Do minds exist?

[Juma]

A think a bee has thoughts, beliefs, memories and desires. Maybe not as advanced as ours but still.

For me it is not a case of whether our thoughts, beliefs, memories and desires are more advanced than those of bees, but whether we or they have those mental properties/content at all. I have no issue with saying bees can think and remember and desire. (I'm skeptical about them believing, but I don't think anything major hangs on that as it won't change my stance regarding the existence of minds). Where I have problem is in saying that bees and humans or any other living being have thoughts, beliefs, memories or desires which would be the properties or contents of a mind. Thinking, to take one example, is not the kind of thing that could be the property or content of any thing. It is something we do. It isn't something we possess.

This does not make sense. I'm out.

 

[MJGraham]

For me it is not a case of whether our thoughts, beliefs, memories and desires are more advanced than those of bees, but whether we or they have those mental properties/content at all. I have no issue with saying bees can think and remember and desire. (I'm skeptical about them believing, but I don't think anything major hangs on that as it won't change my stance regarding the existence of minds). Where I have problem is in saying that bees and humans or any other living being have thoughts, beliefs, memories or desires which would be the properties or contents of a mind. Thinking, to take one example, is not the kind of thing that could be the property or content of any thing. It is something we do. It isn't something we possess.

This does not make sense. I'm out.

Which parts are unclear or incomprehensible? If you let me know, I might be able to remedy them.

 

[George S]

A think a bee has thoughts, beliefs, memories and desires. Maybe not as advanced as ours but still.

For me it is not a case of whether our thoughts, beliefs, memories and desires are more advanced than those of bees, but whether we or they have those mental properties/content at all. I have no issue with saying bees can think and remember and desire. (I'm skeptical about them believing, but I don't think anything major hangs on that as it won't change my stance regarding the existence of minds). Where I have problem is in saying that bees and humans or any other living being have thoughts, beliefs, memories or desires which would be the properties or contents of a mind. Thinking, to take one example, is not the kind of thing that could be the property or content of any thing. It is something we do. It isn't something we possess.

Of course, "thinking" is not a property but an activity. The ability to do "thinking" is a human capability. The ability to make a mental model of a situation and make a plan is what thinking evolved for. It was better for to plan ahead. There is an ability in human thinking capability to project a point of view. To run the mental maze. To imagine what-if scenarios.
Perhaps our thinking is of the same basic kind as bees, but I can easily place a dog between them and us in ability to plan ahead. We dominate the planet for our use of that capability.
What we call our mind is the mental projection of "self" into a point (normally 2 inches behind the eyes). Our mind can wander, though, to idea-playgrounds beautiful.

 

[untermensche]

It is not a clean demarcation.

What it means to say "I am hungry" is not the same as saying "I prefer the color blue". One is a reflection of bodily needs and one is not.

I don't see how anything you say excludes the idea that the mind is a creation of the brain, just as the chair we experience when we say we see a chair is a creation of the brain. It is not a creation of the eye. The eye is just a tool to get information from the external world into the brain. But before the information gets to the brain it must be transformed into a completely different form of information, neural information. The brain has no access to information from the world. That is why it needs things like eyes to bring it in. It only has access to neural information coming to it from the senses and peripheral nerves.

So when somebody "sees" they are experiencing something the brain has created from neural information, not from information in the world. Information in the world was simply a stimulus for other completely different information.

Color is something the brain creates that doesn't exist in the world.

If one talks about color they are talking about something that can only be experienced.

That which experiences is the mind. And it experiences the things the brain creates for it to experience.

In what way does it defy anatomical truths?

The anatomical truth is that visual information travels down the optic nerve to the brain.

This information is transmitted from one cell to another, neural transmission.

The brain receives neural transmissions, not information from the world, i.e. light energy.

I disagree. An object's blueness is in it reflecting light that is around 460 or so nm. Or to be more precise, it is in the light reflected off the surface of the object. Our ability to pick up this stimulus information is matter of us having perceptual systems that have evolved to be excited by that information. Seeing colour is remarkable, but you don't need a mind in the Cartesian sense to do it.* Birds, insects, reptiles, and amphibians see colours. In fact, their perceptual systems are sometimes excited by stimulus information which we blind are to (e.g. ultraviolet light). Consider the honey bee. It has a brain the size of a sesame seed, and yet it can see colour. Is the "internal" life of a bee brimming with thoughts such as "what is blue?" or "is red better than orange?" Probably not. But as Karl von Frisch discovered, they can certainly discriminate one colour from another and that their ability to discriminate colours can influence their behaviour. Bees don't have the kind of subjective experiences that could lead to them thinking things like "I prefer blue". But they can still see blue.


*I take that you have a Cartesian view of the mind. Let me know, if I am wrong about that.

Light of a certain wavelength is no more blue than a block of wood is pain.

Blue and pain are experienced. They exist as experience and as nothing else.

As far as Descartes, he predates Quantum Theory.

There is no more "body" as Descartes knew "body". So saying mind is discrete from body doesn't make any sense anymore, but not because we have gotten rid of mind. Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

 

[fromderinside]

Light of a certain wavelength is no more blue than a block of wood is pain.

