Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?

[Subsymbolic]

Irrefutable logic is not in need of evidence.

Sure, but irrefutable logic needs objectively true premises and where are you going to get objectively true premises from? Because yours are as circular as the orifice you pulled them from.

To experience requires something that can experience and the things it can experience.

Do you have any objective evidence for all of your premises? More to the point can you explain what exactly your irrefutable logic is. As you are clearly a logician as you are able to state what is irrefutable, Formal notation would be nice. But logical sentences are acceptable.

There is no other way.

Even if I accepted your premises, which I don't as they are not objectively verifiable, or your logic which has yet to be demonstrated, the simple fact is that an entire school of philosophy, psychology and neurobiology, linguistic behaviourism disagrees with you. Now, I freely admit I don't agree with them, but there is no denying that they do offer a consistent and coherent other way with the added benefit of being entirely objective. You know, like you insist others are when arguing about conscious experience.

Thus all we have are magic words and name dropping as opposition.

And someone who has different standards for himself and others.

We could break it in half for those having trouble.

You can have 'not' and I'll have 'objective'.

How is something experienced unless there is something capable of having an experience?

When you prove, objectively that anything is experienced, rather than your increasingly shrill assertion that your subjective misidentification of your intentional states for phenomenal ones. Objectively all you have got is heterophenomenology (look it up) and no amount of ranting will get you from there to objective experience. Don't forget, objective evidence is your gold standard, not mine.

What would it mean for there to be experience but nothing having it?

Objectively you cannot have that assertion. All you can have is 'what would it mean for someone to be sincerely claiming they had experience but nothing having it'.

In which case the answer is that Dan Dennett is right?

Objectively, of course.

 

[ruby sparks]

Oh bollocks. I got it so wrong. I should have googled 'out of body experience' and 'Astral Projection first. My bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience#Studies_of_OBEs

 

[Subsymbolic]

How is something experienced unless there is something capable of having an experience?

The objective evidence suggests that the something capable of both generating and having an experience is most probably your brain. There is a vast clinical and experimental body of objective evidence showing significant causal interconnections and correlations between the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the brain, on the one hand, and states of consciousness, on the other.

Your turn.

Come come now Ruby. You know full well that UM has pointed out on many occasions that you have no objective evidence of that connection, merely correlations, constant conjunction and suspiciously subjective anecdote. How very dare you try to pull that on such a guardian of objectivity.

 

[ruby sparks]

Come come now Ruby. You know full well that UM has pointed out on many occasions that you have no objective evidence of that connection, merely correlations, constant conjunction and suspiciously subjective anecdote. How very dare you try to pull that on such a guardian of objectivity.

Sub. I've changed my mind. Or rather it changed me. Watch this. It will turn your life upside down and alter the way you think about ev er y thing:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VB6h_bWR3Y[/YOUTUBE]

I'm simultaneously both amazed embarrassed that I couldn't understand what UM was saying, until now.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm talking about what happens to the sensory information when it hits the senses. Light hits an eye (for example) prepped (by evolution, learning and priming) for what it expects, by a preexisting model of what is out there. As a result it doesn't have to bother cascading the entire signal, merely how the signal differs from expectation. Your chaps imagine a brain laying back waiting for the information. I'm suggesting a brain leaning into the information and not even bothering to process anything that it expects. It's a massive difference that reduces the brain's workload enormously

And it seems to me to explain why I will have a really difficult time taking on an entirely new field, very unlike watching TV for example.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

sensory input being the sole source of information about the external world

Strictly speaking that's true, at least very nearly true in normal situations, and at least as far as the current state of the world is concerned.

Yet, you would need to look at the brain itself, or at least at the brain's structure, down to the DNA contained in it, also as a source of information, and in fact, as a more massive source of information.

It's first the information about the whole life of the individual, indeed acquired through sensory inputs at the time, and somehow "recorded", so not just inputs now, but, second, it's also the whole of the evolution of life on Earth that sort of got recorded into that DNA and effectively, somehow, into that brain's structure.

I would expect, if it was possible to quantify the various contributions, that "evolution" information would be found to be much more massive than all the inputs you get through your life put together.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Dennet has not escaped Descartes necessity that if there is a thought there must be something aware of that thought.

That's definitely not what Descartes said.

I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind (mens sive animus), understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing.

Descartes concludes from his cogitations that the "I" of the Cogito is nothing else but a "thinking thing", and only only when thinking is happening, i.e. only when he has thoughts. Thus, the "I" of the Cogito is just the thoughts themselves. There's nothing else, according to him, that we cannot doubt, that we therefore know exists, or that we could deduce that it exists.

