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Where is the Mind?
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harvey1
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 Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:52 am Post subject: Where is the Mind? |
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In another thread QED and I were discussing IGUSes (information gathering & utilizing systems: a term that physicist James Hartle articulated), and there's one issue I'd like to hear back from materialists of the mind. Where is the mind? By that I mean let's suppose that humans can only "see" atoms and sub-atomic particles (e.g., electrons). That's all that we can see. Now, using this illustration, please tell me in conceptual terms where the mind is. For example, if we look at a computer, we can see the operating system as atoms in energized states on what we normally see as a disk drive. We see how atoms are energized, how electrons flow, etc., upon the booting up of that computer, and we see why the computer works at an atomic level. However what we don't see--can never see--is anything but atoms and sub-atomic particles being shifted about inside the machine. So, I think we can quite naturally conclude that the computer has no internal state that is "non-atomic" in nature. That is, the computer has no awareness of itself, and no feelings, etc. (i.e., qualia).
So, being that we humans have this subjective inner state, I'd like to hear how materialists and identity theorists of mind (i.e., mind=brain) can conceptually account for the mind solely in terms of atomic and sub-atomic particles. Where is it among the stew of particles?
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Post 161:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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| charles51 wrote: | | Correct, but if observations lead to self-contradictions, then we need to examine the assumptions underlying those observations. Nothing real can contradict itself. |
Observations are just that: observations. If you see a guy walking down the street with two heads, you can't really reject your experience because you think it would lead to a contradiction. Well, ok, you can, but you probably shouldn't. Ignoring the evidence of your own senses is not a very good policy, IMO. |
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| charles51 Apprentice Joined: 15 Aug 2006 Total posts: 147 Location: Virginia Age: 59 Gender: Male
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Post 162:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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Bugmaster,
A person with two heads would not be a logical contradiction unless the definition of a person must entail having only one head. It would, however, be a very odd person. |
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Post 163:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| charles51 wrote: | | A person with two heads would not be a logical contradiction unless the definition of a person must entail having only one head. It would, however, be a very odd person. |
Well, in that case, we'd have to update the definition, right ?
So, if we both agree that logical truth and epistemical truth are two different things, let's get back on topic already :-) |
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| charles51 Apprentice Joined: 15 Aug 2006 Total posts: 147 Location: Virginia Age: 59 Gender: Male
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Post 164:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:59 pm Post subject: |
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Bugmaster,
| Quote: | | Er... why ? I certainly don't agree with this statement. Metaphors are, at best, as real as Quake. |
Something either exists or it doesn’t (law of excluded middle). If a metaphor exists at all, then it exists in fact. Whether that existence is physical or abstract doesn’t change that.
| Quote: | | It may be self-evident to you, but it is not to me. You'll have to back up your argument with something better before I am convinced. In fact, by Occam's Razor, monism (materialism or idealism, take your pick) is more probably true than dualism of any kind, because dualism posits more entities. That's fairly evident. |
I’m not a philosophical dualist. Dualism takes what it believes are self-evident truths from both materialism and idealism, but ends up with the additional problem of trying to account for their interaction and why one should rightly correspond to the other.
| Quote: | I simply don't see the connection:
1). When we speak about our experiences, we are speaking about patterns of electrons, but we gloss over a lot of the details. We call this process "abstraction".
2). ?
3). Abstractions really exist.
You need to be more explicit there in step 2. |
As a philosophical idealist, I don’t agree with statement 1, so I see no need for statement 2. Statement 3, however, is an incorrigible fact. Conscious experience undeniably exists. Deny this and you deny all experiential evidence for statement 1.
| Quote: | | I'll be the first one to admit that we don't fully understand how the mind works. I can't give you the exact neurochemical description of how abstract thought operates on the molecular level. However, it does not immediately follow that thought is non-physical. If you think that, then I challenge you to tell me exactly how NTFS works, or how many electrons there are in our Sun. If you can't, then, by your own logic, you must conclude that NTFS as well as our Sun are non-physical entities. |
When I mentally visualize of a purple cube, is there something physical in my brain that is purple and cube-like? I don’t think so. Therefore, my mental image of a purple cube is an abstract, non-physical, reality. This is true of every mental image I have, or can have.