Blue and pain are experienced. They exist as experience and as nothing else.

Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

Well since even that is based on presumptions I guess we can do away with that concept.

Look. A rock is acted upon it 'responds' to whatever force it was that acted in a way that is appropriate for the rock's physical situation.

Life on earth gathered enough scope of sense that it could distinguish thing from other. That machinery is the way beings react beyond how rocks react. Mainly its because beings have limbs, move through metabolically fueled processes, all of which are little rocks in action, if you will.

Now men are trying to say that because we are very advanced biological beings, can distinguish between thing and other, that with our capacity to recite what we experience, we have mind? That's exactly what we're doing here by the way.

We don't have mind. Its not a thing. We have very good machinery that records plays back and discriminates things from other. I call the capacity I just described articulated awareness by a social being. Its much more apt than a thing we need to defend by playing the "what is blue" record.

You said earlier that rocks or geological things don't evolve. Tell that to a geologist who's has studied planetary evolution. Just run the process through its physical capacities and consequences and you've got evolution.


Things don't need to be hard unless we insist we are unique.

 

[MJGraham]

I disagree. An object's blueness is in it reflecting light that is around 460 or so nm. Or to be more precise, it is in the light reflected off the surface of the object. Our ability to pick up this stimulus information is matter of us having perceptual systems that have evolved to be excited by that information. Seeing colour is remarkable, but you don't need a mind in the Cartesian sense to do it.* Birds, insects, reptiles, and amphibians see colours. In fact, their perceptual systems are sometimes excited by stimulus information which we blind are to (e.g. ultraviolet light). Consider the honey bee. It has a brain the size of a sesame seed, and yet it can see colour. Is the "internal" life of a bee brimming with thoughts such as "what is blue?" or "is red better than orange?" Probably not. But as Karl von Frisch discovered, they can certainly discriminate one colour from another and that their ability to discriminate colours can influence their behaviour. Bees don't have the kind of subjective experiences that could lead to them thinking things like "I prefer blue". But they can still see blue.


*I take that you have a Cartesian view of the mind. Let me know, if I am wrong about that.

Light of a certain wavelength is no more blue than a block of wood is pain.

Blue and pain are experienced. They exist as experience and as nothing else.

Re-reading my post I can see I didn't quite explain things as well as I would like, so I'll try again. Light reflecting off the surface of an object gives us information about that object. If that light has a wavelength of about 460nm it tells us that it is the kind of surface that absorbs other wavelengths by showing up as blue. In other words, we learn that it is different kind of surface than one which reflects light of a different wavelength and thereby shows up as red for example.

Colour isn't product of our experiences, it is a consequence of detecting certain kinds of information in our environment. Look at it this way, we can tell that one object is heavier than another by picking them up or by placing them on scales. We can detect that one is heavier than the other because one is heavier than the other. It is not information that our minds construct because they don't need to. The same holds true for colour.

As far as Descartes, he predates Quantum Theory.

There is no more "body" as Descartes knew "body". So saying mind is discrete from body doesn't make any sense anymore, but not because we have gotten rid of mind. Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

Quantum Theory is a branch of physics. When I think of physics I do not associate it with idealism. You may be an expert in QT, but I've come across so much Quantum Quackery in my time, that I've become skeptical of most claims regarding QT. Can you tell me about any quantum physicists who are idealists?

 

[untermensche]

Light of a certain wavelength is no more blue than a block of wood is pain.

Blue and pain are experienced. They exist as experience and as nothing else.

Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

Well since even that is based on presumptions I guess we can do away with that concept.

It is based on the best information available to us, direct experience.

We experience a mind. If we didn't we couldn't do away with any concepts. Concepts are things that exist in minds.

Look. A rock is acted upon it 'responds' to whatever force it was that acted in a way that is appropriate for the rock's physical situation.

A rock has no survival instinct and the need to find food or avoid predators to survive.

A rock doesn't see. It doesn't have emotion. It has no memory or dreams in sleep.

To say a living animal is no more than a rock is just a pose. It isn't an argument or conclusion from one.

Life on earth gathered enough scope of sense that it could distinguish thing from other. That machinery is the way beings react beyond how rocks react. Mainly its because beings have limbs, move through metabolically fueled processes, all of which are little rocks in action, if you will.

Organic chemistry is nothing like the movement of rocks.

And what is happening when a rock is in action? What is happening to what? As described by quantum mechanics, not Descartes.

Now men are trying to say that because we are very advanced biological beings, can distinguish between thing and other, that with our capacity to recite what we experience, we have mind? That's exactly what we're doing here by the way.

Mind is best demonstrated in human creation. Art, literature, science and many many other things.

This is not reciting what we experience. It is bringing something into being that had no existence before.

We don't have mind. Its not a thing.

This is two separate issues. Again, in quantum mechanical terms what does it mean to be a thing?

There is no "Mind". There are only individual "minds".

You said earlier that rocks or geological things don't evolve. Tell that to a geologist who's has studied planetary evolution.

As I said, you can label any kind of change as "evolution". But life changes in a very specific way. Rocks and planets do not change the way life changes.

