Are words immaterial?

[Kharakov]

In the sentence, "The members of Van Halen had all the brown M&Ms removed from the complimentary bowl of M&Ms in their dressing room, because they're arrogant rock stars," the word brown conveys a dark color. In the sentence, "Mr. Brown has eaten the pyjamas and we are now taking him to the emergency room," the word Brown conveys a surname, and a color only by association and habit. We could get into capital letters and what they signify, but why bother?

The drunken scholar said "I'm gonna brown you bro!", and promptly browned his brother at beerpong.

 

[Kharakov]

What is nat accounyed for, yet, is the the actual experience of what goes on in your mind.

That, I quite agree with it.

I would agree to the statement if Juma had used some other word(s) than experience. Let's say the sentence read:

What is not accounted for, yet, is the the actual experience mechanical, electrical, biological process of what goes on in your mind then I'd be inclined to agree, since I don't think science has given a full account of the complex operation of brains, be they human brains or bird brains.[/I]

I think what Juma meant and that I'm sure you agree with was that our subjective experience is still not accounted for in materialist or physicalist terms.
EB

Materialism is so passe. Consciousnessism is where it's at. Although "lawism", which from certain perspectives resembles materialism, is a cool subset of consciousnessism.

Lawism (not defined as John Law's economic views) proposes that certain axioms and rules followed by consciousness produce certain results. So the axioms of arithmetic produce certain specific results, but the laws are not the ultimate arbiters of reality, rather it is the consciousness following specific laws that produces these results.

 

[ryan]

My point about configuration I think is important here. A blob of ink and the exact same ink turned into a word are going to have much different effects on the brain.

It's simply because of the spaces between parts of the ink. The spacing causes the eye to absorb photons which in turn trigger reactions at different times in the visual system.

So a word is partly matter and partly immaterial if we accept that spaces are immaterial.

But then this "immateriality" is utterly trivial. Something you really want to ignore for some reason. Words are immaterial in this sense just as much as anything physical is immaterial in this sense: the sun, the galaxy, a cake, a neutron, whatever. They are all immaterial in this trivial sense. So, what's new here?
EB

I am sorry if my answer to the OP is trivial to you. It's interesting and perplexing, at least to me, how objects with different positions of immaterial can result in such a different behavior from objects composed of the same material/substance. In other words, how can immaterial lead to a different effect.

 

[fast]

The mind is brain function as per heaps of research.

That's silly, and that's exactly why it's much better to have an analytic philosopher (and not just some scientist--adept in his field as he might be) to interpret the results (the so-called findings) of high quality research.

Yep. No surer argument than stating a scientist is not an expert in her/his field.

And by the way, analytic philosophers are by and large favorable to neuroscience and tend to adopt the same conclusions neuroscientists have, which undermines a bit your idea that the philosophers will have a different idea.

No no no, I'm not saying that, not at all. I am not without respect and admiration. Wording. We ought not allow the expertise in one's field undermine our understanding of the lexical meaning of words. You cannot allow the use of stipulative definitions to misguide our understanding of lexical definitions. I do not wholly deny the interpretations brought to us by scientists--who better to know than them?

 

[fast]

Brain function can be studied with instrumentation. The mind cannot be studied with instrumentation. Therefore, the mind is not brain function.

The mind is dependent on brain function, but that's different.

Well, I guess you don't think much of approximately a centennium of psychological research, from Gestalttheorie down to the present day. With instrumentation. In labs. Through methodology that has evolved from simple arithmetic to the sophisticated statistical anaylsis of the last four decades.

You're actually reinforcing my POV with every queer objection you make.

Minds in labs? I suppose you think the mind is actually somewhere--like literally.

 

[Kharakov]

It's interesting and perplexing, at least to me, how objects with different positions of immaterial can result in such a different behavior from objects composed of the same material/substance. In other words, how can immaterial lead to a different effect.

Consciousness is multifaceted. It has the power to be material, or say "I'm material", depending on how you look at the words. Although that was probably the whole point of the i'm material / material division, ehh? To lead you to a certain immaterial concept about our material mater? ial- Of, relating to, or characterized by: baronial.

 

[Kharakov]

Minds in labs? I suppose you think the mind is actually somewhere--like literally.

Mind is somewhere, like literally, as in the simile? Crazy like a fox, are the words your mind is near.

 

[Togo]

And by the way, analytic philosophers are by and large favorable to neuroscience and tend to adopt the same conclusions neuroscientists have, which undermines a bit your idea that the philosophers will have a different idea.