| Quote: | | However, while I can't give you the details about abstractions, I could describe some of the simpler things. Emotions, such as fear and joy; edge detection in your visual field (and associated optical illusions); clinical depression... These, and many other "mental" phenomena are fairly well understood, on a chemical level (this is why Prozac works, for example). With every day, the evidence against dualism gets stronger. |
This proves what, that the mind is a stew of chemical reactions? If the brain’s chemical reactions are purple and cube-like, this may have merit. To my knowledge the phrase “purple and cube-like” doesn’t describe a chemical reaction.
| Quote: | | I would agree with you that my mind is a self-evident fact that I directly experience; I don't know about your mind, since, not being a telepath, I cannot ever directly experience it. However, just because I can experience it, doesn't make it non-physical. Again, I think you're making a leap of faith there. |
So if we stuck a probe inside your brain we would see this very sentence you are now reading? I don’t think so. Obviously, then, your present experience is not itself a physical reality. Yet it is no less real for not being physical.
| Quote: | | No, why ? Do your lungs directly inform you of every single alveolus ? Does your computer inform you of every single electron, as you're reading this message ? |
Unlike the lungs and a computer, the brain is supposedly the origin of consciousness itself. If the mind is identical to a pattern of energized particles in the brain, then my mental experience is that very fact (A=A). Why, then, do I have no direct knowledge of the brain and its patterns of energized particles? Obviously they’re not identical. Logically, the mind cannot be what it is (A), and what it is not (non-A), and both at the same time. The Law of Non-contradiction forbids this.
| Quote: | | In fact, there are some very good reasons to believe that the brain is a vast neural network that performs a lot of computation in parallel. The brain is composed of neurons, which form the nodes and connections of the network (where axons connect to dendrites)... And so on, and so forth, just as the Wikipedia article (or any high-school tetxbook) says. I don't see how any of this requires faith. |
Whether or not this is an accurate description of the brain can be debated. It’s certainly not a description of the mind. Conscious states and brain states are incommensurable. Take, for example, the emotion of sadness. No exhaustive description of neurons and neural networks can capture its emotive reality. The emotion itself is simply not describable in terms of physical structures, chemical reactions, or energized particles.
| Quote: | | Just because the mind does not exist independently of the body, does not automatically mean that everything everyone says is meaningless. Look at it this way: if I say something profound that moves you, or enlightens you, does it matter if I'm an ensouled (or "enminded", if you prefer) being, or a mindless automaton ? How would you even know which one I am ? And, if the answer is, "it doesn't matter", then what does Occam's Razor tell you ? |
Since no one can prove the real existence of other minds, would Occam's Razor cause me to conclude that no other minds exist? |
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Post 165:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Something either exists or it doesn’t (law of excluded middle). If a metaphor exists at all, then it exists in fact. Whether that existence is physical or abstract doesn’t change that. |
Agreed. Then, by this definition, I'd argue that neither metaphors nor Quake exist "in fact".
| Quote: | | As a philosophical idealist, I don’t agree with statement 1, so I see no need for statement 2. Statement 3, however, is an incorrigible fact. Conscious experience undeniably exists. Deny this and you deny all experiential evidence for statement 1. |
Exists, by which definition ? It is self-evident to me that I experience things, such as getting p0wned by a railgun in Quake, but it does not automatically follow that my experiences are somehow separate from the underlying patterns of electrons. More on this below:
| Quote: | | hen I mentally visualize of a purple cube, is there something physical in my brain that is purple and cube-like? I don’t think so. Therefore, my mental image of a purple cube is an abstract, non-physical, reality. This is true of every mental image I have, or can have. |
I think what we have here is just a confusion in terminology. You argue that what goes on in our brains -- the "mental images" -- is different from the actual subject of our thoughts. I.e., if we visualize a purple cube, there's no purple cube in our brains. You seem to believe that this statement is at odds with my worldview, but it isn't. WHat you call a "mental image", I call a pattern of electrons (or other quantum particles, whatever).