 

[untermensche]

...If that light has a wavelength of about 460nm it tells us that it is the kind of surface that absorbs other wavelengths by showing up as blue...

The light energy reflected hits the back of the eye. It doesn't hit the brain.

The light energy is transformed into a language the brain understands by receptor cells in the eye.

Then the blue "shows up".

In the mind.

Colour isn't product of our experiences, it is a consequence of detecting certain kinds of information in our environment. Look at it this way, we can tell that one object is heavier than another by picking them up or by placing them on scales. We can detect that one is heavier than the other because one is heavier than the other. It is not information that our minds construct because they don't need to. The same holds true for colour.

No.

Mass and shape and density are definitely properties of discrete objects, but color is not. Color is like sound. It is created by the brain.

Color and sound are transmitted by energy moving through the air. The energy exists but color and sound have no objective existence. They are subjective creations of individual brains.

You can measure the wavelength of light that reflects off an object but you can't measure the color experienced.

Quantum Theory is a branch of physics. When I think of physics I do not associate it with idealism. You may be an expert in QT, but I've come across so much Quantum Quackery in my time, that I've become skeptical of most claims regarding QT. Can you tell me about any quantum physicists who are idealists?

I don't know what you mean by idealist.

And I am far from an expert in quantum mechanics. But even basic quantum evidence like something can be in two places at the same time contradicts Descartes notion of "body".

 

[DBT]

Quantum 'particles' can display either the characteristics of waves or actual particles. In wave form a photon or an atom may be spread out over a considerable distance, being in different locations at the same time: superposition.
In (wave) collapse state, the particle, photon, atom, etc, is in a definite state/position and its position may be measured.

 

[MJGraham]

The light energy reflected hits the back of the eye. It doesn't hit the brain.

I never said that light hits the brain. I did say that it excites the perceptual system and I did say that we detect information in our environment. None of that has anything at all to with "light hitting the brain".

The light energy is transformed into a language the brain understands by receptor cells in the eye.

Then the blue "shows up".

In the mind.

The information about the kind of surface an object has is present in the light whether or not anyone is there to pick it up. The correct kind of perceptual system can be positioned to make detection of that information a possibility. Once that information is detected it changes the behaviour of the system. Change the information and you change the behaviour of the system.

What makes your hypothesis so implausible is that it

1. treats optics as incidental, maybe even irrelevant, to colour perception.
2. has all the important work on perceiving colour happening in a theoretical construct, i.e the mind.
3. turns the evolution of colour perception into a nonsense story where animals have eyes and brains that are adapted for seeing something which is not there.

I'd like to expand on the third point by saying that there would be no evolutionary advantage to evolving eyes and a brain that consistently have us seeing things which do not exist. The notion that we are "hallucinating" colours every time we open our eyes in a lit environment, becomes even more difficult to take seriously when we consider how useful colour perception is in spotting ripe fruit. Would you have us believe that our minds add the colour red to a ripe raspberry, that we can somehow sense its ripeness in way that has nothing to do with its colour, and that we add on the redness of the raspberry once we see that it is ripe? Or is ripeness another thing that our minds concoct and that we could eat raspberries at any time if our minds would get their act together and just produce the experience of redness and ripeness whenever we wanted?

I can't help but think that maybe the redness of the raspberry is what tell us that it is ripe. That is to say, we know a raspberry is ripe because it is red. We don't make it red because it is ripe.

Mass and shape and density are definitely properties of discrete objects, but color is not. Color is like sound. It is created by the brain.

Color and sound are transmitted by energy moving through the air. The energy exists but color and sound have no objective existence. They are subjective creations of individual brains.

You can measure the wavelength of light that reflects off an object but you can't measure the color experienced.

Of course you can't measure the subjectively created experience of colour; it doesn't exist.

Now I'm glad you mentioned sound because as far as I am aware you can measure things like pitch and volume, and the last time I checked they are properties of sound, and not properties of subjectively created experiences. But okay. let's cut you some slack, and grant you that pitch and volume are like mass, shape and density. What exactly are our minds adding to these measurable properties to create the experience of sound?

I don't know what you mean by idealist.

An idealist is someone who would say this:

There is no more "body" as Descartes knew "body". So saying mind is discrete from body doesn't make any sense any more, but not because we have gotten rid of mind. Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

Idealists believe that there is only one substance: mind.

And I am far from an expert in quantum mechanics. But even basic quantum evidence like something can be in two places at the same time contradicts Descartes notion of "body".

If QT contradicts Descartes notion of the body, and I had to pick a side, I would choose QT. But I don't think that rejecting Descartes notion of the body should lead us to becoming idealist. Descartes being wrong about the body does not automatically mean that bodies do not exist. It just means that Descartes was mistaken about what kind of thing a body is.

 

[untermensche]

I never said that light hits the brain. I did say that it excites the perceptual system and I did say that we detect information in our environment. None of that has anything at all to with "light hitting the brain".

You do say that light hits the brain if you say the light is blue.

The light has a certain wavelength that the brain turns into blue. The light isn't blue. Blue is something the brain creates when the eye is struck by a certain wavelength of light. Without a brain there is no blue. It doesn't exist in any way.