That's not been my experience. Philosophers tend to be dualists, for example. Can you give more detail as to what you're referring to here?

I would guess you consider, say, Daniel Dennett a proponent of scientism since he considers and activiely promotes the idea I am talking about. So perhaps you could start there. Is there any contradiction between Dennett and the conclusions of neuroscience?

Probably. Dennet's a lot earlier than the most recent neuroscience, for a start.

But since both are widely misquoted, it's hard to tell without getting down to details. Happy to address details if you have them, but it may be beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[ryan]

It's interesting and perplexing, at least to me, how objects with different positions of immaterial can result in such a different behavior from objects composed of the same material/substance. In other words, how can immaterial lead to a different effect.

Consciousness is multifaceted. It has the power to be material, or say "I'm material", depending on how you look at the words. Although that was probably the whole point of the i'm material / material division, ehh? To lead you to a certain immaterial concept about our material mater? ial- Of, relating to, or characterized by: baronial.

I can only assume that this has something to do with my post since it is attached as response.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Philosophers tend to be dualists, for example.

A couple of questions:
a. Are you talking about property dualism, or substance dualism?
b. Why do you think so?

 

[Togo]

The point I'm making is that an immaterial concept of ownership and sale is an accurate, useful and reliable way of dealing with the phenomenon, while a discourse on the neural changes made in the buyer's and seller's brain does not, in practice, accurately capture what is going on.

Yes, I admit that I had forgotten your views on this. I guess it’s been a while since last time you discussed them. And I broadly agree if by concept you meant the object of a thought rather than something existing outside spacetime.

Object of thought seems more sensible. There's no obvious reason to argue for some kind of literal mental landscape of Platonic forms.

Now you can make a conscious choice to try and base everything in physical interaction. So to represent a concept, you imagine a theoretical set of physical interactions that would populate all the necessary mental, physical and social interactions, from words on paper, to computers to people's heads, in which that concept is instantiated, or could ever be instantiated, in all of space and time.

You are assuming that concepts are shared.

Yes, but only because I think the alternative makes concepts almost unworkable. I don't agree that my views would be different if they weren't shared though.

I don’t accept the premise and materialists do not either. I say, and they should say, that all you need to do to demonstrate that concepts are material is implement a physical mechanism which achieves the same result as what we people do when we perform an action on the basis of a particular concept. For example, we can implement the concept of circle in a computer and ask the computer to draw circles, to follow a circular trajectory etc. Obviously, it’s been done and more. Selling and buying for example, for instance selling and buying shares on the stock exchange.

So two things that are functionally similar become metaphysically identical? An action that reproduces a member of a set is the set? A set is identical to a member of the set?

How does maths work in such a system?

2+2=4
2 apples + 2 pears = 4 apples

At some point the 'twoness' has to be abstractable, or maths doesn't work. But if you claim identity between a sample of a set and the set itself, between an instantiation of a concept and the concept itself, then that becomes impossible.

It's possible, but there are some objections. A few off the top of my head...
The first is that this isn't a particularly useful way of representing a concept. The concept of ownership neatly categorises certain kinds of social relationship. A vast sprawling collection of physical states that are physically unrelated to eachother, while it may cover the same ground, doesn't do the same work.

It’s useful if you get machines to do the work for you as in the case of the stock exchange,

The stock exchange doesn't work on the basis of assuming that an example of a set is identical to the set itself. In practice it does exactly the opposite, assuming that transactions that are entirely different in execution are fungible, even if this isn't true in practice. So it takes in paper-based trading messages and computer-based stock orders, and treats them both as exemplars of an abstract concept of trade. It assumes a shared set of principles, independent of the actions involved in making a trade, and imposes those principles on every trade that goes through the system, irrespective of how it was executed. What is absolutely does not do is assume that a paper-based message and a computer-based stock order are somehow independent concepts that are only synchronised at execution. It assumes that they are both different examples of the same trading structure - the market would fall apart if it didn't.

The second is that you're seriously violating Occam's Razor here. Insisting on the 'reduction' of a fairly simple and straightforward concept to a vast array of otherwise unrelated and unconnected physical processes is about as far from the concept of maximum parsimony as it's possible to get. This is important largely because Occam's Razor is the most common reason given for adopting some form of physical explanation in the first place.

If you were not talking about shared concept I would agree. But shared concepts seem to have to exist outside our minds and if they are not material then it’s ipso facto a massive ontological assumption.

