Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[The Grand Nudger]

Some of them appear to greatly precede formal math. What’s funny is that you can imagine them on a nature documentary made by a species that thinks we’re not sentient. “Nature has found an ingenious way to help the lowly man tell time, even though he has no specific sentient capacity to do simple math, himself”

Here we are very accurately calling them tricks, as people commonly refer to hypothetical machine sentience. -and yet….they work. Ultimately, we reach a point where all we’re wondering…all we can wonder, is whether a mimic could be so competent as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article, without accurately being the genuine article. A non diamond with the exact same properties as a diamond.

---

We’ve gone on a little digression. It was originally about the possibility that mainstream Christianity would become an ideology of allegory, rather than belief in a particular version of a particular god. I think the secularization of the west (including western Christian’s) shows that it can and at least in that area, the work is well underweigh. Evangelical preachers will tell you it’s already done- and they’re not entirely wrong, even if they tend to lump their personal boogeymen in there as a rule.

[emjay]

I'm still not sure what this topic is about. Can anyone give me a Readers Digest explanation? The more I have read the more I don't understand the topic.

To be fair I'm not sure how this thread has evolved from talking allegorization in Christianity to philosophical zombies and the nature of consciousness - since I haven't read all of it - but personally not complaining as I love these sorts of subjects.

But as to whether it can be put into a Reader's Digest explanation, I don't know really; it's kind of complicated with a lot of different perspectives, and a lot of potential for misunderstanding due to the nuances of different positions. It's a bit of a minefield really ;-), IMO, but fun all the same.

[LadyForCamus]

@GrandizerII

I’d never heard of properly dualism before. How can one distinguish between physical properties and mental properties? If both are made of the same physical “substance” so to speak, what, exactly, differentiates them from one another? Is there a mechanistic explanation? I’m not sure I quite understand.

[Disagreeable]

I’d never heard of properly dualism before.

Property dualism is incoherent so I wouldn't worry about it.

[LadyForCamus]

I’d never heard of properly dualism before.

Property dualism is incoherent so I wouldn't worry about it.

I’m not “worried” about it. I’m interested in learning about it. Is that alright with you?

[Disagreeable]

Property dualism is incoherent so I wouldn't worry about it.

I’m not “worried” about it. I’m interested in learning about it.

Good!

[The Grand Nudger]

Ouch, that sets the bar pretty high. Idk if it’s incoherent, but I do think that if a person is holding to some form of dualism property dualism is easier to hold onto than substance dualism. Our minds seem to be property dualists, themselves, when they report on what they are.

Perhaps this is because what our minds are really tuned into, is detecting other minds. A special category, to us, of which we’re a part. An ability on which a great amount of our survival (and behaviors) depend.

[GrandizerII]

@GrandizerII

I’d never heard of properly dualism before. How can one distinguish between physical properties and mental properties? If both are made of the same physical “substance” so to speak, what, exactly, differentiates them from one another? Is there a mechanistic explanation? I’m not sure I quite understand.

Ok, since it's LFC, I'll post one more reply here:

This is what property dualism, in crude terms, entails: in a sense, the brain is not only physical, but mental. That's because things, at the fundamental level, are both physical and mental.

How can one distinguish between physical properties and mental properties?

I don't know if you can make a clean distinction between physical and mental, but generally speaking, think of it this way. You can go about doing proper science with physical properties from a "third-person perspective" (you can measure the perimeter of a floor outline, manipulate the temperature of water, and add more balls to a set of balls to increase the number). In the context of neuroscience, when you observe the firing patterns of neurons in someone's brains via the technologies we use to detect these patterns, we are observing physical properties here. You will not be able to see one's actual experiences through such a procedure, but you could nevertheless predict what they may be experiencing by observing these patterns.

Mental properties are what you can readily "sense" from a first-person perspective, but are not readily available for others to do direct science with. These properties are to do with one's experiences of the things they observe (such as the color of a golden apple or the feeling of pain when they stub their toe). Other people have to rely on your report of these experiences to have some idea what they are like from your perspective. Otherwise, the most they could do is make predictions about what you experience based on what they themselves experience when observing the same objects.

Is there a mechanistic explanation?

No, but then again, not even the pure physicalist has a mechanistic explanation for consciousness. They may say they do, but what they end up doing is explaining something different and not linked to consciousness itself (in the phenomenal sense).

Property dualism basically is a philosophical position one may adopt as a response to the hard problem. The issue I'm noticing is that one side is starting from what feels obvious to one's self (i.e., phenomenal consciousness) and then going from there, realizing that yes, there does appear to be a hard problem when one thinks hard about it. Another side is starting from what science has shown us thus far, thus coming at this with a highly optimistic faith that science (as it is now) will also eventually solve the apparent problem of consciousness, and thus never having to concern themselves too much with any hard problem.

The former side is thinking "yeah, seems like there is a qualitative difference, we should take this observation seriously". The latter side is thinking "it's to do with complexity, man, nothing more; don't worry, we got this!"

[Belacqua]

Here's my version, since nobody asked:

Substance dualism says that mind and brain are both substances -- two different kinds of stuff. Each type of stuff has its own set of properties, and, in theory, mind-stuff could exist independently of brain-stuff. (I don't think anybody here is a substance dualist.)

Property dualism says that there is only one kind of stuff: brain matter. However, this brain matter gives rise to two very different kinds of properties. These are:

1] electrochemical events in the synapses, which can be detected from fMRI studies, and

2] phenomenological experiences, including qualia and thoughts.

The point is that for property dualists, these two things, while apparently occurring somehow in correlation, are very different properties and the one can't be reduced to the other. 

Some people don't want to accept property dualism, because they think that electrochemical events just are phenomenological experiences. They think that 1 and 2 are the same property, despite the fact that we have no idea how 1 appears to us as 2.

I'm also a property dualist because if you crack open somebody else's head you might see their electrochemical events, but there's no way you'd see their phenomenological experiences.

[The Grand Nudger]

Trouble there, is physicalism has -many- explanations for consciousness. It even has an explanation for why "1 appears as 2".

You and grand think that they're wrong - but it would be massively dishonest (or simply ignorant) to state that they don't exist. Nor, for that matter, would anyone need to explain human consciousness to have any explanation of consciousness. We're entirely likely to figure out more about other examples first...if only for our reservations about human experimentatation. All along the way, I suspect...even if consciousnes in this or that, and many of the aspects of consciousness et al are explained (let's call this a hypothetical for funsies,) people who hold to the hard problem will insist that none of those things explain whatever their thing is. That's the entire gimmick to begin with - explicitly stated.