The light energy is transformed into a language the brain understands by receptor cells in the eye.

Then the blue "shows up".

In the mind.

The information about the kind of surface an object has is present in the light whether or not anyone is there to pick it up.

As I said the light energy is there and the reflective properties are there. But color is not there.

Color is something created whole by brains. They are contingencies of brains not properties of objects.

The property of the object is that it reflects a certain wavelength of what we call visual light because it is that tiny part of the spectrum that excites the retina.

What makes your hypothesis so implausible is that it

1. treats optics as incidental, maybe even irrelevant, to colour perception.
2. has all the important work on perceiving colour happening in a theoretical construct, i.e the mind.
3. turns the evolution of colour perception into a nonsense story where animals have eyes and brains that are adapted for seeing something which is not there.

None of this follows from what I am saying.

What I saying is that energy exists.

Animals have evolved specialized cells that are able to be excited by certain wavelengths of energy.

But there is nothing that forces those evolving animals to make specific colors from that energy. The colors they make are random contingencies.

So one animal could theoretically evolve to turn a certain wavelength of energy into the color blue. But another animal could theoretically turn that same energy into the color red. There is nothing forcing the animal to produce a specific color in response to energy. The colors we produce are random contingencies, not properties of objects.

 

[MJGraham]

You do say that light hits the brain if you say the light is blue.

Since I'm not saying the light is blue, you are really off-track. But even if did, what you are saying still doesn't make sense. The only light that I know of that could hit our brains while they are encased in our skulls are X-rays and we cannot see them.

The light has a certain wavelength that the brain turns into blue. The light isn't blue. Blue is something the brain creates when the eye is struck by a certain wavelength of light. Without a brain there is no blue. It doesn't exist in any way.

Well I agree with you that the mind does not create colour.

As I said the light energy is there and the reflective properties are there. But color is not there.

Color is something created whole by brains. They are contingencies of brains not properties of objects.

The property of the object is that it reflects a certain wavelength of what we call visual light because it is that tiny part of the spectrum that excites the retina.

And I say that when information in the light changes the behaviour of our perceptual system in the right way, we see blue. There's no need to construct or hallucinate colours. All that aside, it's nice to see that you're no longer invoking the fiction of a "mind" to explain colour perception.

What I saying is that energy exists.

Animals have evolved specialized cells that are able to be excited by certain wavelengths of energy.

But there is nothing that forces those evolving animals to make specific colors from that energy. The colors they make are random contingencies.

So one animal could theoretically evolve to turn a certain wavelength of energy into the color blue. But another animal could theoretically turn that same energy into the color red. There is nothing forcing the animal to produce a specific color in response to energy. The colors we produce are random contingencies, not properties of objects.

If the differences between two surfaces are specified in the light such that light reflected off one surface will excite certain photoreceptor cells and not others than there is nothing gained by having our brains add colour since the differences between the surfaces have already been determined by which photoreceptors were excited. The differences in the surface would be detectable without hallucinating non-existent colours.

Your theory of colour perception makes perceiving colour a pointless waste of time, but it has come a long way since you were saying that mind creates colour. Of course, now that we both agree that minds have nothing to do with seeing colour, the disagreement we have about colour perception doesn't have anything to do with this thread. We could continue to go back and forth about whether our brains create colour or not, but that isn't going to settle whether minds are real.

 

[fromderinside]

It is based on the best information available to us, direct experience.

We experience a mind. If we didn't we couldn't do away with any concepts. Concepts are things that exist in minds.

direct experience can't be seen or understood by another directly can it. Something demonstrated and measured can be understood by another.

The better evidence is the latter since it is not phenomenal report. It is repeatable empirical evidence.

A rock has no survival instinct and the need to find food or avoid predators to survive.

A rock doesn't see. It doesn't have emotion. It has no memory or dreams in sleep.

To say a living animal is no more than a rock is just a pose. It isn't an argument or conclusion from one.

Geez. Evolution isn't restricted to life. Evolution need only drivers, whatever they may be, through a process to evolve. I fail to see what mind, something that didn't evolve at all except in the mind of self analyzing men has to do with anything. Evolutionary study is applicable to every major process man has encountered and experienced. I didn't whistle Dixie when I wrote Geologists study the evolution of rocks. For your edification and enjoyment. "The Evolution of Igneous Rocks And the Significance of their Tectonic Associations" http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/Fichter/IgnRx/IgEvweb.html

Organic chemistry is nothing like the movement of rocks.

They are both dependent for activity (motion) according to the laws of thermodynamics (0th through 3rd), This is so easy. Why aren't you getting it?

Mind is best demonstrated in human creation. Art, literature, science and many many other things.

This is not reciting what we experience. It is bringing something into being that had no existence before.

Now we get to the crux of the issue between us. Nothing springs from nothing. Every thing arises due to something. without input there is no output and this is true for thought as well as sense. The fact that existing thoughts are re-arranged or grouped is not something new. It is the result of the process through which we evolved mechanisms that group, sequence, organize, recombine. Falling into them gave those who had them advantage over others.

