Are words immaterial?

[ryan]

It is absolutely not a solution of any kind. It's just not material. If we know anything about it, we know it's not material.

Let's just assume that the Solar System is an isolated system for the purposes of the point I am about to make. So, say, 1 million years ago there were no consciousnesses. Fast-forward a million years (now). The matter stays conserved, but there is also now conscioussnesses. Something was added to the system, and it couldn't have been matter.

Go back far enough and there were no heavy elements to be found in the Universe, basically, just Hydrogen. So what's the point? Complex systems have evolved and formed over a period of Billions of years, and the brain with its information processing ability is most probably the most complex system to have evolved. Given that processing and representation appears to be a physical process (being effected and altered by physical elements, drugs, etc), there is nothing to indicate that the activity of the brain requires a non material element (a completely undefinable property) as an explanation for consciousness.

Here is the most clear thought experiment that I can think of to explain how sensory experience is not material.

I am floating in space inside of a small capsule. Unfortunately, I didn't plan on the amount of oxygen I would need for the time in space, and I die.

Before I died, there was material and my sensory experiences. After I died, there was just my material.

My sensory experiences don't exist anymore, but the material stays conserved. The sensory experience alone is not matter/energy.

 

[ryan]

It is quite difficult for me to know what you mean by "sensory experience". Can tell me what you know or don't know about it?

This (and your answer to DBT) is totally beside the point.
Do not dodge the question again.

I can't answer it because your definition for sensory experience is way too elusive for us to have a meaningful discussion about it.

I went back through our posts just to try to get an idea of what you mean by "sensory experience", and the more I read the more confused I got.

It seems like sometimes you are agnostic about sensory experience, and sometimes you make strong claims about it.

 

[Juma]

This (and your answer to DBT) is totally beside the point.
Do not dodge the question again.

I can't answer it because your definition for sensory experience is way too elusive for us to have a meaningful discussion about it.

I went back through our posts just to try to get an idea of what you mean by "sensory experience", and the more I read the more confused I got.

It seems like sometimes you are agnostic about sensory experience, and sometimes you make strong claims about it.

I make no strong claims on SE. But I am clear on its definition. SE is the fact that we have a first hand experience. Not the contents of that experience.

 

[ryan]

I can't answer it because your definition for sensory experience is way too elusive for us to have a meaningful discussion about it.

I went back through our posts just to try to get an idea of what you mean by "sensory experience", and the more I read the more confused I got.

It seems like sometimes you are agnostic about sensory experience, and sometimes you make strong claims about it.

I make no strong claims on SE. But I am clear on its definition. SE is the fact that we have a first hand experience.

This seems to mean that a sensory experience is a personal experience. Is it still personal if other people can detect it?

Not the contents of that experience.

By this do you mean that the visual image of an apple is not the apple? Or do you mean the contents that make up the process necessary for there to be a sensual experience is not the sensual experience?

 

[Juma]

do you mean that the visual image of an apple is not the apple? Or do you mean the contents that make up the process necessary for there to be a sensual experience is not the sensual experience?

I mean that the processes making up the contents of the SE, qualia, thoughts, etc is not the SE.

 

[ryan]

do you mean that the visual image of an apple is not the apple? Or do you mean the contents that make up the process necessary for there to be a sensual experience is not the sensual experience?

I mean that the processes making up the contents of the SE, qualia, thoughts, etc is not the SE.

Then what material could the sensory experience be?

 

[Juma]

I mean that the processes making up the contents of the SE, qualia, thoughts, etc is not the SE.

Then what material could the sensory experience be?

Who knows? But there is no reason to postulate something unknown "immaterial".

 

[DBT]

A car is more than the sum of its parts; it also includes the assemblage of those parts. That's why the parts from a completely disassembled car is not a car.

An idea has a material basis, and without those materials, never would an idea form, but the material components that go into the formation of an idea is not itself an idea, just as merely the sum of the parts of what would make a car is not itself a car.

It has been apart of our language to regard mental objects (like ideas) as immaterial objects (and so, us ordinary folk speak as if mental things are immaterial things). Of course, believing that something is so doesn't make something so, but there is precedent for things being so because we speak as if things are so, and therein lies the distinction important in making the case that things like ideas are immaterial.

