What kind of dualist are you?

[Kharakov]

Technically, dark matter interacts with electromagnetism via humans. #checkmate

Sorry. Didnt get this.

Humans interact primarily through EM, they (cough) are talking about dark matter, which means dark matter is causing some EM interactions.

 

[Copernicus]

Er, I think that most of us have noticed gravity.

Only because most of us are in close proximity to a planet sized lump of matter. A 1g fridge magnet can generate a magnetic field that easily overcomes the gravity of the 6x10²⁴kg Earth. The gravitational attraction of even the most massive objects is pathetic - the gravitational attraction of two railway locomotives an inch apart cannot overcome the minuscule friction between wheels and rails to pull them together.

Have you ever been aware of people moving around on the other side of a wall, due to the gravitational pull they exert on you? Of course not. Gravity is far too weak for that.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of this to the topic of dualism. Regardless of how we model the physical world, we all understand that it is grounded in the perception of an interaction between our bodies and their environment. A substance dualist takes the position mental events can also take place independently of that physical model, for example on a spiritual plane of existence. IOW, minds do not depend on brains for their existence. A property dualist generally takes the position that they do.

Of more interest to me is how one can consider monism to be an alternative to property dualism, and that means that we are probably moving in the direction of discussing another philosophical conundrum-- eliminative materialism:

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Perhaps I misunderstand monism, but it strikes me as essentially a claim of eliminative materialism. That is, it denies a difference between mental events and physical events, even though those who deny the difference seem to understand it well enough to deny it exists. Puzzling.

 

[PyramidHead]

Only because most of us are in close proximity to a planet sized lump of matter. A 1g fridge magnet can generate a magnetic field that easily overcomes the gravity of the 6x10²⁴kg Earth. The gravitational attraction of even the most massive objects is pathetic - the gravitational attraction of two railway locomotives an inch apart cannot overcome the minuscule friction between wheels and rails to pull them together.

Have you ever been aware of people moving around on the other side of a wall, due to the gravitational pull they exert on you? Of course not. Gravity is far too weak for that.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of this to the topic of dualism. Regardless of how we model the physical world, we all understand that it is grounded in the perception of an interaction between our bodies and their environment. A substance dualist takes the position mental events can also take place independently of that physical model, for example on a spiritual plane of existence.

This is where substance dualism becomes incoherent. A spiritual plane of existence can be any number of things, but if it has the ability to exert any causal influence on anything in such a way that its effect can be measured, it's no different in kind from a physical phenomenon.

IOW, minds do not depend on brains for their existence. A property dualist generally takes the position that they do.

Most substance dualists also concede that the mind depends on the brain, as far as I know.

Of more interest to me is how one can consider monism to be an alternative to property dualism, and that means that we are probably moving in the direction of discussing another philosophical conundrum-- eliminative materialism:

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Perhaps I misunderstand monism, but it strikes me as essentially a claim of eliminative materialism. That is, it denies a difference between mental events and physical events, even though those who deny the difference seem to understand it well enough to deny it exists. Puzzling.

Monism need not be eliminative. See my earlier reply in this thread.

 

[Copernicus]

...A spiritual plane of existence can be any number of things, but if it has the ability to exert any causal influence on anything in such a way that its effect can be measured, it's no different in kind from a physical phenomenon.

This argument strikes me as largely one of semantics--what we choose to define as "physical". One could choose to simply call anything that has a causal effect "physical", but the real dispute is whether there is an aspect of reality where thought (or some essential component of thought) takes place independently of what we conventionally think of as physical interactions (brain activity). So I don't see substance dualism as incoherent on this score. It has more to do with how we parse reality, not how we choose to use the word "physical".

IOW, minds do not depend on brains for their existence. A property dualist generally takes the position that they do.

Most substance dualists also concede that the mind depends on the brain, as far as I know.

I disagree with that generalization. Spirits don't have physical brains. They represent a necessary "ghost in the machine" of a living body, whereas property dualists essentially argue that there is a necessary "machine in the ghost".

Monism need not be eliminative. See my earlier reply in this thread.