This is two separate issues. Again, in quantum mechanical terms what does it mean to be a thing?

There is no "Mind". There are only individual "minds".

Whether it is field or particle it is a thing with properties particular to its form. That doesn't apply to mind or minds. Since we can measure what we have grandly called it it is known by its properties to us. The problem with that as we come to 'know' properties of it it becomes something more difficult to sustain as a concept. That is much different than observing both forms in the same data as is done with photons experiments. Both constructs remain viable by what is known there.

On the other hand, what goes on in the brain which mostly houses what we presume as 'mind' determines what we think is mind. as what we understand about what goes on in the brain the construct of mind needs change. That is primarily because we presume mind before we understand what the brain does and we presume the brain does the work of the 'mind'. I don't know about you, but, i have never read a theory of any sort since Galileo that presumed we knew something because we what knew, say feathers were different than rocks. So if there was an attractive force it could apply to both rocks and feathers since they fell so differently. It was 'self evident' lighter things fell more slowly than did rocks.

My entire contention is mind is a 'self evidence' that isn't so. We are reactive beings in every way except in mind. We act with mind and nowhere else. Every where else we react. Even our senses are reactive. No waving a QM wand will change that. Even in QM things go one way. Time's arrow applies.

As I said, you can label any kind of change as "evolution". But life changes in a very specific way. Rocks and planets do not change the way life changes.

Of course each evolution has a driver or drivers. Every one of those drivers obey the laws of physics, including the mind in human evolution. One needs to get away from the opium of self evidence to really understand that. Evolution of life fits very nicely into the laws of physics. We just don't know enough about the evolution of what we do to neatly box it and ship it at a fair price.

For instance I learned the laws of behavior for highly trained persons in time critical situations to the point where I designed simulations using these laws that became standards for training methods that would get one to operate a variety tactical system optimally in the shortest time. These laws are fairy well known in the industry. They come under the labels of Human Factors, Ergonomics, Bio mechanics and Bio.dynamics. Within these models we modeled the effects of workload which accurately predict human performance over time in a variety of situations.

Mind didn't even come up. things like memory, perception, sensation, operability, performance, situation awareness, etc. have stable theory and we ride them like donkeys. Even the best Global Operator Modelling Systems (GOMS) have no mind included. that is true even though they are required to execute decisions (make choices), read and interpret messages and lists, respond to aural and visual commands, even issue instructions and reports as part of their functions.

With the above I'm just trying to show that humans can be modeled in the same way geological evolution can be modeled. Trying to distinguish human evolution from igneous rack evolution base on uniqueness just doesn't cut it. Calculating he cost of the life of an inferior, less robust, rock under a set of condition is similar calculating the cost of an inferior human, less fit, leads to the end of the rock and the human. Those that remain go on to the next test. If you want to think of rocks that way go for it. I'm just exercising my prerogative to think of life evolution by physical principles rather than some concoction rules that may or may not be based on physical principles.

Guess what. so far over the past several hundred years my approach has shown results. I studied psychology and neuroscience using those other rule sets and always came back to understanding things by applying physical law. Again its just my opinion, just as your opinion of mind is 'self evident'.

 

[untermensche]

Since I'm not saying the light is blue, you are really off-track. But even if did, what you are saying still doesn't make sense. The only light that I know of that could hit our brains while they are encased in our skulls are X-rays and we cannot see them.

If you say the object is blue then you are saying the light is also blue. You are saying that a certain wavelength of light carries blue information from objects.

Well I agree with you that the mind does not create colour.

The mind is what experiences color. The brain creates it.

Color is only an experience. It isn't an arbitrary wavelength of light or an arbitrary reflective surface or a property of objects.

And I say that when information in the light changes the behaviour of our perceptual system in the right way, we see blue. There's no need to construct or hallucinate colours. All that aside, it's nice to see that you're no longer invoking the fiction of a "mind" to explain colour perception.

I never once invoked the reality of my mind as the creator of color.

It is that which experiences color. If you experience a color you experience it with your mind. We call this experience "vision".

Even a bee. If it experiences color it experiences it with it's bee mind.

I don't know how this is twisted into saying the mind creates color? That is purely a figment of your mind.

The brain creates color and the mind is that which experiences color.

If color exists so do minds experiencing color.

What I saying is that energy exists.

Animals have evolved specialized cells that are able to be excited by certain wavelengths of energy.

But there is nothing that forces those evolving animals to make specific colors from that energy. The colors they make are random contingencies.

So one animal could theoretically evolve to turn a certain wavelength of energy into the color blue. But another animal could theoretically turn that same energy into the color red. There is nothing forcing the animal to produce a specific color in response to energy. The colors we produce are random contingencies, not properties of objects.

If the differences between two surfaces are specified in the light such that light reflected off one surface will excite certain photoreceptor cells and not others than there is nothing gained by having our brains add colour since the differences between the surfaces have already been determined by which photoreceptors were excited. The differences in the surface would be detectable without hallucinating non-existent colours.

This doesn't address the arguments made in the least.

You can't escape this by pretending I am saying color is created by minds.

