What kind of dualist are you?

[bilby]

I do not make the connection in the context which is why I had to say something.

But there are epiphenomenalism and parallelism to name a couple that do not have the immaterial mind interacting with the physical. The former is a one way causal relationship from body to mind, and the latter is just both being parallel to each other and either not affecting the other.

And it is well known that about 120 years ago physicists saw the universe as predictable as a clock, and all was reduced to Newtonian mechanics. There were just few "little" problems that needed to be explained like the nature of light, but many felt close to certainty about the state of physics. Then ... well we all know what happened after.

Well, some of us do; and others instead see their error as a modern day Icarus and Daedalus allegory about the dangers of hubris.

Newtonian mechanics was one of many steps along the pathway from 'Anything goes' to 'These are the only possibilities'. Science is a process of eliminating the impossible, from the much larger set of 'all things that can be imagined'.

It is, of course, possible to overstate the case, and to declare 'impossible' things which have not, in fact, been disproven; But that's not what happened in reality (although it makes a popular and entertaining story).

Newtonian mechanics wasn't overturned; It remains an accurate description of the vast majority of reality, at low speeds, low energies and moderate scales. In the same way that no amount of Quantum Theory or Relativity will render the (purely Newtonian) predictions of August's total eclipse of the Sun false, so no putative future theory that unites Gravtation and Quantum Mechanics, or that determines the properties and arrangements of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, or that originates some completely new and unexpected phenomenon, will change the fact that, at human scales, QFT tells us everything about the possible interactions of matter.

Ken Wilson demonstrated that it is not necessary to understand a system at smaller scales in order to correctly predict large scale behaviours - and this is informally obvious, in that Newton was able to correctly calculate to orbits of the various bodies in the Solar System without knowing their compositions; and that Faraday and Maxwell (and others) were able to develop an understanding of electricity without reference to Quantum Mechanics.

There may well be unknown forces, that are not currently described by the Standard Model; But we know that these forces cannot interact in any significant way with physical humans without destroying them. It is an unavoidable conclusion of Quantum Field Theory that any unknown forces must be either too weak (weaker than Gravity) to be able to transmit worthwhile information to or from a human sized object in less than a human lifetime; Or too energetic to interact with a human without atomizing him.

The area of understanding wherein undiscovered forces have been ruled out has expanded - In Newton's day, the Physics of the time gave the right answers for phenomena above scale of surface tension, and below the planetary, in conditions where temperatures were above that of liquid air, and below that of fire. Outside those limits, odd and unexplainable things could occur, but within those limits, Newton's Laws and the rest of 17th Century Physics gave answers that are still correct today.

Today's physics gives the right answers for phenomena above the scale of Quarks, and below the scale of Galaxies; in conditions where temperatures are above about 0.5 Kelvin and below 7.2 Trillion Kelvin. If, and ONLY if, a human being is experiencing conditions outside those bounds, THEN it would be possible that he is interacting with a currently unknown force.

Of course, there are known interactions that could, hypothetically, mediate Substance Dualism; One popular (but thoroughly refuted) candidate is radio waves (or other EM frequencies) - This can be ruled out, as no such EM radiation effects can be found either being transmitted or received by living (or dying) humans, despite considerable effort to find them. Another is Quantum Entanglement - but this can be ruled out, as it simply doesn't persist in the warm, wet and noisy conditions that constitute living things.

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however disappointingly little of it there might be, must be the whole of reality.

Substance Dualism is not possible, unless all of modern physics is not just slightly wrong, but wildly wrong. And it really isn't - we've checked, and the imperfections are now too small. Newton had every excuse to believe in the 'soul'; Even in the time of Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac, we couldn't be sure that we had seen all of the possible interactions involving matter. But with the LHC, we have been able to push up the minimum possible mass of any unknown subatomic particles to the point where an interaction between humans and any such hypothetical 'new' species could not possibly be routinely occurring.