It may well be true that the thing aware of the thoughts is indeed distinct from the thoughts themselves, but Descartes doesn't say we know this to be the case.

Of course, it's literally true that if there are thoughts then there is something aware of the thoughts, but this will be true even if there's only one thing, self-aware thoughts, so to speak, and not two distinct things, thoughts and something distinct aware of these thoughts. That's what Descartes says.
EB

EDIT
An other way to understand Descartes' Cogito is to see it as an epistemological claim, not an ontological claim, although it has ontological consequences.

Descartes' claim is that he knows something, i.e. the premise of the Cogito, "I think". Everyone can make up their own mind about whether Descartes' premise, as applied to themselves, is true. The conclusion, "I exist", which is indeed properly ontological, is merely the logical consequence of that epistemological premise.

 

[Speakpigeon]

There's a word for people who do that...

Now .. fingers in your ears and lalalala.

Great psychology here!
EB

 

[untermensche]

Sure, but irrefutable logic needs objectively true premises and where are you going to get objectively true premises from?

Something is either true or untrue.

There is no such thing as objectively true. It means nothing more. A meaningless redundancy.

More to the point can you explain what exactly your irrefutable logic is.

It's called knowing what is required for a concept to be realized.

The concept of "experiencing" requires two things.

1. That which is capable of having an experience.

2. That which can be experienced.

Without both you do not have "experience".

If there is just something that can experience but has nothing to experience there clearly is no experience.

If there is just that which can be experienced but nothing to experience it then again clearly there is no experience.

This cannot be waved away with your nothingness of an argument.

 

[untermensche]

Dennet has not escaped Descartes necessity that if there is a thought there must be something aware of that thought.

That's definitely not what Descartes said.

I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind (mens sive animus), understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing.

It's exactly what he said.

He says he is a thinking thing because he experiences thoughts.

He is certain he exists because he is experiencing thoughts. He can experience a lot more too.

That cannot be doubted.

And if he is experiencing thoughts there is he and there are the experienced thoughts. Two things.

 

[ruby sparks]

Two things.

There is evidence from Holotropic studies that two may be an underestimate of the total number:



Note that only two of them are related to the brainzone, which in a way means your number would technically be correct, if we are confining ourselves to what the relevant experts call that 'region'.

So, if that little diversion is all sorted and agreed in principle, can we gat back on topic? A good way to do that might be to ask, using the schemata above, if spirituality 'downcauses' love, or is it the other way around, or a bit of both? Is any answer useful, or is it misguided? Note that these are also 'two things'.

 

[untermensche]

You have not addressed anything with this nonsense.

How is there awareness without a thing that has the ability to be aware?

How is there awareness without the things that can be experienced?

How do you not have both?

 

[ruby sparks]

How do you not have both?

Them being two separate things is not a necessity because they could be two aspects of the same thing. Anomalous monism, in other words. It's a perfectly respectable and popular thesis, apparently. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry concludes that it "has earned a central place on the rather short list of important positions on the relation between mental and physical events and properties".

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/#Con

Btw, I think you had at least 3 things. The brain, thoughts, and a 'me' to experience them.

 

[Subsymbolic]

How do you not have both?

Them being two separate things is not a necessity because they could be two aspects of the same thing. Anomalous monism, in other words. It's a perfectly respectable and popular thesis, apparently. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry concludes that it "has earned a central place on the rather short list of important positions on the relation between mental and physical events and properties".



https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/#Con

Btw, I think you had at least 3 things. The brain, thoughts, and a 'me' to experience them.

Where do you get these ideas? If you want objective truth of the sort UM insists on, all you can rely on is behaviour and biology subjective truths, like how things seem to you, can never be objective. UM’s position Cartesian Behaviourism opens a new dimension to the study of the brain/brain dualism

 

[DBT]

sensory input being the sole source of information about the external world

Strictly speaking that's true, at least very nearly true in normal situations, and at least as far as the current state of the world is concerned.

Yet, you would need to look at the brain itself, or at least at the brain's structure, down to the DNA contained in it, also as a source of information, and in fact, as a more massive source of information.

It's first the information about the whole life of the individual, indeed acquired through sensory inputs at the time, and somehow "recorded", so not just inputs now, but, second, it's also the whole of the evolution of life on Earth that sort of got recorded into that DNA and effectively, somehow, into that brain's structure.

