Emergent Dualism

[AgnosticBoy]

I've read, listened to, and watched many debates on consciousness between Christians and atheist philosophers and so far I'm left with more questions than answers. Then I read a book by Dr. David Chalmers called The Conscious Mind and realized that his position accounts for a lot of the evidence and objections that seem to plague the materialist and non-materialist sides.

In short, emergent dualism is the position that consciousness/mind is an emergent nonphysical property of the brain. Under this view, the brain is primary in that the mind depends on the brain, but what starts out as a physical process gives rise to a nonphysical nonphysical effect (i.e. the mind and its attributes). Another add-on to this position is that the mind has causal powers which it exerts on the brain - commonly referred to as 'downward' or 'top-down' causation. This turns the deterministic worldview (which also includes materialism) on its head.

After reviewing the arguments for emergent dualism, I'm left to conclude that materialism is incomplete when it comes to explaining consciousness. Substance dualism simply goes too far.

Debate requests: Leave materialism or explain why anyone should remain a materialists after learning about consciousness.

Have you considered emergent dualism? What are your objections?

[Danmark]

In short, emergent dualism is the position that consciousness/mind is an emergent nonphysical property of the brain. Under this view, the brain is primary in that the mind depends on the brain, but what starts out as a physical process gives rise to a nonphysical nonphysical effect (i.e. the mind and its attributes).
....
Have you considered emergent dualism? What are your objections?

I do not see this as dualism, but as a confusion of terms. Certainly consciousness and 'mind' emerge from material processes; i.e., the electrical connections of the 100 billion neurons of the brain and their 100 trillion connections. 'Mind' and 'consciousness' are simply the labels we fix to the result of these material interconnections and the patterns that emerge from.

[AgnosticBoy]

[Replying to post 112 by AgnosticBoy]

Okay, lets say that rocks and soda cans have "experiences"...

Since this is my first post here, I can say that I hope there is more rational content than is in this sentence above on the rest of the forum.

No, I am not making a slam at the one who posted it, but I am legitimately questioning the notion that inanimate objects somehow have sensory organs and brains sufficient to record "experiences".

You can find a more complete description of my view in post 8. This thread was voted best topic so I'm sure I won that award because people liked the logic and evidence behind my view (also held by Chalmers, and others).

I also recommend reading my argument from mental imagery. You can read that thread here.

In short, emergent dualism is the position that consciousness/mind is an emergent nonphysical property of the brain. Under this view, the brain is primary in that the mind depends on the brain, but what starts out as a physical process gives rise to a nonphysical nonphysical effect (i.e. the mind and its attributes).
....
Have you considered emergent dualism? What are your objections?

I do not see this as dualism, but as a confusion of terms. Certainly consciousness and 'mind' emerge from material processes; i.e., the electrical connections of the 100 billion neurons of the brain and their 100 trillion connections. 'Mind' and 'consciousness' are simply the labels we fix to the result of these material interconnections and the patterns that emerge from.

The 'mind' is a broad term covering a lot of different features of the brain. In the context of the mind/body problem, the usual focus is on certain type of features like phenomenal consciousness, mental imagery, subjective experience, etc. None of these have been proven to be observable nor physical, but yet we still experience them. If you could prove all of this was material then we would've built it (any computers with subjective experience????).

I've already offered a logical defense for my view, so I will not go over every detail. It really gets old proving materialism wrong over and over again. For now, I'm just focusing on gathering more empirical evidence and I'll let that do the talking.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 131 by AgnosticBoy]

If you could prove all of this was material then we would've built it (any computers with subjective experience????).

How does this follow? If it were proven that mind and consciousness were material ... ie. emergent properties of the physical brain structure ... we still might not be able to physically build a "computer" having these properties. It may simply be too complex and beyond our current capabilities in AI software, hardware and simulation to physically build such a machine (and I think that is clearly the case at present).

It really gets old proving materialism wrong over and over again. For now, I'm just focusing on gathering more empirical evidence and I'll let that do the talking.

Wait a minute! How have you proven materialism wrong when you are still gathering empirical evidence against it? I'd say the jury is still out until you can present that empirical evidence and have it run the gauntlet of scientific scrutiny.