Lots of people are still trying, or course. Just as lots of people still try to build perpetual motion machines, even after Clausius and Kelvin showed that they were impossible in the 1850s. But the fact is that a person with a reasonable education in the current state of Physics has no more excuse to hypothesize the existence of a 'soul' than he has to hypothesize the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. They are equally silly and disproven ideas, and to say so is no more hubris, than is predicting a solar eclipse visible from Kentucky on August 21, 2017.

You have too much stake in physics. Physics can't even be wrong about the consciousness because it isn't even equipped to address it. The consciousness just isn't the same kind of phenomenon as anything else physical we observe. How can we know that physics is ontologically complete when we don't know what the consciousness is, how it arises or why it is needed for evolutionary purposes.

I am done talking about this subject because I went so deep into it with DBT that I finally feel up to date with where everything is at with the hard problem. I can't spend anymore time on it.

It doesn't matter what consciousness is; Either in interacts with matter, in which case physics DOES address at least one side of that interaction; Or it doesn't interact with matter, in which case it is a totally valueless concept to us as material human beings.

I am a material human being; And I experience consciousness; Therefore it MUST logically be the former - I think, therefore thought is material. Consciousness must interact with matter; And Physics now has an exhaustive list of the ways in which matter interacts. Consciousness cannot be anything other than a dynamic pattern of material interactions.

I would argue that you are your mind.

And I am happy to agree - and as my mind interacts with my physical body, so I am, necessarily, physical. the relationship between mind and body remains the same which ever side you consider it from.

Of course, there is a great deal more to be determined; but any hypothesis of consciousness or mind that does not include that framework as its starting point can reasonably be discarded without further study, just as any machine, no matter how complex, that is claimed to produce more energy than it consumes, can be dismissed without a detailed consideration of its design.

Substance Dualism is physically impossible; Property Dualism and Monism are the only options. Personally I am unconvinced that there is any utility in differentiating between the two - Emergent properties of matter are simply high level observations of vast numbers of iterations of fundamental properties.

Sure, but "hard" emerging properties are just as strange as emerging substances. A truly emergent property like the consciousness is one that is so emergent that it can't be predicted by more fundamental physical properties (assuming you do not accept panpsychism). In physics, there are not very many properties known that give us all of the variety we see in the world/universe. The consciousness should not be coming from its parts, yet it mysteriously seems to, thus the "how it arises" question. There must be something else going on.

That's just an argument from ignorance.

We don't know whether or not the consciousness 'should be coming from its parts'; But there seems to be no good reason to say that it shouldn't - particularly as literally every other phenomenon we have ever found an explanation for has come from its parts.

Our ignorance about the details is not evidence for a mysterious 'something else'; It's far more reasonable to assume that our ignorance is due to the massive level of complexity of the system under consideration, than it is to assume that it is due to something completely novel, undetected, unevidenced, and that would completely overturn all of physics were it to be found.

 

[ryan]

That's just an argument from ignorance.

We don't know whether or not the consciousness 'should be coming from its parts'; But there seems to be no good reason to say that it shouldn't - particularly as literally every other phenomenon we have ever found an explanation for has come from its parts.

Our ignorance about the details is not evidence for a mysterious 'something else'; It's far more reasonable to assume that our ignorance is due to the massive level of complexity of the system under consideration, than it is to assume that it is due to something completely novel, undetected, unevidenced, and that would completely overturn all of physics were it to be found.

It is not ignorance; it is purely logical. There are fundamental properties of the universe as per the Standard Model. None of the fundamental properties of the Standard Model are consciousness. Consciousness itself is not a certain arrangement of non-conscious entities; at some point the consciousness has to emerge.

 

[bilby]

That's just an argument from ignorance.

We don't know whether or not the consciousness 'should be coming from its parts'; But there seems to be no good reason to say that it shouldn't - particularly as literally every other phenomenon we have ever found an explanation for has come from its parts.

Our ignorance about the details is not evidence for a mysterious 'something else'; It's far more reasonable to assume that our ignorance is due to the massive level of complexity of the system under consideration, than it is to assume that it is due to something completely novel, undetected, unevidenced, and that would completely overturn all of physics were it to be found.