OK, let's look at it:

My position is most similar to 'anomalous' or 'dual aspect' monism. I agree with untermensche that labeling something as 'physical' may have a folk meaning in accepted usage, but it doesn't refer to a coherent concept when you really break it down. When people say they can talk to spirits, then whether they know it or not they are saying the spirits are actually 'physical', because talking and listening require things ordinarily referred to as physical. Anomalous monism says that there are multiple ways of looking at or describing the same phenomenon, and at least two of these aspects (what we call physical and mental) are mutually irreducible--that is, they convey things that can't be reformulated in terms of the other aspect. This is perhaps only slightly different from property dualism, in that it doesn't ascribe properties to things in themselves; the physical/mental distinction isn't found in substances or their properties, but in the ways we observe and describe them. The 'actual substance' of the universe, if there is one, is neither physical nor mental and has an unknown nature that we don't need to worry about since we'll never know it. I am also a mysterian about the hard problem: it will never be solved.

Apart from your last statement, which seems to be just an unsupported claim, much of what you say here strikes me as eliminative when you start supporting the claim that something isn't a "coherent concept". That is tantamount to saying that the linguistic usage is deceptive and can therefore be discarded. But then you go on to seem to want it both ways--to say that there are just different ways of describing physical and mental phenomena. Your last claim that you think the "hard problem" will never be solved acknowledges that there is a problem that calls for a solution. You have some unexplained reason for thinking that it will never be solved.

I wonder if you've looked at the concept of "predicate dualism". Would that be a reasonable label to put on what you are arguing for?

 

[bilby]

Only because most of us are in close proximity to a planet sized lump of matter. A 1g fridge magnet can generate a magnetic field that easily overcomes the gravity of the 6x10²⁴kg Earth. The gravitational attraction of even the most massive objects is pathetic - the gravitational attraction of two railway locomotives an inch apart cannot overcome the minuscule friction between wheels and rails to pull them together.

Have you ever been aware of people moving around on the other side of a wall, due to the gravitational pull they exert on you? Of course not. Gravity is far too weak for that.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of this to the topic of dualism. Regardless of how we model the physical world, we all understand that it is grounded in the perception of an interaction between our bodies and their environment. A substance dualist takes the position mental events can also take place independently of that physical model, for example on a spiritual plane of existence. IOW, minds do not depend on brains for their existence. A property dualist generally takes the position that they do.

Of more interest to me is how one can consider monism to be an alternative to property dualism, and that means that we are probably moving in the direction of discussing another philosophical conundrum-- eliminative materialism:

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Perhaps I misunderstand monism, but it strikes me as essentially a claim of eliminative materialism. That is, it denies a difference between mental events and physical events, even though those who deny the difference seem to understand it well enough to deny it exists. Puzzling.

Mental events cannot be completely independent of the physical - at the absolute minimum, there must be communication from the mental to the physical, or actions could not be inspired by thoughts - as I think about this topic, I am inspired to respond to your post, and my fingers are commanded to depress the keys on my keyboard.

The problem for substance dualism, is that this communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world is ruled out by physics. We know all of the possible forces that can act on physical matter at human scales. And we know how to detect these forces, and how to reproduce them. And yet we cannot in any way detect or disrupt this hypothetical link between the 'spiritual' and the 'physical'. The only possible explanation is that there is no such link - the two things are either not separate (everything is part of the observable physical realm); or the two things are not in communication (your 'spirit' has no association of any kind with your physical body - which renders the concept pointless; In such a case, it's not even meaningful to define a 'spirit' as 'yours').

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics. Given the choice of which to discard, it would be bizarre in the extreme to discard the well tested and highly useful Physics, in favour of the purely conjectural and utterly useless Substance Dualism.

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." ― Han Solo

 

[PyramidHead]

Monism need not be eliminative. See my earlier reply in this thread.

OK, let's look at it:

My position is most similar to 'anomalous' or 'dual aspect' monism. I agree with untermensche that labeling something as 'physical' may have a folk meaning in accepted usage, but it doesn't refer to a coherent concept when you really break it down. When people say they can talk to spirits, then whether they know it or not they are saying the spirits are actually 'physical', because talking and listening require things ordinarily referred to as physical. Anomalous monism says that there are multiple ways of looking at or describing the same phenomenon, and at least two of these aspects (what we call physical and mental) are mutually irreducible--that is, they convey things that can't be reformulated in terms of the other aspect. This is perhaps only slightly different from property dualism, in that it doesn't ascribe properties to things in themselves; the physical/mental distinction isn't found in substances or their properties, but in the ways we observe and describe them. The 'actual substance' of the universe, if there is one, is neither physical nor mental and has an unknown nature that we don't need to worry about since we'll never know it. I am also a mysterian about the hard problem: it will never be solved.