[AgnosticBoy]

[Replying to post 131 by AgnosticBoy]

If you could prove all of this was material then we would've built it (any computers with subjective experience????).

How does this follow? If it were proven that mind and consciousness were material ... ie. emergent properties of the physical brain structure ... we still might not be able to physically build a "computer" having these properties. It may simply be too complex and beyond our current capabilities in AI software, hardware and simulation to physically build such a machine (and I think that is clearly the case at present).

Well not only can we not build it, but most importantly, we have not been able to observe the mental features that I brought up. So have you ever considered that we can't build mental imagery because there's nothing material to build?!

It really gets old proving materialism wrong over and over again. For now, I'm just focusing on gathering more empirical evidence and I'll let that do the talking.

Wait a minute! How have you proven materialism wrong when you are still gathering empirical evidence against it? I'd say the jury is still out until you can present that empirical evidence and have it run the gauntlet of scientific scrutiny.

The evidence that I have already does the job. I have SCIENTIFIC evidence of how physical perception works and none of that applies to mental images and how we perceive them. Secondly, I have evidence of subjective experience being able to have physical effects. It is here that we can solve the age-old 'interaction problem' by observing how subjective experience can change/control brain structure.

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 133 by AgnosticBoy]

We have evidence that there are some structures too complex for humans to build... That's why we tell machines to do it.

Several algorithms currently skimming the net have such a vast system of rules and logic governing their behavior that no human alive can actually follow the logic or determine how it would behave. So does that mean their complexity is dualistic, and there's actually a substrate of "logicness" that is impossible to build? No.

We made machines do it. We made a simple "builder bot" and told it to go to work making more bots, used a simple algorithm to sort out the ones that have a function we want it to have, and then repeat using the successful bots until we've managed to introduce such a vastly complex item that we can't understand it, yet it is both entirely physical and entirely artificial.

Simple governing systems leading to high complexity... well I'll be gosh darned, we've got ourselves a case for abstracted evolutionary processes to lead to higher complexity. No supernaturalism required. It curbs your constant moaning about how we "should've been able to build entire brains by now" if they were entirely material. The entirely reasonable and logical perspective is that brains are physical, the minds that emerge from them depend on the brain and are not supernatural, and our ability to understand the brain is overwhelmed by the vast amounts of complexity that iterative evolution introduced. The burden of proof is on you, then, to justify your assertions.

[Danmark]

The evidence that I have already does the job. I have SCIENTIFIC evidence of how physical perception works and none of that applies to mental images and how we perceive them. Secondly, I have evidence of subjective experience being able to have physical effects. It is here that we can solve the age-old 'interaction problem' by observing how subjective experience can change/control brain structure.

WHAT 'evidence?' You've demonstrated nothing, proved nothing, except what we already know, that consciousness emerges from a material foundation. That you cannot fully explain consciousness does not "prove materialism wrong." In fact, I'm not even sure what YOU mean when you say this. Please give us your definition of 'materialism.'
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 133 by AgnosticBoy]

So have you ever considered that we can't build mental imagery because there's nothing material to build?!

I've never disagreed with the idea that a mental image is not a physical thing. But what evidence is there for a mental image NOT being the result of the interactions of physical things in the brain (neurons, memory elements, electrical signals, etc.). A thought is not a physical thing in the sense of it being something we could build, but it is a result of activity by the physical components of the brain. A mental image is a similar thing ... a perception formed by the brain via its physical components interacting in such a way as to produce the perception of an image. How else could the perception of an image (a mental image, not an image processed by the eye system) occur? What evidence can you present to prove that a mental image is not the direct result of physical activity within the brain?

[Kenisaw]

What phenomena of subjective experience precisely? Two people having a different experience at the same event are no different than two rocks having a different experience when thrown into the same pond at the same velocities and angles, because they don't have the exact same history and therefore do not have the exact same shape and content. Everything that has reacted with them previously influences how they can react in the present.

Sure, we are way more complicated and rocks, but that doesn't make our experience any less predicated on what we've experienced in the past and how those interactions affected the physical brain.