It is not ignorance; it is purely logical. There are fundamental properties of the universe as per the Standard Model. None of the fundamental properties of the Standard Model are consciousness. Consciousness itself is not a certain arrangement of non-conscious entities; at some point the consciousness has to emerge.

How do you know this? I think there's every reason to expect that consciousness IS a certain (dynamic) arrangement of non-conscious entities.

 

[ryan]

It is not ignorance; it is purely logical. There are fundamental properties of the universe as per the Standard Model. None of the fundamental properties of the Standard Model are consciousness. Consciousness itself is not a certain arrangement of non-conscious entities; at some point the consciousness has to emerge.

How do you know this? I think there's every reason to expect that consciousness IS a certain (dynamic) arrangement of non-conscious entities.

I explained in the post. There is no conscious property in physics. But I think your issue is against the idea that there is more than just the parts; am I right? Are you rejecting the very existence of a subjective state that cannot be known observationally?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Dualism is the view that there is a non-physical aspect to human beings--a mental/spiritual aspect and a physical aspect. (See the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Dualism for reference.) The vast majority of people are dualists. More than that, they are what philosophers call "substance dualists" (aka Cartesian dualists) in that they believe in an immaterial spiritual plane of existence that is independent of physics. The major alternative to substance dualism is "property dualism"--the view that mental phenomena are not physical per se, but that mental/spiritual experience is a property of certain physical interactions. In modern terms, one might call it an emergent property.

Just out of curiosity, I would like to know whether you consider yourself a substance or property dualist. If not, why not? So I offer two choices and an option to decline either label (with explanation).

I'm a suspicious guy so essentially doubtful and I therefore don't buy the obviousness of things material. Like Descartes, I accept that the only certainty is 'I exist', leaving the material, or physical world in a kind of doubtful ontological limbo. The claim that there's a physical world is therefore somewhat overdone. You can say you believe there's a physical world but then again you don't actually know it and you don't know that there's one. One can certainly believe what one likes but it's not too compelling as an argument.

Of course, the characterisation of mental phenomena is somewhat dubious as well. We can only believe we are talking about the same thing when we talk about pain as a mental phenomenon. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. My green may be more like your blue and my pain may be more like acrid smell to you, who would know?

So I'm not dualist but I'm also not monist, essentially because I think that explanation is a category that's only relevant to our concept of the material world, and then again it's not much of anything since explaining is bound to be restricted to explaining one material thing in terms of another. Big deal.

So I think it's appropriate in fact to stop at 'I think therefore I am'. Anything beyond that is bound to be suspicious. You're free to do it but then don't pretend you know what you're doing.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

There is also the point that emergent properties of systemic activity do not necessarily follow from the components of the system, although they supervene on them. That is, mental events supervene on physical events but are not necessarily equivalent to those physical events.

I've always failed at finding the notion of emergence and of supervenience as meaningful. Objective properties seem to me to result from the interaction of several things so any potentially emerging property should be understood as really a property that involves something else we haven't fathomed yet. It's basically a phenomenon we are unable to explain yet. Not much of a thing.

And obviously, consciousness falls into that category because there's no available and good explanation of consciousness in terms of the physical activity of brains. Not even the beginning of one. Not even the slightest hint that one might one day become available. Yet, saying it supervenes on brains is just speaking from ignorance. Who knows if consciousness doesn't occurs in computer chips, in the few neurons of more basic lifeforms, or even in molecules and atoms? Sure, we believe other people are conscious and that's something but then it just shows that you need a conscious observer to be aware of the world. Not much to that.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sorry. Didnt get this.

Humans interact primarily through EM, they (cough) are talking about dark matter, which means dark matter is causing some EM interactions.

Yeah, exactly.

And humans talk occasionally about ghosts so ghosts are causing EM interactions.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Er, I think that most of us have noticed gravity.

Nobody notices gravity, or any acceleration for that matter. We may be aware of our own effort when we move heavy objects around, including ourselves, and we probably have a perception of some of the tension caused in our bodies by our weight and the resistance of things around us. Gravity is an inference from that.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Water is reducible to H2O, but it has different properties that are not reducible to, or predictable from, the properties of the molecules.