I would expect, if it was possible to quantify the various contributions, that "evolution" information would be found to be much more massive than all the inputs you get through your life put together.
EB

DNA is a source of information, nobody is saying otherwise....but not in regard to what is happening around us in terms of our immediate environment.

That being the point of sensory input and its necessity.

I do not deny that there are multiple sources of information, signals from organs, limbs, memory, etc, but none of this negates the necessity of sensory input as a means of interacting with our surroundings.

 

[ruby sparks]

Where do you get these ideas?

I am open to alternative suggestions. I can only hope that they are accompanied by either a large clinical and experimental body of evidence or/and a fleshed-out philosophical argument.

Your turn?

 

[Subsymbolic]

sensory input being the sole source of information about the external world

Strictly speaking that's true, at least very nearly true in normal situations, and at least as far as the current state of the world is concerned.

Yet, you would need to look at the brain itself, or at least at the brain's structure, down to the DNA contained in it, also as a source of information, and in fact, as a more massive source of information.

It's first the information about the whole life of the individual, indeed acquired through sensory inputs at the time, and somehow "recorded", so not just inputs now, but, second, it's also the whole of the evolution of life on Earth that sort of got recorded into that DNA and effectively, somehow, into that brain's structure.

I would expect, if it was possible to quantify the various contributions, that "evolution" information would be found to be much more massive than all the inputs you get through your life put together.
EB

DNA is a source of information, nobody is saying otherwise....but not in regard to what is happening around us in terms of our immediate environment.

That being the point of sensory input and its necessity.

I do not deny that there are multiple sources of information, signals from organs, limbs, memory, etc, but none of this negates the necessity of sensory input as a means of interacting with our surroundings.

You are underestimating just how rich the stage setting is. Have you ever considered how edge detection (one of the most basic tasks of vision) is actually achieved? More to the point, have you actually considered how informationally rich DNA is?

Meanwhile, no one is denying that sensory input from the environment is critical. What's being quibbled about is how much work incredibly well informed expectation is doing from the moment the, for example, light hits the eye.

Look, consider a superbly tuned autocorrect system just using something dumb like Markov Chains, the system predicts the next word. It's only when the system doesn't guess right that you have to type anything. Even then by a couple of letters the system will make remarkable predictions. The rest of the time you can move on. Let's say this system works with fifty percent accuracy to start and ninety within two letters. Now imagine someone trying to work out what is going on by intercepting the signals. Would they get enough information to make sense, because these chaps are looking at blood flow as an indicator of workload. I'm (and Sp also, it seems) suggesting this will not be a terribly informative.

- - - Updated - - -

Where do you get these ideas?

I am open to alternative suggestions. I can only hope that they are accompanied by either a large clinical and experimental body of evidence and/or a fleshed-out philosophical argument.

Your turn?

I was trying for a joke. YOu can tell, because it wasn't funny.

 

[ruby sparks]

I was trying for a joke.

You succeeded. I just had to find an excuse to seem to genuinely ask you to flesh out a viable alternative because......well....no one else is doing it.

So far, it's only autonomous monism and chakras on the table. Oh and some long-dead god-botherer of the garlic-and-frogs-legs-eating variety who won the "Mr Worthless Bag of Wind Award" for 1645 for mistakenly thinking the pineal gland had superpowers, but who can't be identified in the thread because it means using magic words and name dropping.

 

[untermensche]

How do you not have both?

Them being two separate things is not a necessity because they could be two aspects of the same thing. Anomalous monism, in other words. It's a perfectly respectable and popular thesis, apparently. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry concludes that it "has earned a central place on the rather short list of important positions on the relation between mental and physical events and properties".

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/#Con

Btw, I think you had at least 3 things. The brain, thoughts, and a 'me' to experience them.

Two aspects of the same thing are two things.

You have not escaped the need for there to be both that which can experience and that which can be experienced.

The brain creates them both. It is not a third element.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

In case it isn't clear, Carroll's argument is that thoughts, consciousness, and free will are not illusions. They are very real phenomena. You just can't explain them in terms that make reference to quarks and neurons. Reductionist explanations fail.

It is perfectly clear. Systems approaches and reductionist approaches utilize different fundamental modeling strategies. They are actually ontologically dissimilar. Systems defy Dennett's stances to some degree. Or, at least they include all three stances which means to understand a system, you need to understand the observer that defines the system as well as the observed phenomena that the observer models as a system. It makes a deep mess of strict physicalism. But then, so does any field theory so I guess we should know at this point that our ontologies are purely matters of convenience.