Apart from your last statement, which seems to be just an unsupported claim, much of what you say here strikes me as eliminative when you start supporting the claim that something isn't a "coherent concept". That is tantamount to saying that the linguistic usage is deceptive and can therefore be discarded.

That's solely a remark about the word 'physical', not about whether people experience qualia or anything like that.

But then you go on to seem to want it both ways--to say that there are just different ways of describing physical and mental phenomena. Your last claim that you think the "hard problem" will never be solved acknowledges that there is a problem that calls for a solution. You have some unexplained reason for thinking that it will never be solved.

I wonder if you've looked at the concept of "predicate dualism". Would that be a reasonable label to put on what you are arguing for?

I'm not arguing for anything, I was just answering the question you put in the OP. Predicate dualism seems close to what I believe, but I'll have to look into it some more.

 

[ryan]

I'm struggling to see the relevance of this to the topic of dualism. Regardless of how we model the physical world, we all understand that it is grounded in the perception of an interaction between our bodies and their environment. A substance dualist takes the position mental events can also take place independently of that physical model, for example on a spiritual plane of existence. IOW, minds do not depend on brains for their existence. A property dualist generally takes the position that they do.

Of more interest to me is how one can consider monism to be an alternative to property dualism, and that means that we are probably moving in the direction of discussing another philosophical conundrum-- eliminative materialism:

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Perhaps I misunderstand monism, but it strikes me as essentially a claim of eliminative materialism. That is, it denies a difference between mental events and physical events, even though those who deny the difference seem to understand it well enough to deny it exists. Puzzling.

Mental events cannot be completely independent of the physical - at the absolute minimum, there must be communication from the mental to the physical, or actions could not be inspired by thoughts - as I think about this topic, I am inspired to respond to your post, and my fingers are commanded to depress the keys on my keyboard.

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.

The problem for substance dualism, is that this communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world is ruled out by physics.

That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical. Physics can still be complete for anything observable, just not ontologically complete.

 

[PyramidHead]

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.

The problem for substance dualism, is that this communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world is ruled out by physics.

That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical.

...in which case it would NOT involve "communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world". THAT'S the part that is ruled out by physics.

 

[ryan]

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.



That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical.

...in which case it would NOT involve "communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world". THAT'S the part that is ruled out by physics.

Right, but physics has not ruled it out. Physics is actually in a more uncertain state than it was 120 years ago.

 

[bilby]

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.



That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical.

...in which case it would NOT involve "communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world". THAT'S the part that is ruled out by physics.

Right, but physics has not ruled it out. Physics is actually in a more uncertain state than it was 120 years ago.

Neither of these statements is correct.

 

[ryan]

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.



That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical.

...in which case it would NOT involve "communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world". THAT'S the part that is ruled out by physics.

Right, but physics has not ruled it out. Physics is actually in a more uncertain state than it was 120 years ago.

Neither of these statements is correct.

But you even said, "there must be communication from the mental to the physical".

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

 

[bilby]

This sounds a lot like substance dualism, independent or not. In other words, there would seem to be a discontinuous physical chain of events with a spirit providing one or more of the links.



That is absolutely not true.

Substance Dualism is incompatible with Physics.

Not necessarily, you may have a mind unable to affect the physical.

...in which case it would NOT involve "communication between the hypothesized 'spiritual' and the observed 'physical' world". THAT'S the part that is ruled out by physics.

Right, but physics has not ruled it out. Physics is actually in a more uncertain state than it was 120 years ago.

Neither of these statements is correct.

But you even said, "there must be communication from the mental to the physical".

Yes, and?

That wasn't ALL I said; are you suggesting that when I said that I was declaring a fact about reality? Because if you read the context of that quote, you will find that I was stating that this is an unavoidable implication of Substance Dualism - IF Substance Dualism is correct, THEN there must be communication from the mental to the physical; and AS there is no possible mechanism for this communication, THEREFORE Substance Dualism cannot be correct.

I said "there must be communication from the mental to the physical" in the context of showing that claim to be FALSE.