Essentially, we are both arguing that there's something in our brains which powers our thoughts. You call that thing a "mental image", and I call it a pattern of electrons... but... we're both right, it just depends on how much detail you want to include. For example, consider a rock. You can think of it as a rock, or you can think of it as a whole bunch of silicon atoms arranged in a particular pattern. However, talking about atoms all the time can get very tiring, so you use this shorthand called "rock", instead, and gloss over the details.
| Quote: | | This proves what, that the mind is a stew of chemical reactions? |
If our minds can be altered by manipulating chemical reactions (as they most definitely can), then it follows that either chemical reactions are causally related to minds, or they are minds (or, rather, components of a mind, in the same way that individual atoms are components of the rock). If you posit that material chemicals are causally related to immaterial minds, you get ye olde mind-body problem of dualism. Occam's Razor dictates that monism -- i.e., the idea that chemicals are minds -- is more probable.
| Quote: | | So if we stuck a probe inside your brain we would see this very sentence you are now reading? |
Yes and no. If we stuck a probe (or, better yet, an MRI scan) inside my brain, we'd see electrochemical events that correspond to my mental activity at the time. In fact, many people have done so in the past, with some interesting results. As it turns out, your brain does light up in some very specific ways when you read sentences, or look at flowers, or speak, or whatnot.
Remember that this concept of a "sentence" is yet another shorthand we use, just as "mind". It has no independent existence.
| Quote: | | Unlike the lungs and a computer, the brain is supposedly the origin of consciousness itself. |
Computer is to Quake as lungs are to breathing as brain is to consciousness. I don't see any principal difference between them.
| Quote: | | If the mind is identical to a pattern of energized particles in the brain, then my mental experience is that very fact (A=A). |
Ok, so do you think that a rock is not identical to a pattern of energized silicon atoms ? If not, then what is it ?
| Quote: | | Take, for example, the emotion of sadness. No exhaustive description of neurons and neural networks can capture its emotive reality. The emotion itself is simply not describable in terms of physical structures, chemical reactions, or energized particles. |
If this were true, Prozac would not work. But it does.
Keep in mind that I don't share your underlying assumption that non-physical things have an independent existence. Thus, it's pointless to talk to me about "the emotion itself", because when you say "emotion", I hear "a particular sequence of chemical reactions".
| Quote: | | Since no one can prove the real existence of other minds, would Occam's Razor cause me to conclude that no other minds exist? |
Well, I personally conclude that no minds at all exist (according to the definition at the top of this post), so I'd answer "yes".
Note that when I say, "no minds exist", I am not implying that "I don't have any experiences" or that "other people are illusions", or anything of that sort. I am making a much milder statement that the word "mind" is just shorthand we use for certain patterns of electrons. Electrons most likely do exist. |
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Post 166:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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charles51
| Quote: | | When I mentally visualize of a purple cube, is there something physical in my brain that is purple and cube-like? |
When you visualize a purple cube a certain area of the brain lights up with activity. We are not yet able(though we soon may be) to decode the pattern of synapse firings which means "Purple" or "cube" or understand how this area presents those concepts to our conciousness(CPU), but it is there every time we think purple cube none the less. The same thing happens in another section when we read a sentence. If we are hooked to an eeg or brain scan we find the same areas deal with the same thought or action, in the same way every time we have the same thought or action, it is a one to one congruence taking place on the physical structure of the brain even if the though is abstract. The thought and the activity of the synaptic network are one and the same thing. So yes, abstract thought has a physical explanation, we just don't know enough to directly read or understand those thoughts yet.
Then there are the mind reading military jets where the pilot(after extensive calibration for his unique brain signiture) can control systems on his jet with his thoughts. It's crude at present, but it proves thoughts are directly tied to the activity of the brain AND CAN BE DETECTED AS A PHYSICAL PHENOMINON. Given a few million different thoughts( and their complex interactions) and you have a mind and conciousness.
