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Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
#31
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
The chicken dance may be a bit flippant. Nevertheless, because the decision always, or almost always, corresponds to the behavior there is a clear causal explanation. If you insist that the conscious decision is not the real cause you not only have to demonstrate that the brain not only causes the decision but somehow an unconscious process always, or almost always, corresponds to the decision and the behavior. The brain apparently would also have to produce the idea that doing the chicken dance would be fun or whatever the reason might be. 

Say you hate your job. Really hate it. The only other job offer you can find pays 30% less. You sit down and work on your finances. If you have dependants you predict what the effect on them would be. All sort of predictions on how your life would change are taken into account. Eventually you make a decision based on your planning and balanced against the desire to get out of a job you hate. 

You're Michelangelo and you have the idea in your head of a statue of David....

All these conscious experiences provide me with a perfectly rational, causal sequence for the behavior that ensues. The idea that the conscious experiences are just illusions, but also miraculously correspond to behavior really being caused by  process in the brain seems incredible. The only reason for this line of thought seems to be the dogma that something immaterial cannot effect something material.
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#32
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 14, 2019 at 10:41 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: The chicken dance may be a bit flippant. Nevertheless, because the decision always, or almost always, corresponds to the behavior there is a clear causal explanation. If you insist that the conscious decision is not the real cause you not only have to demonstrate that the brain not only causes the decision but somehow an unconscious process always, or almost always, corresponds to the decision and the behavior. The brain apparently would also have to produce the idea that doing the chicken dance would be fun or whatever the reason might be. 
Some clear casual explanation beyond the fact that our decisions influence our actions, though?  Decisions happen, they exist.  They exist whether there's one substance or two, whether that substance is material or immaterial.  

Quote:Say you hate your job. Really hate it. The only other job offer you can find pays 30% less. You sit down and work on your finances. If you have dependants you predict what the effect on them would be. All sort of predictions on how your life would change are taken into account. Eventually you make a decision based on your planning and balanced against the desire to get out of a job you hate. 
Sure, the human condition.  But what does that have to say about the grounding of being or substance?  I think you promised more out of this home experiment than it could ever possibly deliver.

Quote:You're Michelangelo and you have the idea in your head of a statue of David....

All these conscious experiences provide me with a perfectly rational, causal sequence for the behavior that ensues. The idea that the conscious experiences are just illusions, but also miraculously correspond to behavior really being caused by  process in the brain seems incredible. The only reason for this line of thought seems to be the dogma that something immaterial cannot effect something material.
Would it be fair to say that everything that preceded this complaint about some other viewpoint was more foreplay than thorough investigation?

Imagine a ghostly AST.......so, no, it has nothing to do with any commitment to the interaction problem (which is, ofc, a problem).
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#33
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
Buuurp.
"For the only way to eternal glory is a life lived in service of our Lord, FSM; Verily it is FSM who is the perfect being the name higher than all names, king of all kings and will bestow upon us all, one day, The great reclaiming"  -The Prophet Boiardi-

      Conservative trigger warning.
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#34
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 12, 2019 at 10:36 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: I enjoyed that. The part about Lipset's [ sp?] experiments being misrepresented was informative

His experiments aren't being misrepresented by anyone. Anyone is free to conclude whatever they like from the data produced by Libet's experiments. Some take his data to suggest that free will illusory. Libet himself drew different conclusions. This doesn't mean anybody's work is being misrepresented by anyone.

Furthermore, if anyone is misrepresenting Libet, it's the neuroscientist in the video... (although, to be fair, he doesn't really misrepresent Libet)... here's the deal: According to the video, Libet is a property dualist. A property dualist is much like a materialist. They do not posit that there is any kind of immaterial soul or distinct substance like the Cartesians do. All they say is that there is one kind of substance, yet some of that substance has an immaterial property.

I don't really like that they are called dualists... much for the same reasons you give-- guilt by association with Descartes.

Quote:I also don't like the term dualist as it suggests Descartes...

But his position can be easily proved and you can do this at home all by yourself. Imagine any sensation or thought you might have. Now I'll concede the point for arguments sake that these sensations correspond to or are even caused by measurable activities in the brain. Still the sensation or thought you experience is something very different from the brain activity. No? Qualia the eggheads call them. This is obvious to me. 

But this is the thought experiment that Rene Descartes describes in the first two chapters of his Meditations. Why do you have a problem that something "suggests Descartes" when your own ideas are distinctly Cartesian. In fact, what you've done is describe the mind/body problem. That's why Descartes was an excellent philosopher... not because his theory, substance dualism, was correct, but that he discovered the question that we had yet to answer. (And we still haven't answered it.)

***

You brought up hylomorphism in another post, so maybe you prefer it to substance dualism. But hylomorphism does not suggest an immaterial soul. If anything, it describes a material soul.

Hylomorphism was Aristotle's "improvement" on Plato's theory of Forms (which Aristotle rejected). To Aristotle, you could look at a few examples of different kinds of tables and come up with an idea of "table-ness." Now anyone can recognize that "table-ness" is a real thing. But it isn't a physical thing. It's nonphysical.

Where Aristotle departed from Plato was in that Plato thought that Forms could exist independently of material. Aristotle said "no"... Every real thing was a combination of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). So a table, for example, could be divided into the wood that comprises it (matter) and the form of "table-ness" that organizes the wood. So "table-ness" is an organizing principle and NOT an immaterial substance.