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

Well, some of us do; and others instead see their error as a modern day Icarus and Daedalus allegory about the dangers of hubris.

Newtonian mechanics was one of many steps along the pathway from 'Anything goes' to 'These are the only possibilities'. Science is a process of eliminating the impossible, from the much larger set of 'all things that can be imagined'.

It is, of course, possible to overstate the case, and to declare 'impossible' things which have not, in fact, been disproven; But that's not what happened in reality (although it makes a popular and entertaining story).

Newtonian mechanics wasn't overturned; It remains an accurate description of the vast majority of reality, at low speeds, low energies and moderate scales. In the same way that no amount of Quantum Theory or Relativity will render the (purely Newtonian) predictions of August's total eclipse of the Sun false, so no putative future theory that unites Gravtation and Quantum Mechanics, or that determines the properties and arrangements of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, or that originates some completely new and unexpected phenomenon, will change the fact that, at human scales, QFT tells us everything about the possible interactions of matter.

Ken Wilson demonstrated that it is not necessary to understand a system at smaller scales in order to correctly predict large scale behaviours - and this is informally obvious, in that Newton was able to correctly calculate to orbits of the various bodies in the Solar System without knowing their compositions; and that Faraday and Maxwell (and others) were able to develop an understanding of electricity without reference to Quantum Mechanics.

There may well be unknown forces, that are not currently described by the Standard Model; But we know that these forces cannot interact in any significant way with physical humans without destroying them. It is an unavoidable conclusion of Quantum Field Theory that any unknown forces must be either too weak (weaker than Gravity) to be able to transmit worthwhile information to or from a human sized object in less than a human lifetime; Or too energetic to interact with a human without atomizing him.

The area of understanding wherein undiscovered forces have been ruled out has expanded - In Newton's day, the Physics of the time gave the right answers for phenomena above scale of surface tension, and below the planetary, in conditions where temperatures were above that of liquid air, and below that of fire. Outside those limits, odd and unexplainable things could occur, but within those limits, Newton's Laws and the rest of 17th Century Physics gave answers that are still correct today.

Today's physics gives the right answers for phenomena above the scale of Quarks, and below the scale of Galaxies; in conditions where temperatures are above about 0.5 Kelvin and below 7.2 Trillion Kelvin. If, and ONLY if, a human being is experiencing conditions outside those bounds, THEN it would be possible that he is interacting with a currently unknown force.

Of course, there are known interactions that could, hypothetically, mediate Substance Dualism; One popular (but thoroughly refuted) candidate is radio waves (or other EM frequencies) - This can be ruled out, as no such EM radiation effects can be found either being transmitted or received by living (or dying) humans, despite considerable effort to find them. Another is Quantum Entanglement - but this can be ruled out, as it simply doesn't persist in the warm, wet and noisy conditions that constitute living things.

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however disappointingly little of it there might be, must be the whole of reality.

Substance Dualism is not possible, unless all of modern physics is not just slightly wrong, but wildly wrong. And it really isn't - we've checked, and the imperfections are now too small. Newton had every excuse to believe in the 'soul'; Even in the time of Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac, we couldn't be sure that we had seen all of the possible interactions involving matter. But with the LHC, we have been able to push up the minimum possible mass of any unknown subatomic particles to the point where an interaction between humans and any such hypothetical 'new' species could not possibly be routinely occurring.

Lots of people are still trying, or course. Just as lots of people still try to build perpetual motion machines, even after Clausius and Kelvin showed that they were impossible in the 1850s. But the fact is that a person with a reasonable education in the current state of Physics has no more excuse to hypothesize the existence of a 'soul' than he has to hypothesize the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. They are equally silly and disproven ideas, and to say so is no more hubris, than is predicting a solar eclipse visible from Kentucky on August 21, 2017.

 

[PyramidHead]

There are types of substance dualism (epiphenomenalism for example) that do not posit a causal link between mental and physical events.

 

[bilby]

There are types of substance dualism (epiphenomenalism for example) that do not posit a causal link between mental and physical events.

According to the Wikipedia article on Epiphenominalism: "epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism."

 

[PyramidHead]

There are types of substance dualism (epiphenomenalism for example) that do not posit a causal link between mental and physical events.

According to the Wikipedia article on Epiphenominalism: "epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism."