I'm not prepared to say that it's true because it's a necessary truth, but of course, if it were a necessary truth, it would most certainly be true, as all necessary truths are true, but there is something going on here where the very nature of how we categorize things I believe come into play.

An idea is a body of information that's related to the physical world in some way. Even imaginary things are related to the physical world in terms of the description, features, attributes, of the imaginary object. An idea that does not relate to the things of the world in any way, is so 'immaterial' that it does not exist. I doubt that there is such a thing as an idea with no relationship the physical world. Even the gods have human attributes....Heaven and Hell are related to the pleasures and pains of the both human mind and the physical World.

 

[DBT]

Go back far enough and there were no heavy elements to be found in the Universe, basically, just Hydrogen. So what's the point? Complex systems have evolved and formed over a period of Billions of years, and the brain with its information processing ability is most probably the most complex system to have evolved. Given that processing and representation appears to be a physical process (being effected and altered by physical elements, drugs, etc), there is nothing to indicate that the activity of the brain requires a non material element (a completely undefinable property) as an explanation for consciousness.

Here is the most clear thought experiment that I can think of to explain how sensory experience is not material.

I am floating in space inside of a small capsule. Unfortunately, I didn't plan on the amount of oxygen I would need for the time in space, and I die.

Before I died, there was material and my sensory experiences. After I died, there was just my material.

My sensory experiences don't exist anymore, but the material stays conserved. The sensory experience alone is not matter/energy.

But what's missing? Upon the moment of death, the brain is no longer active. No longer processing information, no longer generating conscious representation of its sensory information. The missing element is the electrochemical processing activity, which ceases to function in a low oxygen environment.

 

[Togo]

True or false? The initial expansion of the universe occurred in a number of stages:
True - the universe expanded in a series of stages, we can separate and identify those stages, and count them
False - the universe expanded, but there are no stages and no enumeration, because there was no one around at the time to make such human distinctions

The categorisation of events depends upon imposing a human viewpoint on those events. The same applies to SE.

Is categorisation a physical force or object? Can it be kicked, effected by physical forces, etc. Or is it simply a logical mistake to expect it to be material at all? If it is not material, does that make it immaterial?

 

[ryan]

Then what material could the sensory experience be?

Who knows? But there is no reason to postulate something unknown "immaterial".

Ordinary matter as defined by our current understanding of it is not our sensory experiences.

 

[ryan]

Here is the most clear thought experiment that I can think of to explain how sensory experience is not material.

I am floating in space inside of a small capsule. Unfortunately, I didn't plan on the amount of oxygen I would need for the time in space, and I die.

Before I died, there was material and my sensory experiences. After I died, there was just my material.

My sensory experiences don't exist anymore, but the material stays conserved. The sensory experience alone is not matter/energy.

But what's missing? Upon the moment of death, the brain is no longer active. No longer processing information, no longer generating conscious representation of its sensory information. The missing element is the electrochemical processing activity, which ceases to function in a low oxygen environment.

I agree, but there is something else missing too. Sensory experiences are no longer there either, yet everything else in total is there.

 

[ryan]

If it is not material, does that make it immaterial?

By definition immaterial means not material.

 

[Togo]

A car is more than the sum of its parts; it also includes the assemblage of those parts. That's why the parts from a completely disassembled car is not a car.

An idea has a material basis, and without those materials, never would an idea form, but the material components that go into the formation of an idea is not itself an idea, just as merely the sum of the parts of what would make a car is not itself a car.

It has been apart of our language to regard mental objects (like ideas) as immaterial objects (and so, us ordinary folk speak as if mental things are immaterial things). Of course, believing that something is so doesn't make something so, but there is precedent for things being so because we speak as if things are so, and therein lies the distinction important in making the case that things like ideas are immaterial.

I'm not prepared to say that it's true because it's a necessary truth, but of course, if it were a necessary truth, it would most certainly be true, as all necessary truths are true, but there is something going on here where the very nature of how we categorize things I believe come into play.

