Physicalism

[Juma]

I'm not denying anything that is supported by evidence. I am questioning claims that are apparently not supported by the evidence that is available. I'm not aware of descriptions of non physical things.

How about an interest rate? Surely that's not physical? Or Hogwarts?

Why not? They are represented by processes in the brain. Processes that are clearly physical.

T

Please define "physical" in as much detail as you understand the term to be.

Space, time and matter and everything resulting from it.

 

[Togo]

I'm not denying anything that is supported by evidence. I am questioning claims that are apparently not supported by the evidence that is available. I'm not aware of descriptions of non physical things.

How about an interest rate? Surely that's not physical? Or Hogwarts?

Concepts and ideas exist in the form of information. Firstly in mental form, which is physical storage and rearrangement of information which includes imaginary entities, followed by the physical media of print and digital information.

No, they don't.

There isn't an arrangement of physical storage that is the concept of Hogwarts.

Of course there is. It is called memory function.

Memory function not only deals with recall and recognition, but ideas, concepts and imagination.

But the memory function of the brain, even the portion of it that deals with ideas about small scarred boys with glasses, is not identical to the concept.

I think this is where the principle confusion arises. Even if every instance of a concept is entirely driven, produced shaped founded and in all ways instantiated by a physical processes, it does not follow from that that the concept is identical to such a physical process. If one thing is identical to another it means that all features of the two are the same. Comparing the concept of Hogwarts to the memory processes of an individual thinking about the concept is comparing apples to pears. A different individual thinking about the same concept may have an entirely different physical memory structure. The two aren't the same.

How do you think memory works? Do you too believe that memory is laid down in non physical form?

Physicalism is not about the absence of ghosts. At minimum, it is supervenience physicalism, which states that any possible world that is physically identical to our own is also mentally identical to our own.

What you seem to be arguing is much stronger, that mental states are identical with physical states. That can be rejected just pointing to the differences between them, as I've been doing. It is generally only substantiated by somehow rejecting or reducing the properties on concepts until they can be said to be identical to physical states.

Hence why some posters were assuming that, by claiming that concepts and physical memory were identical, you were proposing some form of reductionism.

And if someone else has the same idea, their electrochemical arrangement will be different. Which suggests that the idea is not the electrochemical arrangement.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course every brain is different. Environment and life events, and so on. How an individual brain interprets and envisions its information is governed by a multitude of factors.

It means that the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in my head is different to the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in your head, and thus that two are not in fact identical. If the two physical states are not identical with each other, they can not in any sense both be identical to the concept itself.

You can argue that the concept itself doesn't exist (elminativism), or that it doesn't matter (reductionism), but you can't argue that two physically different things are identical to a third thing.

 

[ryan]

I'm not denying anything that is supported by evidence. I am questioning claims that are apparently not supported by the evidence that is available. I'm not aware of descriptions of non physical things.

How about an interest rate? Surely that's not physical? Or Hogwarts?

Why not? They are represented by processes in the brain. Processes that are clearly physical.

T

Please define "physical" in as much detail as you understand the term to be.

Space, time and matter and everything resulting from it.

I still think that you need to quantify a property for it to be physical since space, time and matter are all quantifiable. Can you do this with anything you consider to be a property?

 

[steve_bnk]

Drugs alter mental states. Brain tumorscan affect behavior.


Brain disease affects behavior.


Chronic high blood sugar affects brainand behavior.


And so on.


How ever difficult it may be todescribe in words and concepts, everything about your 'mind' is a chemical process.

Space and time are scientific abstractions used to construct a reality model, they are not reality.

Matter is an abstraction that encompasses all that exists known or unknown.

Mass is an arbitrary dentition based a chunk of metal in a Paris lab.

All of what we take as objective knowledge is relative to our arbitrary definitions.

 

[Juma]

And if someone else has the same idea, their electrochemical arrangement will be different. Which suggests that the idea is not the electrochemical arrangement.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course every brain is different. Environment and life events, and so on. How an individual brain interprets and envisions its information is governed by a multitude of factors.

It means that the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in my head is different to the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in your head, and thus that two are not in fact identical. If the two physical states are not identical with each other, they can not in any sense both be identical to the concept itself.

You can argue that the concept itself doesn't exist (elminativism), or that it doesn't matter (reductionism), but you can't argue that two physically different things are identical to a third thing.

Its about behaviourial/relational identity. Not instance identity.

Two different processes can realize the same concept. The concept is the same if the outcome (the behaviour) is the same.