It is created by brains. And you have offered nothing to think otherwise.

 

[untermensche]

direct experience can't be seen or understood by another directly can it. Something demonstrated and measured can be understood by another.

Yes. Something directly experienced by one can sometimes be directly experienced by another. But what is primary is direct experience.

This is why we have students perform experiments that have already been done.

Because something is only hearsay unless it is directly experienced.

Geez. Evolution isn't restricted to life. Evolution need only drivers, whatever they may be, through a process to evolve....

This is where you are wrong.

Biological evolution involves entities trying to survive. They are both drivers and driven.

A rock is only driven.

Organic chemistry is not an arbitrary category.

Organic chemistry is nothing like the movement of rocks.

They are both dependent for activity (motion) according to the laws of thermodynamics (0th through 3rd),

That's as constructive as saying a bat is like an elephant because they both respond to gravity. Get real.

Despite the effects of thermodynamics the motion of organic chemistry is nothing like the movement of rocks.

Organic chemistry is only modeled but the models involve electrons "jumping around" from one atom to another.

The models of the movement of rocks has nothing to do with the "jumping" of electrons.

We may one day find minds in the movement of electrons.

 

[fromderinside]

This should be enough.

Originally posted by untermensche
Organic chemistry is only modeled but the models involve electrons "jumping around" from one atom to another.

The models of the movement of rocks has nothing to do with the "jumping" of electrons.

R U sure?

As I understand, some rocks have evolved to the point where when pressed they emit a current (electrons jumping around from one molecule to another).

Clay is a form of rock that some abiogeneticists believe was the bonding template, where electrons jumped around for RNA where those electrons jump around in molecules you are so fond of excluding from other forms of evolution. There are others ......, but, this should be enough for you to go to the optometrist and get a more scientific pair of glasses.

As for fitness, where did you learn that entities are trying to survive? If they are fit they survive. If not. Bye. We're into population stuff here bud. Individuals don't try anything in fitness. You go into the equation and if you produce offspring where the relevant genes along with a bunch of others not really involved are preserved. You are gonna die no matter what.

 

[Togo]

Nah, it's better to start with measureable data. There's no point launching into a big discussion about what mind could be just so you can then claim that the entire subject has no basis. No we'll start with the data, same as with everything else.

Mind crops up in a number of repeatable experiments. Let's start with subject reports.

Subjects reliably, repeatedly, and across cultures, report the existence of subjective internal experience. These are consistent within groups, consistent across groups, and consistent over time.
Subjects report using these internal experiences, and the imputation of their presence within others, to reliably predict the actions of others. These predictions are measurably more accurate than chance.
Subjects report using these internal experiences as part of directing attention to and away from certain observable phenomena. This effect creates extremely large and easily detectable differences in what data is then reportable by the subject. While there is some evidence that unattended channels are still actually picked up at some level, the difference it makes in terms of processing is vast.
Subjects report using these internal experiences as part of complex tasks performance. Again, by changing purely internal experiential conditions, large physically observably changes in task performance are repeatably established.
Subjects reports of internal subjective experience correlate extremely well with neurological activity around similar actual experience. For example, the activity that accompanies playing with a particular toy is repeated when searching for the same toy, even though the actual toy itself is not present to provide stimulation. Rats navigating a three dimensional maze can be observed to reproduce the same neural activation patterns when trying to reach a location as occurred when they were actually there. In short, the neurological evidence backs up the existence of the same logical patterns that subjects report experiencing.

So, these findings are generally grouped under a theory of mind - that there is an internal set of subjective experiences that is strongly connected to memory, decision making, and task performance. You seem to be keen to disavow this theory, in defiance of the existing scientific evidence.

Can you explain why?

... One of the reasons why theories of eliminative materialism are so unpopular at the moment is the criticism they've come under as to whether their insistence on eliminating subject experience does any work. It's not obvious that ignoring all mental events to the extent of denying them existence provides any benefit in terms of explanation or prediction. Given that it also leaves a huge number of scientific observations high and dry, it's not obvious why it should be adopted.

Mele has suggested that it is a phenomenon that originates from a handful of large US educational institutions that are seeking to rule out from consideration in the psychological sciences all questions relating to topics beyond neurophysiology. He notes that these same institutions share budgets between neurophysiological research and human behavioural studies. Statistically, the idea is far from established, but it feels like it's worth asking people who are seeking to restrict research in this way why they believe would be gained by doing so.

....

I've highlighted the essence of why I find Toto's argument unconvincing. He talks of subjective report as material evidence.

No he doesn't. In fact I didn't mention the word material once. What I said is that it is evidence.

You had to add the term material so it would look like you had a criteria for you rejecting it, without actually declaring that criteria.

I think what you want to say is that subject reports are not evidence of anything, therefore I didn't say anything of substance.

The problem with this little prejudice of yours, is that you it causes you ignore data in a way that doesn't pass muster as any kind of science. I didn't just talk about subject reports - I pointed out how they were related to predictions of human behaviour, how they were related to established differences in the processing of sensory information, the impact of task performance, and the correlation with measureable neural activation patterns. You're ignoring all of it.