Why are you talking about rocks having a subjective experience?

If we accept that rocks are having a subjective experience then there is no problem associated with human subjective experience.

Not only this, but we would then need to say that our digital computers are having a subjective experience as well.

Let me back up here, because something got lost along the way.

Rocks experience energy. This is probably quite the obvious statement, but I'll explain further so as to avoid any ambiguity. If I take a rock and throw it into a cake, the rock experiences the forces that add kinetic energy to the rock (the throw), the frictional forces of the air and the cake that absorb this kinetic energy away from the rock (slow it down), and any other forces that may be in play (such as a change in potential energy if it rests at a different elevation than it did before it was thrown). In this way, the rock experiences something. That set of experiences is unique to that rock in that situation.

Humans experience energy as well. We call it our senses, but it is really no different than the rock, in that energy being transferred from atom to atom causes a reaction among those atoms affected by the energy.

In that sense, even a rock has a subjective experience because it is having an experience that is unique to it. In no way was I trying to state that rocks are alive, or that rocks can recall such an experience at a later time. That is taking my meaning too far.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 133 by AgnosticBoy]

So have you ever considered that we can't build mental imagery because there's nothing material to build?!

I've never disagreed with the idea that a mental image is not a physical thing. But what evidence is there for a mental image NOT being the result of the interactions of physical things in the brain (neurons, memory elements, electrical signals, etc.). A thought is not a physical thing in the sense of it being something we could build, but it is a result of activity by the physical components of the brain. A mental image is a similar thing ... a perception formed by the brain via its physical components interacting in such a way as to produce the perception of an image.

I assume the mental image, a momentary display of consciousness, exists as a combination of neurons and the pattern, quality, and strength of the electrical connections. Might there also be subatomic components involved that have yet to be observed?

[Kenisaw]

What phenomena of subjective experience precisely? Two people having a different experience at the same event are no different than two rocks having a different experience when thrown into the same pond at the same velocities and angles, because they don't have the exact same history and therefore do not have the exact same shape and content. Everything that has reacted with them previously influences how they can react in the present.

Sure, we are way more complicated and rocks, but that doesn't make our experience any less predicated on what we've experienced in the past and how those interactions affected the physical brain.

Okay, lets say that rocks and soda cans have "experiences". Are you actually equating this to human experience? Not even those born blind have visual experiences, not even visual dreams. So I fail to grasp how a rock with NO sensory organs nor stimuli can have any experience like sentient, organic, thinking and feeling beings.

I agree that rocks don't have sentience, or think. But at the most basic of levels of physics, how a rock experiences something is no different than how you or I experience something. It's all about energy transfer from atom to atom.

I throw a rock at a brick wall. The rock and the wall experience each other as the rock gets very close to the wall (technically even before that they feel the pull of gravity towards each other, albeit very minutely because gravity isn't a very strong force). The repulsive strength of the strong nuclear forces in the atoms of the brick and of the rock stop the rock in it's flight path, pushing the rock back away from the brick atoms (they atoms don't actually touch). The air molecules caught between the rock and the wall are squeezed together and are forced out the side, causing a sound wave (part of the noise you hear). Also, some of the molecules in the rock and in the brick may absorb enough of the kinetic energy to be able to break free (hence a chip in the rock and the brick from the impact) and other molecules may even briefly vibrate (the rest of the noise you hear). The rock, along with whatever fragments of rock and brick there are, fall to the ground and go through the same basic process with the Earth.

You run into a brick wall. Nothing changes here from the rock example, except that in your body when some molecules break or absorb certain amounts of force, a chemical or electrical signal is produced that goes to the structures in the brain. The signal is triggered by the energy absorbed by the impact with the wall, either because a molecule received enough energy to break which released a new chemical, or the energy was turned into an electrical impulse that travels your neural network. This signal interacts with the structures in your brain, which react based on what type of chemical or electrical signal is received. These reactions all follow the laws of physics and chemistry.

The physical structure of your brain can imprint these events somehow onto a type of neuron called a place cell. When that imprint is read later, the moment is recreated (hence a memory).

How we experience things is no different than the rock. We are different in that we can recall the experience at a later time.