It is emotional activity that seems more closely tied to chemical activity of the brain. When frightened the glands shoot adrenelin into the blood stream, this prepares the muscles and lungs for great effort, but it also sharpens our concentration(in our minds) on that which frightened us(sometimes to the exclusion of effective cognition or normal inhibitions or limits(so scared I couldn't think. I lifted the car off of the victim. etc)). When we feel love, endorphines lift our mood, give us feelings of euphoria and (in the male) damps down our analytical functions to the point of making us stupid  . These too are real physically detectable activities tied directly to those feelings. They too happen the same way for the same feeling every time(though these reactions are less "accurate" than our synaptic network would be, and slower on uptake and letdown). Testostrone, Adrenelin, Progestrin, endorphins, alcohol, marijuana, LSD, cocaine...the list of chemicals which have documented effects on our mind is a long one. These chemicals have physical effects on the brain which have direct effects on the mind. A one to one relationship between the physical(the chemicals effect on the brain) and the mind. This is just undeniable.
So our mind is an emergent property of a physical organ. It is very complex but ultimately knowable in principle, if not yet in fact.
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Post 167:
Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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Bugmaster,
| Quote: | | I think what we have here is just a confusion in terminology. You argue that what goes on in our brains -- the "mental images" -- is different from the actual subject of our thoughts. I.e., if we visualize a purple cube, there's no purple cube in our brains. You seem to believe that this statement is at odds with my worldview, but it isn't. WHat you call a "mental image", I call a pattern of electrons (or other quantum particles, whatever). |
I take your words seriously. If you say my mental image of a purple cube IS a pattern of electrons, that pattern of electrons IS purple and cube-like (A = A). That doesn’t fit any description of electrons I’m familiar with. It might make some sense to say that one CAUSES the other; it’s nonsensical to say that one IS the other.
| Quote: | | Essentially, we are both arguing that there's something in our brains which powers our thoughts. You call that thing a "mental image", and I call it a pattern of electrons... but... we're both right, it just depends on how much detail you want to include. For example, consider a rock. You can think of it as a rock, or you can think of it as a whole bunch of silicon atoms arranged in a particular pattern. However, talking about atoms all the time can get very tiring, so you use this shorthand called "rock", instead, and gloss over the details. |
I disagree. Patterns of electrons and mental images are different in kind, not just in detail. No about of detailed description of my mental experience will arrive at patterns of electrons. Likewise, no descriptive generalization of the electron patterns will arrive at my conscious experience. The two are conceptually incommensurable.
| Quote: | | If our minds can be altered by manipulating chemical reactions (as they most definitely can), then it follows that either chemical reactions are causally related to minds, or they are minds (or, rather, components of a mind, in the same way that individual atoms are components of the rock). If you posit that material chemicals are causally related to immaterial minds, you get ye olde mind-body problem of dualism. Occam's Razor dictates that monism -- i.e., the idea that chemicals are minds -- is more probable. |
You approach the problem with some logical consistency. Are you’re saying that everything is ultimately mind?
| Quote: | | Yes and no. If we stuck a probe (or, better yet, an MRI scan) inside my brain, we'd see electrochemical events that correspond to my mental activity at the time. In fact, many people have done so in the past, with some interesting results. As it turns out, your brain does light up in some very specific ways when you read sentences, or look at flowers, or speak, or whatnot. |
Note your own wording. You say that we’d see electrochemical events that “correspond” to mental activity. We would not see the mental activity itself, but only the electrochemical events which we presume to correlate with it. This clearly implies they are not the same thing.
| Quote: | | Computer is to Quake as lungs are to breathing as brain is to consciousness. I don't see any principal difference between them. |
The analogy only holds if consciousness is itself a physical reality. It’s not. It’s a subjective, abstract, reality. This is why no physical test or observation can directly verify the real existence of conscious states. We can, at most, only infer their existence, at least with respect to other minds.
| Quote: | | Ok, so do you think that a rock is not identical to a pattern of energized silicon atoms ? If not, then what is it ? |
No, they’re not the same. A ‘rock’ is a conscious percept which the pattern of energized silicon atoms cause in us, the observers. This is the commonly accepted interpretation. My interpretation is that silicon atoms are part of a mental construct, or paradigm, we use to explain conscious events.
| Quote: | | If this were true, Prozac would not work. But it does. |
Prozac tablets have no physical effects whatsoever. I stand by this statement.