Thus two very different processes can refer to "Paris, the capital of France" in very different ways, the only thing in common being the 5 letters of the answer to the question "what is the capital of France?".

That is "identity" between ideas. Not their physical realisation.

 

[Juma]

I still think that you need to quantify a property for it to be physical since space, time and matter are all quantifiable. Can you do this with anything you consider to be a property?

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

 

[ryan]

I still think that you need to quantify a property for it to be physical since space, time and matter are all quantifiable. Can you do this with anything you consider to be a property?

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Is a property composed of time, space and matter?

 

[Juma]

I still think that you need to quantify a property for it to be physical since space, time and matter are all quantifiable. Can you do this with anything you consider to be a property?

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Is a property composed of time, space and matter?

Still gibberish.

Are you refering to the concepts of properties? Are you asking if concepts are "composed of time, space and matter"?

 

[ryan]

I still think that you need to quantify a property for it to be physical since space, time and matter are all quantifiable. Can you do this with anything you consider to be a property?

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Is a property composed of time, space and matter?

Still gibberish.

Are you refering to the concepts of properties? Are you asking if concepts are "composed of time, space and matter"?

I want to know if all properties themselves are composed of time, space and/or matter.

 

[DBT]

But the memory function of the brain, even the portion of it that deals with ideas about small scarred boys with glasses, is not identical to the concept.

It is information, input and experience, that is interpreted by the brain as a ''small scarred boys with glasses'' - just as all information is related to something, whether it is concepts or actual external objects. All relevant information is encoded within the cells and connections of the brain as working memory.

I think this is where the principle confusion arises. Even if every instance of a concept is entirely driven, produced shaped founded and in all ways instantiated by a physical processes, it does not follow from that that the concept is identical to such a physical process. If one thing is identical to another it means that all features of the two are the same. Comparing the concept of Hogwarts to the memory processes of an individual thinking about the concept is comparing apples to pears. A different individual thinking about the same concept may have an entirely different physical memory structure. The two aren't the same.

Neural information, memory function, that is related to objects and events, ideas and concepts are not the actual objects and events, ideas and concepts, but codes that are recognized by the brain as representing various objects and events, ideas and concepts. Consciousness being a subjective represention of information. Memory function being woven into the 'fabric' of consciousness...loss of memory function unraveling recognition, etc

Hence why some posters were assuming that, by claiming that concepts and physical memory were identical, you were proposing some form of reductionism.

You are stretching things too far again. I did not say concepts and physical memory were identical, I said concepts exist in the brain in the form of physical information. That is not the same as your interpretation - ''concepts and physical memory are identical.'' Not even close.

 

[Togo]

And if someone else has the same idea, their electrochemical arrangement will be different. Which suggests that the idea is not the electrochemical arrangement.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course every brain is different. Environment and life events, and so on. How an individual brain interprets and envisions its information is governed by a multitude of factors.

It means that the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in my head is different to the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in your head, and thus that two are not in fact identical. If the two physical states are not identical with each other, they can not in any sense both be identical to the concept itself.

You can argue that the concept itself doesn't exist (elminativism), or that it doesn't matter (reductionism), but you can't argue that two physically different things are identical to a third thing.

Its about behaviourial/relational identity. Not instance identity.

Two different processes can realize the same concept. The concept is the same if the outcome (the behaviour) is the same.

Thus two very different processes can refer to "Paris, the capital of France" in very different ways, the only thing in common being the 5 letters of the answer to the question "what is the capital of France?".

That is "identity" between ideas. Not their physical realisation.

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

 

[Juma]

And if someone else has the same idea, their electrochemical arrangement will be different. Which suggests that the idea is not the electrochemical arrangement.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course every brain is different. Environment and life events, and so on. How an individual brain interprets and envisions its information is governed by a multitude of factors.

It means that the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in my head is different to the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in your head, and thus that two are not in fact identical. If the two physical states are not identical with each other, they can not in any sense both be identical to the concept itself.

You can argue that the concept itself doesn't exist (elminativism), or that it doesn't matter (reductionism), but you can't argue that two physically different things are identical to a third thing.

Its about behaviourial/relational identity. Not instance identity.

Two different processes can realize the same concept. The concept is the same if the outcome (the behaviour) is the same.

Thus two very different processes can refer to "Paris, the capital of France" in very different ways, the only thing in common being the 5 letters of the answer to the question "what is the capital of France?".

That is "identity" between ideas. Not their physical realisation.