Interesting, I always thought it was a substance position. Like there were two realms in perfect synchronicity but causally isolated from each other.

 

[bilby]

According to the Wikipedia article on Epiphenominalism: "epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism."

Interesting, I always thought it was a substance position. Like there were two realms in perfect synchronicity but causally isolated from each other.

Even that implies some kind of influence passing from one to the other, to keep them in synch; It would be a rather striking coincidence for there to be a perfect synchronization between two complex systems that were totally isolated from each other.

 

[ryan]

That wasn't ALL I said; are you suggesting that when I said that I was declaring a fact about reality? Because if you read the context of that quote, you will find that I was stating that this is an unavoidable implication of Substance Dualism - IF Substance Dualism is correct, THEN there must be communication from the mental to the physical; and AS there is no possible mechanism for this communication, THEREFORE Substance Dualism cannot be correct.

I said "there must be communication from the mental to the physical" in the context of showing that claim to be FALSE.

I do not make the connection in the context which is why I had to say something.

But there are epiphenomenalism and parallelism to name a couple that do not have the immaterial mind interacting with the physical. The former is a one way causal relationship from body to mind, and the latter is just both being parallel to each other and either not affecting the other.

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

Well, some of us do; and others instead see their error as a modern day Icarus and Daedalus allegory about the dangers of hubris.

Newtonian mechanics was one of many steps along the pathway from 'Anything goes' to 'These are the only possibilities'. Science is a process of eliminating the impossible, from the much larger set of 'all things that can be imagined'.

It is, of course, possible to overstate the case, and to declare 'impossible' things which have not, in fact, been disproven; But that's not what happened in reality (although it makes a popular and entertaining story).

Newtonian mechanics wasn't overturned; It remains an accurate description of the vast majority of reality, at low speeds, low energies and moderate scales. In the same way that no amount of Quantum Theory or Relativity will render the (purely Newtonian) predictions of August's total eclipse of the Sun false, so no putative future theory that unites Gravtation and Quantum Mechanics, or that determines the properties and arrangements of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, or that originates some completely new and unexpected phenomenon, will change the fact that, at human scales, QFT tells us everything about the possible interactions of matter.

Ken Wilson demonstrated that it is not necessary to understand a system at smaller scales in order to correctly predict large scale behaviours - and this is informally obvious, in that Newton was able to correctly calculate to orbits of the various bodies in the Solar System without knowing their compositions; and that Faraday and Maxwell (and others) were able to develop an understanding of electricity without reference to Quantum Mechanics.

There may well be unknown forces, that are not currently described by the Standard Model; But we know that these forces cannot interact in any significant way with physical humans without destroying them. It is an unavoidable conclusion of Quantum Field Theory that any unknown forces must be either too weak (weaker than Gravity) to be able to transmit worthwhile information to or from a human sized object in less than a human lifetime; Or too energetic to interact with a human without atomizing him.

The area of understanding wherein undiscovered forces have been ruled out has expanded - In Newton's day, the Physics of the time gave the right answers for phenomena above scale of surface tension, and below the planetary, in conditions where temperatures were above that of liquid air, and below that of fire. Outside those limits, odd and unexplainable things could occur, but within those limits, Newton's Laws and the rest of 17th Century Physics gave answers that are still correct today.

Today's physics gives the right answers for phenomena above the scale of Quarks, and below the scale of Galaxies; in conditions where temperatures are above about 0.5 Kelvin and below 7.2 Trillion Kelvin. If, and ONLY if, a human being is experiencing conditions outside those bounds, THEN it would be possible that he is interacting with a currently unknown force.

Of course, there are known interactions that could, hypothetically, mediate Substance Dualism; One popular (but thoroughly refuted) candidate is radio waves (or other EM frequencies) - This can be ruled out, as no such EM radiation effects can be found either being transmitted or received by living (or dying) humans, despite considerable effort to find them. Another is Quantum Entanglement - but this can be ruled out, as it simply doesn't persist in the warm, wet and noisy conditions that constitute living things.

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however disappointingly little of it there might be, must be the whole of reality.