| Quote: | | Keep in mind that I don't share your underlying assumption that non-physical things have an independent existence. Thus, it's pointless to talk to me about "the emotion itself", because when you say "emotion", I hear "a particular sequence of chemical reactions". |
That’s odd. When I experience an emotion, I rarely think of sequences of chemical reactions. How is that possible unless one is somehow different from the other?
| Quote: | | Note that when I say, "no minds exist", I am not implying that "I don't have any experiences" or that "other people are illusions", or anything of that sort. I am making a much milder statement that the word "mind" is just shorthand we use for certain patterns of electrons. Electrons most likely do exist. |
Electrons “most likely” exist? Why the uncertainty? You seem certain of your own conscious experience. You don’t doubt that. If one is essentially the same the other, how can you be sure of one and doubt the other? This suggests to me that maybe they aren’t really the same thing. |
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Post 168:
Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:21 am Post subject: |
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| charles51 wrote: | QED,
I’m not entirely sure what you’re even claiming. According to conventional materialism, all causes are “bottom up”. That's what I've been saying. I don’t understand how you can posit a physical system that operates according to physical laws but can, at the same time, operate by some kind of self-directed action not determined by those same laws. These are contradictory claims. |
By "bottom up" I'm talking about considering the evolution of life from the humblest of beginnings. Here we can understand the formation of sensor and motor loops through natural selection. This is what Christophe Menant does in his paper developing a Systemic Theory of Meaning. Somewhere on the path from simple organisms like this to human beings there is the evolution of conscious self-awareness. If we are satisfied with supernatural explanations we can walk away content that some magic wand has been waved over the human head. Personally though, I would prefer to think that consciousness is a natural property that might be present in some small degree in all information processing systems. It might be that it is dependant on the hardware or it might be a general, transferable, property.
I think then that we might find that a cruise missile has a similar level of consciousness to a wasp. Put another way, how can we say that neither can have this property? |
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Post 169:
Fri Sep 01, 2006 8:03 am Post subject: |
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QED,
| Quote: | | By "bottom up" I'm talking about considering the evolution of life from the humblest of beginnings. Here we can understand the formation of sensor and motor loops through natural selection. This is what Christophe Menant does in his paper developing a Systemic Theory of Meaning. Somewhere on the path from simple organisms like this to human beings there is the evolution of conscious self-awareness. If we are satisfied with supernatural explanations we can walk away content that some magic wand has been waved over the human head. Personally though, I would prefer to think that consciousness is a natural property that might be present in some small degree in all information processing systems. It might be that it is dependant on the hardware or it might be a general, transferable, property. |
You have two things going on here. On one side is the description of a physical processing system. Whether simple or complex, these systems operate according to physical laws. They are made of tiny physical parts, which themselves are governed by physical laws. As they form complex systems, those same laws continue to operate. The tiny parts, of which the complex system consists, continue to obey the same laws as before. Nothing changes in that respect. As the parts form more complex systems, the newly developed systems may seem to operate according to new and different laws. But these new laws are only describing the collective actions of the tiny parts. The tiny parts, and the laws that govern them, haven’t changed. The new laws don’t cause anything to happen at the macroscopic level that violates the physical laws operating at the microscopic level. The ‘new’ laws are only a different way of describing these underlying basal laws.
On the other side is the rise of consciousness within the physical processing system. Evolutionists want to believe that consciousness actually does something to aid the organism (or physical processing system) in its fight for survival in each developmental stage. For this to happen, consciousness must be able to physically interfere in the cause and effect relationships taking place among the physical parts, and which are determined by physical laws. Consciousness must do something that the physical parts and their laws alone can't account for. But consciousness can't do this; it's physically impossible. Consciousness is therefore, at best, a passive addition to the physical processing systems. It benefits the organism in no way whatsoever. What a complex physical processing system (or organism) does is completely governed by physical laws, laws which operate and determine physical action all the way down to the molecular and atomic level.