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

It is not dualism. Dualism would be to actually say that awareness is something separate. I dont.

 

[Juma]

I want to know if all properties themselves are composed of time, space and/or matter.

You have to specify what the phrase "all properties themselves" is supposed to mean.

 

[DBT]

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

It is not mind/brain dualism, but the relationship between mind and the external world. Both being physical aspects of the physical World.

Mind, a form of electrochemical physical activity produced by the physical neural activity of a physical brain, the physical brain being an object that is an aspect of the physical world.

 

[ryan]

I want to know if all properties themselves are composed of time, space and/or matter.

You have to specify what the phrase "all properties themselves" is supposed to mean.

An example is the property containment. Is a property such as containment composed of time, space and/or matter?

 

[Underseer]

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

It is not mind/brain dualism, but the relationship between mind and the external world. Both being physical aspects of the physical World.

Mind, a form of electrochemical physical activity produced by the physical neural activity of a physical brain, the physical brain being an object that is an aspect of the physical world.

We don't understand everything about consciousness, therefore I can make up anything I like, insert it into the gaps of our knowledge, and my just-so stories become true, therefore physicalism is definitely false! [/christian-muslim]

 

[Juma]

I want to know if all properties themselves are composed of time, space and/or matter.

You have to specify what the phrase "all properties themselves" is supposed to mean.

An example is the property containment. Is a property such as containment composed of time, space and/or matter?

Do you mean the property or the containment?

 

[ryan]

I want to know if all properties themselves are composed of time, space and/or matter.

You have to specify what the phrase "all properties themselves" is supposed to mean.

An example is the property containment. Is a property such as containment composed of time, space and/or matter?

Do you mean the property or the containment?

I thought that containment is a property?

 

[Togo]

And if someone else has the same idea, their electrochemical arrangement will be different. Which suggests that the idea is not the electrochemical arrangement.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course every brain is different. Environment and life events, and so on. How an individual brain interprets and envisions its information is governed by a multitude of factors.

It means that the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in my head is different to the physical storage of the concept of Hogwarts in your head, and thus that two are not in fact identical. If the two physical states are not identical with each other, they can not in any sense both be identical to the concept itself.

You can argue that the concept itself doesn't exist (elminativism), or that it doesn't matter (reductionism), but you can't argue that two physically different things are identical to a third thing.

Its about behaviourial/relational identity. Not instance identity.

Two different processes can realize the same concept. The concept is the same if the outcome (the behaviour) is the same.

Thus two very different processes can refer to "Paris, the capital of France" in very different ways, the only thing in common being the 5 letters of the answer to the question "what is the capital of France?".

That is "identity" between ideas. Not their physical realisation.

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

It is not dualism. Dualism would be to actually say that awareness is something separate. I dont.

There are many forms of dualism that don't maintain that mental concepts are separate. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism

 

[Kharakov]

I have no particular objection to this formulation, but you do realise it's dualism, yes? You have mental concepts, and you have physical objects, and you have ideas about how these two different things interact.

It is not mind/brain dualism, but the relationship between mind and the external world. Both being physical aspects of the physical World.

Mind, a form of electrochemical physical activity produced by the physical neural activity of a physical brain, the physical brain being an object that is an aspect of the physical world.

We don't understand everything about consciousness, therefore I can make up anything I like, insert it into the gaps of our knowledge, and my just-so stories become true, therefore physicalism is definitely false! [/christian-muslim]

As fleeting as our thoughts are compared to our life, so too is the physical state of the universe compared to eternity. It may as well be a fleeting thought of a single triune proton that stretches out all fields and states of matter, creating spacetime for the fields it creates, of which our earthly human consciousnesses are just a few.

Pretty complicated being a single triune "proton" that has to care for all of reality, balancing the desires one creates in one's children, refining them, teaching them, entertaining them, creating duty for them so that they may learn to care for one another as a family, and balancing the consequence of original ignorance within your children, knowing the consequences, knowing and caring about the fall, the consequence of revelation, the consequence of spoiling your children, the consequence of making some children rich while others are hungry, the consequence of correcting your children for situations you have created with them, knowing that you will ultimately hold yourself responsible despite the fact that it is your children's original ignorance and ideas that arose from it that required correction, and knowing ultimately that this correction will result in love and bliss for your children, knowing that the end does justify the means, and recognition of you and your plan will bring joy to all who do not see it yet, for some dwell comfortably in the shadows, not yet readied for the light.