Likewise, the hylomorphic soul, is NOT an immaterial substance but an organizing principle-- or as I said earlier, a material soul. I'm not alone on this. Many philosophers agree with me in that hylomorphism is materialism. There is disagreement too, but not enough disagreement for the neuroscientist in the video to say that hylomorphism relates to the existence of an immaterial thing.
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#35
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
I haven't mentioned or at least argued for an immaterial soul yet on this forum. Just the existence of conscious experiences distinct from brain activity and possessing causal power over behavior.  


Your point about Aristotle being a materialist: He would not be a materialist in any sense in which we use the word today. Universals exist only in the mind it is true but they correspond to that within a physical object that makes it intelligible. The form of an object is ontologically distinct from it's matter. Further the form determines the behavior  we see in physical things. 

If someone wants to call him a materialist that's fine. It might also open a good discussion on what contemporary philosophy means by matter. The word is often used as if it's meaning is  self-evident.
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#36
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
I got 4:50 into it and could take no more. Life is too short. Why assume that complex brain functions such as thinking about justice should be localized? Why assume this is evidence for a mind not part of a brain? Remember, the U.S. has a Neurosurgeon in the Trump White House that believes the Pyramids were grain silos built by Joseph.
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#37
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 15, 2019 at 1:58 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: I haven't mentioned or at least argued for an immaterial soul yet on this forum. Just the existence of conscious experiences distinct from brain activity and possessing causal power over behavior.  
Sure, you have not mentioned it, but it is clearly where you want to go. So let us just shortcut the whole ambiguation deal.

Have you any evidence any conscious experience absent a live brain? I am pretty sure you don't.


(June 15, 2019 at 1:58 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: Your point about Aristotle being a materialist: He would not be a materialist in any sense in which we use the word today. Universals exist only in the mind it is true but they correspond to that within a physical object that makes it intelligible. The form of an object is ontologically distinct from it's matter. Further the form determines the behavior  we see in physical things. 
Word salad is no substitute for actual evidence. Do you have any?

(June 15, 2019 at 1:58 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: If someone wants to call him a materialist that's fine. It might also open a good discussion on what contemporary philosophy means by matter. The word is often used as if it's meaning is  self-evident.
Years ago I used to work with a guy whose primary degree was in philosophy. We were programmers. So I asked him the obvious question. Why are you a programmer now? He said and I quote, "Philosophy is a waste of time that cannot put food on your table". That is a philosophy I can relate to.
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#38
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 15, 2019 at 4:03 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: Years ago I used to work with a guy whose primary degree was in philosophy. We were programmers. So I asked him the obvious question. Why are you a programmer now? He said and I quote, "Philosophy is a waste of time that cannot put food on your table". That is a philosophy I can relate to.

Then why are you posting in the philosophy forum?
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#39
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 15, 2019 at 1:58 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: I haven't mentioned or at least argued for an immaterial soul yet on this forum.

Well then, please take a position so I can attack it. Tongue

Quote:Just the existence of conscious experiences distinct from brain activity and possessing causal power over behavior.  

That suggests that you are some kind of substance dualist. If something has causal power over material things, it must be some kind of substance. Period.


Quote:Your point about Aristotle being a materialist: He would not be a materialist in any sense in which we use the word today. Universals exist only in the mind it is true but they correspond to that within a physical object that makes it intelligible. The form of an object is ontologically distinct from it's matter. Further the form determines the behavior  we see in physical things. 

I think hylomorphism has to do with intelligibility as I understand it. But (admittedly) I'm not all that familiar with Aristotle. I'm more of a Plato guy. But I'm familiar enough with hylomorphism and intelligibility to discuss this with you. Feel free to correct any of my errors.

Here is how I see it: The tiger's "tiger-ness" determines its behavior. But (at the same time) the "tiger-ness" is not a causal force. It's an intelligible pattern of matter. Think of something inanimate like water. The water "behaves" like ice when the temperature reaches 31 degrees because that is an intelligible feature of water. This sounds like materialism to me. Can you point out any misunderstandings/errors I have here?

Quote:If someone wants to call him a materialist that's fine. It might also open a good discussion on what contemporary philosophy means by matter. The word is often used as if it's meaning is  self-evident.

That could be an interesting conversation. I think most people use the definition furnished by science. How do you define matter?
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#40
RE: Neurosurgeon Provides Evidence Against Materialism
(June 13, 2019 at 5:05 pm)ColdComfort Wrote:
(June 13, 2019 at 12:08 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: I'm interested in this home experiment, though.  What is de to demonstrate that the authors ciding that I'm going to do the chicken dance in ten minutes meant to demonstrate, which others are we proving wrong, and about what?

The chicken dance experiment was meant to demonstrate that the authors were wrong in saying that a "non-physical essence" cannot control behavior.

A nonphysical essence is synonymous with a nonexistent one.

(June 15, 2019 at 1:58 pm)ColdComfort Wrote: I haven't mentioned or at least argued for an immaterial soul yet on this forum. Just the existence of conscious experiences distinct from brain activity and possessing causal power over behavior.  


Your point about Aristotle being a materialist: He would not be a materialist in any sense in which we use the word today. Universals exist only in the mind it is true but they correspond to that within a physical object that makes it intelligible. The form of an object is ontologically distinct from it's matter. Further the form determines the behavior  we see in physical things. 

If someone wants to call him a materialist that's fine. It might also open a good discussion on what contemporary philosophy means by matter. The word is often used as if it's meaning is  self-evident.

In my whole life, I've never even heard a coherent definition of nonphysical that doesn't refer to something that can't easily be physical. There's no reason to believe that there are two kinds of ultimate substances in the universe. Mind and matter are the same damn thing.
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