An idea is a body of information that's related to the physical world in some way. Even imaginary things are related to the physical world in terms of the description, features, attributes, of the imaginary object. An idea that does not relate to the things of the world in any way, is so 'immaterial' that it does not exist. I doubt that there is such a thing as an idea with no relationship the physical world. Even the gods have human attributes....Heaven and Hell are related to the pleasures and pains of the both human mind and the physical World.

Sure, but equally, the reverse is true. An object is a body of matter that's related to the mental model of the universe in some way. Even very mundane things are related to mental models, assumptions and ideas about the world. An object that does not relate to things of the mind in any way, is so 'indescribable' that it does not exist. I doubt there is such a thing as an object with no relationship to our ideas about the world. Even natural formations and clouds of vapour are given human attributes... try looking at a cloudy sky and not seeing familiar shapes, or describing a mountain in any way other than by relations to ideas about objects and shapes that aren't there.

That ideas and physical objects are related to eachother doesn't make ideas into physical objects, any more than it makes physical objects into ideas.

 

[DBT]

But what's missing? Upon the moment of death, the brain is no longer active. No longer processing information, no longer generating conscious representation of its sensory information. The missing element is the electrochemical processing activity, which ceases to function in a low oxygen environment.

I agree, but there is something else missing too. Sensory experiences are no longer there either, yet everything else in total is there.

It's not that there are two separate things, it's not that there is electrochemical activity and sensory experience. Electrochemical activity becomes sensory experience within the conditions of information feed and patterns of firings (conscious activity). Conscious activity can be generated by electrical stimulation of brain regions, emotions, thoughts and imagery form according to which region of the brain is being stimulated, which stops when the current is disconnected.

So its not a matter of two separate entities, consciousness and neural activity that cease when the current is disconnected, but just 'conscious neural activity.' The unconscious mind, of course, functions without conscious representation.

 

[Togo]

Hm. At the risk of opening a can of worms...

Are you saying that sensory experience is the same thing as neural activity, or two different things, one of which causes or produces the other?

If it is the first, then we're saying that physical events (ion charge flow across neurones) have non-physical qualities (subjective experience). If it's the second then we're saying that physical events cause non-physical events.

Neither one seems to support the idea that the universe is material.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's quite interesting this idea of subjective experience as strictly identical from one person to the next, the only variation in our minds being in the contents of our subjective experiences. We don't really need them to be strictly identical but if subjective experience is really as fundamental as it seems to be then we would all have the same kind, i.e. either there is just one God-like subjective experience looking at the different contents of our experiences, or each of us has one for himself but they are all identical, which seems more like it.

A function is something like this too. Various objects may have the same function but there is this question about uniqueness and identity.

Both can have the same answer if both function and subjective experience are properties. To have the same function is just to have the same property. To have the same property is just to have exactly the same behaviour in a given environment, but this doesn't require that things having identical properties only have identical properties so any actual test may be quite challenging to carry out. But we can accept that different brains have identical functions, like memory, colour vision, intelligence etc. even though we don't have a test to prove that absolutely. But brains are messy while subjective experience is supposed to be straightforward, like energy or mass and unlike particle physics. So comparing different instances of subjective experience should be a shoe in but it doesn't seem to allow itself to be tested. We could conceivably produce machines with functions identical to those of brains, and therefore people but that wouldn't tell us whether these machines possess subjective experience at all. Even that they would talk about their own subjective experience would be terminally inconclusive. I'm still not even really convinced that other people have subjective experience like I do!
EB

Speakpigeon, I have typed in a post what I am about to say to you and to others many times, but then I just decide not to post it. This time I am posting it because I just feel like it must be said.

Many times during your critique of the conjecture at hand, you will question the assumption/postulate/axiom that led up to the conjecture. This is taking on too much. As wrong as the conjecture's foundation might be, it is the conjecture that should be critiqued. For example, if I did a science experiment on how fast gravity accelerates an object in a vacuum and showed my friend the results, my friend should not critique the results by questioning gravity's existence. Even though questioning the existence of gravity is actually a legitimate scientific concern, it should be questioned in a separate context. So he can question it, but it is not relevant to the situation at hand.