Do you mean 'not material' here?

If one takes the view that a concept is the object of a human being’s thought here and now then I don’t see how we could explain this other than through some physical theory.

Given that we can't, in practice, explain it through physical theory, isn't this a moot point? Or is physical theory superior in some way for the purpose of supplying inadequate explanations?

I would also disagree that it’s not ontologically economical since each concept would be explained by the same basic mechanism, ultimately for example the interplay of twelves material particles and one force.

Can't agree with this. By that arguement, 'God did it' is always the simplest explanation, as it requires only one force.

What would need to be explained on top of that would be the subjective experience of having a concept in mind. Which of course nobody seems able to even suggest the beginning of an answer.

Why would we need the subjective experience? You get the same problems comparing a written communication to a computer signal, without any need to bring in the hard problem of consciousness. The problem is not world-to-mind, but world-to-abstraction.

The third is that it's not really an adequate replacement. Replacing a conceptual category with the instantiation of everything that could fall into that category is not an equivalency. A category is not equivalent to its contents, a set is not equivalent to its members. One does not accurately replace the other.

Again, you are making this assumption. You are assuming that the view of concepts as something real outside our minds is adequate but you would need to show it.

I don't need to show that it's 'real', merely that what is meant is not accurately represented by specific physical systems. It can simply be an abstraction.

A fourth objection is that you lose the distinction between fact and fiction. If 'the scientific method' is merely a collection of physical descriptions or conceptions of that concept, and 'Santa Claus' is similarly a collection of physical descriptions or conceptions of that concept, then on what grounds are they treated differently?

I don’t see any distinction as far as concepts are concerned, so I don’t have this problem. The distinction may be made by reality itself, i.e. some concepts may have a reference, other do not. But the belief that a certain concept has a reference is something else entirely.

How can you have a 'reference' to a physical system? By what physical mechanism does this 'reference' operate? How can a physical state/system have a truth value? If the concept is physical, it exists. I think you will struggle to hang 'true' or 'false' on a purely physical mechanism without making some kind of reference to an abstraction which has no physical counterparty within the system.

 

[fast]

Minds in labs? I suppose you think the mind is actually somewhere--like literally.

Mind is somewhere, like literally, as in the simile? Crazy like a fox, are the words your mind is near.

If I were to adopt a narrow (and incorrect) understanding of what it means to say of something that it exists, I would be arguing that there is no actual mind, let alone one that physically exists; however, I would, nevertheless, continue to hold the view that there is such a thing as brain function. Brain function occurs somewhere, literally, but if I held the view that the mind did not exist, I certainly wouldn't argue that it's somewhere.

We speak as if we have ideas, but I would deny that there were in fact any ideas located in some actual place; indeed, I would argue against the existence of ideas and would instead simply hold the view that we have brain functions. That we in fact speak as if we literally have ideas located somewhere doesn't mean we in fact have ideas. We do, but I would deny that we do under the narrow (and incorrect) understanding of what it means to say of something that it exists.

We're creative. Not only do we claim that we have a mind, but we claim that we have ideas. We even say that ideas are located in the mind, but under the narrow understanding, we neither have minds or ideas, let alone ideas that are located somewhere--especially not located inside something else that doesn't exist.

Of course, we do have ideas, yet it's only partly because of brain function. What's else is required is a broader understanding of what it means to say of something that it exist; additionally, we have to have a very clear understanding of what constitutes a property, since to say of something that it exists is to say of something that it has properties.

Brain function (as I've said elsewhere) gives rise to the mind. It's not the mind itself. It's something we say that exists--but not because it's physically located somewhere. It's an abstraction--not to be confused with an abstract object. There is a physical basis for our ability to have conceptualizations, but just as we shouldn't confuse our brain function with having a mind, neither should we confuse that which gives rise with that which has risen.

We cannot open the brain and find an idea. We can perhaps find the physical basis for it, but we shouldn't in our failure to locate a specific concept decide that the basis for it is therefore it itself. It's engrained in our use of language to speak as if there are mental objects, but a mental object is no more an actual object anymore than an abstract object is an actual kind of object. Not grasping this is precisely why so many people are prone to deny the existence of abstract objects.