Substance Dualism is not possible, unless all of modern physics is not just slightly wrong, but wildly wrong. And it really isn't - we've checked, and the imperfections are now too small. Newton had every excuse to believe in the 'soul'; Even in the time of Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac, we couldn't be sure that we had seen all of the possible interactions involving matter. But with the LHC, we have been able to push up the minimum possible mass of any unknown subatomic particles to the point where an interaction between humans and any such hypothetical 'new' species could not possibly be routinely occurring.

Lots of people are still trying, or course. Just as lots of people still try to build perpetual motion machines, even after Clausius and Kelvin showed that they were impossible in the 1850s. But the fact is that a person with a reasonable education in the current state of Physics has no more excuse to hypothesize the existence of a 'soul' than he has to hypothesize the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. They are equally silly and disproven ideas, and to say so is no more hubris, than is predicting a solar eclipse visible from Kentucky on August 21, 2017.

You have too much stake in physics. Physics can't even be wrong about the consciousness because it isn't even equipped to address it. The consciousness just isn't the same kind of phenomenon as anything else physical we observe. How can we know that physics is ontologically complete when we don't know what the consciousness is, how it arises or why it is needed for evolutionary purposes.

I am done talking about this subject because I went so deep into it with DBT that I finally feel up to date with where everything is at with the hard problem. I can't spend anymore time on it.

 

[ryan]

According to the Wikipedia article on Epiphenominalism: "epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism."

Interesting, I always thought it was a substance position. Like there were two realms in perfect synchronicity but causally isolated from each other.

I think it can be for either substance or property dualism. From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, inside of speaking about the different kinds of interactions it has "If mind and body are different realms, in the way required by either property or substance dualism, then there arises the question of how they are related.". It then goes on to talk about epiphenomenalism and parallelism.

 

[bilby]

I do not make the connection in the context which is why I had to say something.

But there are epiphenomenalism and parallelism to name a couple that do not have the immaterial mind interacting with the physical. The former is a one way causal relationship from body to mind, and the latter is just both being parallel to each other and either not affecting the other.

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

Well, some of us do; and others instead see their error as a modern day Icarus and Daedalus allegory about the dangers of hubris.

Newtonian mechanics was one of many steps along the pathway from 'Anything goes' to 'These are the only possibilities'. Science is a process of eliminating the impossible, from the much larger set of 'all things that can be imagined'.

It is, of course, possible to overstate the case, and to declare 'impossible' things which have not, in fact, been disproven; But that's not what happened in reality (although it makes a popular and entertaining story).

Newtonian mechanics wasn't overturned; It remains an accurate description of the vast majority of reality, at low speeds, low energies and moderate scales. In the same way that no amount of Quantum Theory or Relativity will render the (purely Newtonian) predictions of August's total eclipse of the Sun false, so no putative future theory that unites Gravtation and Quantum Mechanics, or that determines the properties and arrangements of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, or that originates some completely new and unexpected phenomenon, will change the fact that, at human scales, QFT tells us everything about the possible interactions of matter.

Ken Wilson demonstrated that it is not necessary to understand a system at smaller scales in order to correctly predict large scale behaviours - and this is informally obvious, in that Newton was able to correctly calculate to orbits of the various bodies in the Solar System without knowing their compositions; and that Faraday and Maxwell (and others) were able to develop an understanding of electricity without reference to Quantum Mechanics.

There may well be unknown forces, that are not currently described by the Standard Model; But we know that these forces cannot interact in any significant way with physical humans without destroying them. It is an unavoidable conclusion of Quantum Field Theory that any unknown forces must be either too weak (weaker than Gravity) to be able to transmit worthwhile information to or from a human sized object in less than a human lifetime; Or too energetic to interact with a human without atomizing him.

The area of understanding wherein undiscovered forces have been ruled out has expanded - In Newton's day, the Physics of the time gave the right answers for phenomena above scale of surface tension, and below the planetary, in conditions where temperatures were above that of liquid air, and below that of fire. Outside those limits, odd and unexplainable things could occur, but within those limits, Newton's Laws and the rest of 17th Century Physics gave answers that are still correct today.

Today's physics gives the right answers for phenomena above the scale of Quarks, and below the scale of Galaxies; in conditions where temperatures are above about 0.5 Kelvin and below 7.2 Trillion Kelvin. If, and ONLY if, a human being is experiencing conditions outside those bounds, THEN it would be possible that he is interacting with a currently unknown force.