Even mathematics has to do this for it to get anywhere, as you probably know. It was hoped in the early 20th Century by the greatest mathematicians that math would bring intrinsic truth to itself, but that hope was actually proved impossible by Gödel's incompleteness theorems. So even with mathematics, we are constantly building onto our ignorance and hopefully not onto something illogical.

Now, I am not saying this is the best method in seeking "knowledge". In fact I have always wanted to do what Descartes did and start with the ultimate first principles of knowledge and go from there. In my attempt, I usually start with the certainty of my consciousness and then have trouble building onto it with as much certainty.

I hope this post does not come off poorly.

And I hope you will critique anything that does not make sense in this post; I need to know that I am not misguiding myself too.

Your example about gravity I think is misleading. Gravity is already taken to exist as an observable so that nit-picking over its precise status could be regarded in the situation you describe as a derail.

I certainly have no option but question for example Togo’s or Fast’s notion of "abstraction" because I think what they seem to mean doesn’t appear to exist at all. Why spend time considering what the notion of abstraction might be able to achieve if there is no reason to believe there is any abstract thing?

Your characterisation of physical structures as "immaterial" seems to force an open door, something you still appear not to realise. I’m still not convinced you have clarified what you meant at all.
EB

 

[ryan]

I agree, but there is something else missing too. Sensory experiences are no longer there either, yet everything else in total is there.

It's not that there are two separate things, it's not that there is electrochemical activity and sensory experience. Electrochemical activity becomes sensory experience within the conditions of information feed and patterns of firings (conscious activity).

If sensory experience is only electrochemical activity, then why is the visual image of a landscape so much different than the process required to give that vision?

Conscious activity can be generated by electrical stimulation of brain regions, emotions, thoughts and imagery form according to which region of the brain is being stimulated, which stops when the current is disconnected.

But scientists analyzing a brain will see electrochemical activity while the brain has sensory experience. They do not seem to be the same thing.

You can observe a brain observing, but you can't observe what it's observing. Only the brain itself can do that because it requires the brain to do so.

Observing is the opposite of being observed. It is an immaterial difference.

 

[ryan]

Your example about gravity I think is misleading. Gravity is already taken to exist as an observable so that nit-picking over its precise status could be regarded in the situation you describe as a derail.

I certainly have no option but question for example Togo’s or Fast’s notion of "abstraction" because I think what they seem to mean doesn’t appear to exist at all. Why spend time considering what the notion of abstraction might be able to achieve if there is no reason to believe there is any abstract thing?

Your characterisation of physical structures as "immaterial" seems to force an open door, something you still appear not to realise. I’m still not convinced you have clarified what you meant at all.
EB

This wasn't about the argument; it was about how we should argue it. I just wanted to bring it up.

 

[DBT]

It's not that there are two separate things, it's not that there is electrochemical activity and sensory experience. Electrochemical activity becomes sensory experience within the conditions of information feed and patterns of firings (conscious activity).

If sensory experience is only electrochemical activity, then why is the visual image of a landscape so much different than the process required to give that vision?

The High Definition images on your TV or computer screen are entirely composed of electrical impulses, pixels, liquid crystal displays and so on. 3D gives the illusion of depth that is not actually there, but there are no immaterial elements necessary to explain the images on the screen they are generated by physical processes. The evidence suggests that the brain generates imagery, perhaps in the form patterns of firings within a 'global workspace' - nobody knows, but the process does appear to be physical.

You obviously don't agree, but your non-material doesn't explain anything either. Even worse, there is no evidence for non-material input, or how explanation for how it might work. You'd be better off to say 'we don't know how the brain forms consciousness' and leave it at that.

But scientists analyzing a brain will see electrochemical activity while the brain has sensory experience. They do not seem to be the same thing.

You can observe a brain observing, but you can't observe what it's observing. Only the brain itself can do that because it requires the brain to do so.

Observing is the opposite of being observed. It is an immaterial difference.

The 'same thing?' The images on your screen are not exactly the same thing as the liquid crystal screen, the microchip processors and electrical impulses that happen to be shaping and form them. A complex process may be multifaceted, a range different aspects, attributes and functions depending on the structure, process and activity of the object. One facet of an active brain appears to be the ability to form internally generated imagery from an interaction of neurons, sensory input and memory function.