Evolutionists have forgotten -- or maybe never learned -- that biology is founded on physics. Biology is only a branch of physics as it applies to complex organic physical processing systems. At no time does biology override and violate physics and its laws. The adaptive role of consciousness and its powers to aid physical survival is a myth based on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics itself. Why so many otherwise intelligent people buy into this fable can only be attributed to selective forgetfulness, or perhaps a deficient educational system. |
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Post 170:
Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| charles51 wrote: | | I take your words seriously. If you say my mental image of a purple cube IS a pattern of electrons, that pattern of electrons IS purple and cube-like (A = A). |
Sorry, I don't see how this follows at all. Are you saying that, when you play Quake on a computer, there are little Quake-homunculi running around inside of it ? I understand that you believe that mental phenomena are categorically different from Quake, but you just keep stating it: | Quote: | | I disagree. Patterns of electrons and mental images are different in kind, not just in detail. No about of detailed description of my mental experience will arrive at patterns of electrons. |
I need some proof and/or evidence before I am convinced.
Basically, I think you are setting up a false dillemma:
* Either our perceptions of purple cubes are non-physical, or
* Our perceptions of purple cubes are physical and purple and cube-like.
I believe there's a third choice:
* When we perceive a purple cube, what really happens is a shift in chemical activity inside our brain. The perception itself does not exist independently of this activity, physically or otherwise.
So, you can think about it like this: perception is a process, not an object.
| Quote: | | Bugmaster wrote: | | If you posit that material chemicals are causally related to immaterial minds, you get ye olde mind-body problem of dualism. Occam's Razor dictates that monism -- i.e., the idea that chemicals are minds -- is more probable. |
You approach the problem with some logical consistency. Are you’re saying that everything is ultimately mind? |
I am saying that all the following statements are more likely than dualism: "everything is mind", "everything is matter (or energy, if you prefer, since E=mc^2)", "everything is something else". Based on other evidence, I conclude that "everything is matter" is even more probable, so that's what I'm going with.
| Quote: | | Note your own wording. You say that we’d see electrochemical events that “correspond” to mental activity. We would not see the mental activity itself, but only the electrochemical events which we presume to correlate with it. This clearly implies they are not the same thing. |
I did not mean to imply any such thing; what I meant was that the MRI scan is not precise enough to show us every single electron inside of every single neuron (nor would we, at this point, know what do do with such data). However, if you believe that electrochemical beliefs are not the same thing as mental events, and yet the two are causally related, then you need to explain to me how a physical thing can affect a non-physical thing, and offer some evidence for this "mechanism".
| Quote: | | My interpretation is that silicon atoms are part of a mental construct, or paradigm, we use to explain conscious events. |
Are you saying that the rock is made out of mental stuff ?
| Quote: | | Prozac tablets have no physical effects whatsoever. I stand by this statement. |
!! This is a fairly extraordinary statement, and I'll need to see some extraordinary evidence before I am convinced. Specifically:
* Do you believe that Prozac is more efficacious than a placebo ?
* If you do, then how do you explain that a chemical pill that we swallow can affect our non-physical minds ?
* Is it possible to explain the working of Prozac at all in strictly physical terms ?
* How was Prozac engineered in the first place ?
* What happens to our physical bodies when we swalow Prozac ? Does anything happen that would not have happened if we swallowed a sugar pill ?
| Quote: | | I rarely think of sequences of chemical reactions. How is that possible unless one is somehow different from the other? |
When you walk down the street, do you think of your individual muscles ? I'm not sure what you're driving at.
| Quote: | | Electrons “most likely” exist? Why the uncertainty? You seem certain of your own conscious experience. You don’t doubt that. If one is essentially the same the other, how can you be sure of one and doubt the other? |
I am sure of my own conscious experience because of the Descartean "Cogito Ergo Sum". However, I believe that electrons exist due to the overwhelming amount of evidence for them. It is quite possible that the entirety of our modern physics is wrong, and that electrical current is carried by some sort of goblins... It's possible, but not very likely.
Actually, this is exactly the difference between logical truth and empirical truth, which I'd mentioned earlier. Empirical truth can never be 100% certain. For example, are you 100% certain that the Sun exists ? How do you know that the Earth isn't really a giant alien zoo, covered by a holographic dome that displays the Sun ? Or maybe you're a brain in a vat, being fed misleading sensory input ? All these things are possible, but very, very unlikely. Thus, you can be 99.99999...% sure that the Sun exists, but not 100% sure. |
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