I understand that you don't think subject reports are useful measures, but nothing I've said commits you to regarding subject reports as useful measures, and you can't just throw a fit every time someone mentions them. Nor can you accuse entire of branches of science of dishonesty just because you disagree with their approach.

Togo justifies subjective experience reports by promoting them to mental events without demonstrating how verbal reports are actually mental events. No.

No, he doesn't. In fact I invite you to show a single instance of such a promotion in the entire post.

What I said was that such reports exist, and correspond to a great mass of evidence that does not consist of subject reports, that is often unified into a general theory of mind. Such theories are an attempt to unify all the available data, subject reports, behavioural prediction, perceptual processing, task performance and neurological data, into a single theory. If you have an ideological objection to using subject reports, then the rest of the evidence doesn't disappear, the theories still get formed and used in experiments to test those theories and their implications.

Mele's reported 'arguments' are just just some rationalizations

Not they're a political arguement from Mele. I think quite an interesting one, but probably silghtly off topic.

Look, I understand that your background and beliefs lead you to dismiss anything beyond your own brand of neo-Behaviourism as nonsense. I'm generally happy to discuss these differences with you, even though I don't agree. But trying to claim that entire branches of scientific study are not just invalid, but that those who practice them are being actively duplicituous for disagreeing with you, just makes you sound like an idiot. You usually do much better.

Ok.. Well let's start from the basics. The mental content that people you claim people don't have are reported with amazing consistency across the globe. By asking people to think or not think about certain things, you can manipulate the activation patterns in their brain, and their performance on certain tasks. How are these physical differences arising if there is no mental content?

I guess they arrive from thinking or not thinking about certain things. Why do you think mental content is needed?

What's the difference between thinking about something, and mental content?

If you don't have mental content, then strictly speaking you don't think about something at all, correct?

 

[fromderinside]

I've highlighted the essence of why I find Togo's (sorry) argument unconvincing. He talks of subjective report as material evidence.

No he doesn't. In fact I didn't mention the word material once. What I said is that it is evidence.

You had to add the term material so it would look like you had a criteria for you rejecting it, without actually declaring that criteria.

I think what you want to say is that subject reports are not evidence of anything, therefore I didn't say anything of substance.

The problem with this little prejudice of yours, is that you it causes you ignore data in a way that doesn't pass muster as any kind of science. I didn't just talk about subject reports - I pointed out how they were related to predictions of human behaviour, how they were related to established differences in the processing of sensory information, the impact of task performance, and the correlation with measureable neural activation patterns. You're ignoring all of it.

I understand that you don't think subject reports are useful measures, but nothing I've said commits you to regarding subject reports as useful measures, and you can't just throw a fit every time someone mentions them. Nor can you accuse entire of branches of science of dishonesty just because you disagree with their approach.

Togo justifies subjective experience reports by promoting them to mental events without demonstrating how verbal reports are actually mental events. No.

No, he doesn't. In fact I invite you to show a single instance of such a promotion in the entire post.

What I said was that such reports exist, and correspond to a great mass of evidence that does not consist of subject reports, that is often unified into a general theory of mind. Such theories are an attempt to unify all the available data, subject reports, behavioural prediction, perceptual processing, task performance and neurological data, into a single theory. If you have an ideological objection to using subject reports, then the rest of the evidence doesn't disappear, the theories still get formed and used in experiments to test those theories and their implications.

Mele's reported 'arguments' are just just some rationalizations

Not they're a political arguement from Mele. I think quite an interesting one, but probably silghtly off topic.

Look, I understand that your background and beliefs lead you to dismiss anything beyond your own brand of neo-Behaviourism as nonsense. I'm generally happy to discuss these differences with you, even though I don't agree. But trying to claim that entire branches of scientific study are not just invalid, but that those who practice them are being actively duplicituous for disagreeing with you, just makes you sound like an idiot. You usually do much better.

Lets start with the second last first. Political argument is a rationalization almost by definition.

My eliminative view comes from neuropsychologyscience, neuro-pharmacology, psycho-physics, both sensory and subjective report under tight protocol, primarily. I've never trucked with any behaviorism, neo or otherwise. I've rejected Stevens and Skinner's definitions of  Operationalism going, rather, with Percy Williams Bridgman, a Nobel prize winning physicist and originator of the term. Doing one's damnedest as he concludes

“there is nothing absolute or final about an operational analysis” (Bridgman 1959b, 522). Still, he would not give up on the pushing, which was necessary to reach as much clarity as possible.*.

To me its all about first order investigation as classical physiologists demonstrated effective. We tried to sustain that perspective in neuro-sensoy physiology, but, its tough since the 'effector' is upstream. OK.

BTW the points I bolded in your setup-justification statement do uncover the fallacy in your denial.

No one ever says never, but, does anyone ever show ever in four to seven intervening synapse models? I'm not confident that has ever been demonstrated. Every time I think I've found a way to falisify myself I find a later example thee puts my view back in play.