Of course, there are known interactions that could, hypothetically, mediate Substance Dualism; One popular (but thoroughly refuted) candidate is radio waves (or other EM frequencies) - This can be ruled out, as no such EM radiation effects can be found either being transmitted or received by living (or dying) humans, despite considerable effort to find them. Another is Quantum Entanglement - but this can be ruled out, as it simply doesn't persist in the warm, wet and noisy conditions that constitute living things.

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however disappointingly little of it there might be, must be the whole of reality.

Substance Dualism is not possible, unless all of modern physics is not just slightly wrong, but wildly wrong. And it really isn't - we've checked, and the imperfections are now too small. Newton had every excuse to believe in the 'soul'; Even in the time of Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac, we couldn't be sure that we had seen all of the possible interactions involving matter. But with the LHC, we have been able to push up the minimum possible mass of any unknown subatomic particles to the point where an interaction between humans and any such hypothetical 'new' species could not possibly be routinely occurring.

Lots of people are still trying, or course. Just as lots of people still try to build perpetual motion machines, even after Clausius and Kelvin showed that they were impossible in the 1850s. But the fact is that a person with a reasonable education in the current state of Physics has no more excuse to hypothesize the existence of a 'soul' than he has to hypothesize the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. They are equally silly and disproven ideas, and to say so is no more hubris, than is predicting a solar eclipse visible from Kentucky on August 21, 2017.

You have too much stake in physics. Physics can't even be wrong about the consciousness because it isn't even equipped to address it. The consciousness just isn't the same kind of phenomenon as anything else physical we observe. How can we know that physics is ontologically complete when we don't know what the consciousness is, how it arises or why it is needed for evolutionary purposes.

I am done talking about this subject because I went so deep into it with DBT that I finally feel up to date with where everything is at with the hard problem. I can't spend anymore time on it.

It doesn't matter what consciousness is; Either in interacts with matter, in which case physics DOES address at least one side of that interaction; Or it doesn't interact with matter, in which case it is a totally valueless concept to us as material human beings.

I am a material human being; And I experience consciousness; Therefore it MUST logically be the former - I think, therefore thought is material. Consciousness must interact with matter; And Physics now has an exhaustive list of the ways in which matter interacts. Consciousness cannot be anything other than a dynamic pattern of material interactions.

Of course, there is a great deal more to be determined; but any hypothesis of consciousness or mind that does not include that framework as its starting point can reasonably be discarded without further study, just as any machine, no matter how complex, that is claimed to produce more energy than it consumes, can be dismissed without a detailed consideration of its design.

Substance Dualism is physically impossible; Property Dualism and Monism are the only options. Personally I am unconvinced that there is any utility in differentiating between the two - Emergent properties of matter are simply high level observations of vast numbers of iterations of fundamental properties.

 

[ryan]

I do not make the connection in the context which is why I had to say something.

But there are epiphenomenalism and parallelism to name a couple that do not have the immaterial mind interacting with the physical. The former is a one way causal relationship from body to mind, and the latter is just both being parallel to each other and either not affecting the other.

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

Well, some of us do; and others instead see their error as a modern day Icarus and Daedalus allegory about the dangers of hubris.

Newtonian mechanics was one of many steps along the pathway from 'Anything goes' to 'These are the only possibilities'. Science is a process of eliminating the impossible, from the much larger set of 'all things that can be imagined'.

It is, of course, possible to overstate the case, and to declare 'impossible' things which have not, in fact, been disproven; But that's not what happened in reality (although it makes a popular and entertaining story).

Newtonian mechanics wasn't overturned; It remains an accurate description of the vast majority of reality, at low speeds, low energies and moderate scales. In the same way that no amount of Quantum Theory or Relativity will render the (purely Newtonian) predictions of August's total eclipse of the Sun false, so no putative future theory that unites Gravtation and Quantum Mechanics, or that determines the properties and arrangements of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, or that originates some completely new and unexpected phenomenon, will change the fact that, at human scales, QFT tells us everything about the possible interactions of matter.

Ken Wilson demonstrated that it is not necessary to understand a system at smaller scales in order to correctly predict large scale behaviours - and this is informally obvious, in that Newton was able to correctly calculate to orbits of the various bodies in the Solar System without knowing their compositions; and that Faraday and Maxwell (and others) were able to develop an understanding of electricity without reference to Quantum Mechanics.