Language can be misleading. A toy car is not a kind of car. It's a kind of toy. The point is that we should be careful not to make assumptions because of word placement. For instance, a mental object is not literally an object. Under the narrow understanding of existence, I would deny that there are mental objects at all. They do exist, just as the mind exists, and there is a physical basis for saying they do--brain function, but brain function alone is insufficient for their existence--as there is something else needed to cross the gap--the gap between that which is physical (what gives rise) and that which is not physical (that which arises)--mental objects, for instance. What is needed and what makes what I'm saying true is deeply tied to language usage.

Scientific progress in the area of brain function is (I'm sure) a wonderful thing, but how and why we are able to have abstract ideas is one thing, but the nature of words used to refer to mental objects as used in our lexicon must be taken into consideration.

 

[WAB]

Perspie,

I don't know anything about Dennet, as I haven't read his work or anything about him, so I'm not qualified to answer your question.

I'm not really married to the word scientism. It may just be a nonsense word.

Speakie,

I see your responses and raise you a neck-ache, and some eye-strain. Which means: I'm too tired to continue...

Maybe soon, mon ami parisien.

 

[Juma]

We cannot open the brain and find an idea. We can perhaps find the physical basis for it, but we shouldn't in our failure to locate a specific concept decide that the basis for it is therefore it itself. It's engrained in our use of language to speak as if there are mental objects, but a mental object is no more an actual object anymore than an abstract object is an actual kind of object. Not grasping this is precisely why so many people are prone to deny the existence of abstract objects.

Using advanced probes I can find the bits representing every data in a computer. I can also follow the flow of the processes going on. In the sa,e manner it is in principle possible to see the representations of ideas and the flow of the thought.

Language can be misleading. A toy car is not a kind of car.

A toy car is a kind of car. It is judt not required to be useful, that is all.

 

[Juma]

Really? May it be so that you have any arguments for that standpoint?

Brain function can be studied with instrumentation. The mind cannot be studied with instrumentation. Therefore, the mind is not brain function.

The mind is dependent on brain function, but that's different.

"The mind"?

As i already wrote: i agree that there is a "subjective experience" that is hard to explain, even in principle. But the actual contents of that experience: thougths, ideas, feelings, meaning etc is just complicated and for now not fullt understood, but is never the less an obvious result of brain activity.

 

[ryan]

Brain function can be studied with instrumentation. The mind cannot be studied with instrumentation. Therefore, the mind is not brain function.

The mind is dependent on brain function, but that's different.

"The mind"?

As i already wrote: i agree that there is a "subjective experience" that is hard to explain, even in principle. But the actual contents of that experience: thougths, ideas, feelings, meaning etc is just complicated and for now not fullt understood, but is never the less an obvious result of brain activity.

Why is subjective experience hard to explain; why can't we say that it is a function in the brain? I have a hard time with that argument from physicalists.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Materialism is so passe. Consciousnessism is where it's at. Although "lawism", which from certain perspectives resembles materialism, is a cool subset of consciousnessism.

Lawism (not defined as John Law's economic views) proposes that certain axioms and rules followed by consciousness produce certain results. So the axioms of arithmetic produce certain specific results, but the laws are not the ultimate arbiters of reality, rather it is the consciousness following specific laws that produces these results.

I always struggle trying to understand your posts, but this is fun even if I fail consistently.

What are called "laws" here are not really laws since it is claimed that consciouness can abstain from following them and is therefore not subjected to them. If consciousness can abstain to follow them why would it need them at all? Consciousness does as it pleases, so it is said here, so what's the need for laws? Who would need laws to arrive at what one wants to arrive at and can arrive at without them?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's interesting and perplexing, at least to me, how objects with different positions of immaterial can result in such a different behavior from objects composed of the same material/substance. In other words, how can immaterial lead to a different effect.

According to you, effects themselves are also not material since like structures they are not matter. So, why is that perplexing to you that an immaterial difference should lead to another immaterial difference. To everybody else, effects are material just as structures are material and differences in material structures lead very unperplexingly to differences in material effects. We are not perplexed and you shouldn't be perplexed. So, where's the problem already?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Consciousness is multifaceted. It has the power to be material, or say "I'm material", depending on how you look at the words. Although that was probably the whole point of the i'm material / material division, ehh? To lead you to a certain immaterial concept about our material mater? ial- Of, relating to, or characterized by: baronial.

Excellent!

But, a baronial missive, a baronial badge, a baronial envelope, all these these are not made of barons, which would be ryan's point I guess.
EB

 

[Juma]

Why is subjective experience hard to explain; why can't we say that it is a function in the brain?

It Is a function in the brain.

But do you not recognize the difference between subjectiveä experience and the contents?