Finally I'm not above working with unifying models to make theory. We've make some pretty good Global Operator Modeling Systems we use to simulate predictions for operational Air Force and Navy systems using such theories that do a pretty good job for what they are intended. However I'd never superimpose control or modulation circuits and tools for actual human thinking or performance theory. I'll never be accused of saying the human performs a Fourier analysis on acoustic input for instance. Nor will I ever say something like "entities are trying to survive" as a stand in for fitness.

Just as you say. I'm not saying anything tending to be suspect of interospective technique is invalid. It certainly can serve as "neat, now lets conduct some objective study". But, whoa. Almost never does the objective replace the subjective. Saying it is so, but, a grain of salt.... Now if they do that on purpose it is duplicitous.

There are entire fields depending on a change in scientific standards to include correlation as science. That is an easy no for me.

Finally, see bolded. Here we are doing just that. Thanks.

*^{_{from Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy "Operatinalism"}}

 

[Togo]

No he doesn't. In fact I didn't mention the word material once. What I said is that it is evidence.

You had to add the term material so it would look like you had a criteria for you rejecting it, without actually declaring that criteria.

I think what you want to say is that subject reports are not evidence of anything, therefore I didn't say anything of substance.

The problem with this little prejudice of yours, is that you it causes you ignore data in a way that doesn't pass muster as any kind of science. I didn't just talk about subject reports - I pointed out how they were related to predictions of human behaviour, how they were related to established differences in the processing of sensory information, the impact of task performance, and the correlation with measureable neural activation patterns. You're ignoring all of it.

I understand that you don't think subject reports are useful measures, but nothing I've said commits you to regarding subject reports as useful measures, and you can't just throw a fit every time someone mentions them. Nor can you accuse entire of branches of science of dishonesty just because you disagree with their approach.

Togo justifies subjective experience reports by promoting them to mental events without demonstrating how verbal reports are actually mental events. No.

No, he doesn't. In fact I invite you to show a single instance of such a promotion in the entire post.

What I said was that such reports exist, and correspond to a great mass of evidence that does not consist of subject reports, that is often unified into a general theory of mind. Such theories are an attempt to unify all the available data, subject reports, behavioural prediction, perceptual processing, task performance and neurological data, into a single theory. If you have an ideological objection to using subject reports, then the rest of the evidence doesn't disappear, the theories still get formed and used in experiments to test those theories and their implications.

Mele's reported 'arguments' are just just some rationalizations

Not they're a political arguement from Mele. I think quite an interesting one, but probably silghtly off topic.

Look, I understand that your background and beliefs lead you to dismiss anything beyond your own brand of neo-Behaviourism as nonsense. I'm generally happy to discuss these differences with you, even though I don't agree. But trying to claim that entire branches of scientific study are not just invalid, but that those who practice them are being actively duplicituous for disagreeing with you, just makes you sound like an idiot. You usually do much better.

Lets start with the second last first. Political argument is a rationalization almost by definition.

No, it isn't, which is why you had to add 'almost'. Political arguement is defined by it's subject matter, not it's form.

My eliminative view comes from neuropsychologyscience, neuro-pharmacology, psycho-physics, both sensory and subjective report under tight protocol, primarily.

No, it doesn't. Your declared view, the one I'm actually discussing and disputing, is that by including subject reports as evidence, large sections of the scientific community are not just wrong, but deliberately deceptive. That's not psycho-physics, that's you being an ass.

BTW the points I bolded in your setup-justification statement do uncover the fallacy in your denial.

How?

And why would it matter? Your declared position is not that I was fallacious, but that I'm being deceptive.

Just as you say. I'm not saying anything tending to be suspect of interospective technique is invalid.

Are you saying that any mention of subject reports is introspection? If so, then that is exactly what you said. If not, then why have you brought up this subject, when I did not?

There are entire fields depending on a change in scientific standards to include correlation as science.

No, again, you need to use the actual position I took, not some fantasy position. You show where I said that I was changing scientific standards to change the status of correlations and we can talk.

Finally, see bolded. Here we are doing just that. Thanks.

I said, in general. Claiming other people are being deceptive simply because they don't agree with you, crosses a line for me.

 

[untermensche]

This should be enough.

Originally posted by untermensche
Organic chemistry is only modeled but the models involve electrons "jumping around" from one atom to another.

The models of the movement of rocks has nothing to do with the "jumping" of electrons.

R U sure?

As I understand, some rocks have evolved to the point where when pressed they emit a current (electrons jumping around from one molecule to another).

Clay is a form of rock that some abiogeneticists believe was the bonding template, where electrons jumped around for RNA where those electrons jump around in molecules you are so fond of excluding from other forms of evolution. There are others ......, but, this should be enough for you to go to the optometrist and get a more scientific pair of glasses.

As for fitness, where did you learn that entities are trying to survive? If they are fit they survive. If not. Bye. We're into population stuff here bud. Individuals don't try anything in fitness. You go into the equation and if you produce offspring where the relevant genes along with a bunch of others not really involved are preserved. You are gonna die no matter what.

Rocks have not evolved new properties. They have the exact same properties today they had two billion years ago.

Life on the other hand evolves and is not the same thing today it was 2 billion years ago.

And one of those changes was the evolution of minds.