There may well be unknown forces, that are not currently described by the Standard Model; But we know that these forces cannot interact in any significant way with physical humans without destroying them. It is an unavoidable conclusion of Quantum Field Theory that any unknown forces must be either too weak (weaker than Gravity) to be able to transmit worthwhile information to or from a human sized object in less than a human lifetime; Or too energetic to interact with a human without atomizing him.

The area of understanding wherein undiscovered forces have been ruled out has expanded - In Newton's day, the Physics of the time gave the right answers for phenomena above scale of surface tension, and below the planetary, in conditions where temperatures were above that of liquid air, and below that of fire. Outside those limits, odd and unexplainable things could occur, but within those limits, Newton's Laws and the rest of 17th Century Physics gave answers that are still correct today.

Today's physics gives the right answers for phenomena above the scale of Quarks, and below the scale of Galaxies; in conditions where temperatures are above about 0.5 Kelvin and below 7.2 Trillion Kelvin. If, and ONLY if, a human being is experiencing conditions outside those bounds, THEN it would be possible that he is interacting with a currently unknown force.

Of course, there are known interactions that could, hypothetically, mediate Substance Dualism; One popular (but thoroughly refuted) candidate is radio waves (or other EM frequencies) - This can be ruled out, as no such EM radiation effects can be found either being transmitted or received by living (or dying) humans, despite considerable effort to find them. Another is Quantum Entanglement - but this can be ruled out, as it simply doesn't persist in the warm, wet and noisy conditions that constitute living things.

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however disappointingly little of it there might be, must be the whole of reality.

Substance Dualism is not possible, unless all of modern physics is not just slightly wrong, but wildly wrong. And it really isn't - we've checked, and the imperfections are now too small. Newton had every excuse to believe in the 'soul'; Even in the time of Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac, we couldn't be sure that we had seen all of the possible interactions involving matter. But with the LHC, we have been able to push up the minimum possible mass of any unknown subatomic particles to the point where an interaction between humans and any such hypothetical 'new' species could not possibly be routinely occurring.

Lots of people are still trying, or course. Just as lots of people still try to build perpetual motion machines, even after Clausius and Kelvin showed that they were impossible in the 1850s. But the fact is that a person with a reasonable education in the current state of Physics has no more excuse to hypothesize the existence of a 'soul' than he has to hypothesize the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. They are equally silly and disproven ideas, and to say so is no more hubris, than is predicting a solar eclipse visible from Kentucky on August 21, 2017.

You have too much stake in physics. Physics can't even be wrong about the consciousness because it isn't even equipped to address it. The consciousness just isn't the same kind of phenomenon as anything else physical we observe. How can we know that physics is ontologically complete when we don't know what the consciousness is, how it arises or why it is needed for evolutionary purposes.

I am done talking about this subject because I went so deep into it with DBT that I finally feel up to date with where everything is at with the hard problem. I can't spend anymore time on it.

It doesn't matter what consciousness is; Either in interacts with matter, in which case physics DOES address at least one side of that interaction; Or it doesn't interact with matter, in which case it is a totally valueless concept to us as material human beings.

I am a material human being; And I experience consciousness; Therefore it MUST logically be the former - I think, therefore thought is material. Consciousness must interact with matter; And Physics now has an exhaustive list of the ways in which matter interacts. Consciousness cannot be anything other than a dynamic pattern of material interactions.

I would argue that you are your mind.

Of course, there is a great deal more to be determined; but any hypothesis of consciousness or mind that does not include that framework as its starting point can reasonably be discarded without further study, just as any machine, no matter how complex, that is claimed to produce more energy than it consumes, can be dismissed without a detailed consideration of its design.

Substance Dualism is physically impossible; Property Dualism and Monism are the only options. Personally I am unconvinced that there is any utility in differentiating between the two - Emergent properties of matter are simply high level observations of vast numbers of iterations of fundamental properties.

Sure, but "hard" emerging properties are just as strange as emerging substances. A truly emergent property like the consciousness is one that is so emergent that it can't be predicted by more fundamental physical properties (assuming you do not accept panpsychism). In physics, there are not very many properties known that give us all of the variety we see in the world/universe. The consciousness should not be coming from its parts, yet it mysteriously seems to, thus the "how it arises" question. There must be something else going on.