What properties does water have that cannot be reduced to "its parts and their interactions"?

Yeah, I'd like to know too.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

A chorus of water molecules in drops tapping out the Anvil Chorus on Normandy blvd in South Central LA (Watts) during a spring sprinkle?

 

[Speakpigeon]

A chorus of water molecules in drops tapping out the Anvil Chorus on Normandy blvd in South Central LA (Watts) during a spring sprinkle?

So you can say something that makes sense when you want to. Just one post in thousands and thousands of them but still.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

OOOOH. (blush)

 

[Random Person]

That definition doesn't work very well, given that most English speakers believe that spiritual entities have objective existence. All you are doing here is expressing the opinion that only things with physical properties can exist, but that is just one philosophical point of view.

No.

If it exists we call it "physical".

No matter what form it exists in.

It is impossible for something that exists to be "non-physical". The term makes no sense. It is just a negation of something that does make sense.

What about the duality of love and hate?

 

[fromderinside]

Are you talking about the actions of love and hate or the feelings of love and hate?

Only one is physical.

 

[Random Person]

Are you talking about the actions of love and hate or the feelings of love and hate?

Only one is physical.

I don't know what your point is. Do the feeling so love and hate exist?

 

[fromderinside]

Yes. But that isn't the point. Both have obvious material components, but, it's not clear that these are what makes it hote and love. Perhaps it's engagement of general chemical induced states throughout large parts of the organism that bring on these feelings.

 

[Random Person]

Yes. But that isn't the point. Both have obvious material components, but, it's not clear that these are what makes it hote and love. Perhaps it's engagement of general chemical induced states throughout large parts of the organism that bring on these feelings.

Love is an induced state?

What triggers it?

 

[Elixir]

"Poll: Which kind of dualist are you?"

I wanted to take the poll, but I am in fact two kinds of dualist, and that wasn't an option.

 

[bilby]

Yes. But that isn't the point. Both have obvious material components, but, it's not clear that these are what makes it hote and love. Perhaps it's engagement of general chemical induced states throughout large parts of the organism that bring on these feelings.

Love is an induced state?

What triggers it?

Neurobiologists have studied pair-bonding mechanisms in animal models of mate choice to elucidate neurochemical mechanisms underlying attachment and showed possible roles for oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine and their receptors in pair-bonding and monogamy. Unresolved is whether these substances are also critically involved in human attachment. The limited number of available imaging studies on love and affection is hampered by selection bias on gender, duration of a love affair, and cultural differences. Brain activity patterns associated with romantic love, shown with fMRI, overlapped with regions expressing oxytocin receptors in the animal models, but definite proof for a role of oxytocin in human attachment is still lacking. There is also evidence for a role of serotonin, cortisol, nerve growth factor, and testosterone in love and attachment. Changes in brain activity related to the various stages of a love affair, gender, and cultural differences are unresolved and will probably become important research themes in this field in the near future.

(Abstract - full article is paywalled)

So the answer is that we are not 100% sure, but that it is probably a combination of several neurochemicals, the most important of which are oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, nerve growth factor, and testosterone; plus physical changes in the structure of the brain due to changes in nerve cell connectivity.

How romantic.

Of course, those neurological changes are themselves triggered by the sight, sound, smell, taste and touch of an entity that meets our brain's established criteria for 'love'; Some of which are instinctual, and others of which are learned, often subconsciously and due to myriad early life interactions.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm thinking the most important stimuli are chemical across cellular/dermal boundary and chemical up the nose/mouth. Mechanical and electromagnetic stimuli induce, after mechanical transduction, chemical stuff which drives neuro/endocrinal stuff through nerves and blood. All about those things that make us high, low, how far can you go. We're wired and chemistried to respond. What's love got to do with it?

I have a 15 pager that is behind a pay wall for me. Eyup as an author I can get the thing for $25 from ScienceDirect. Fortunately I have complete notes around somewhere. I hope I do. It's only been 37 years. Profit, profit, profit, for somebody, just not the scientists.

I'm a duelist dualist of the monist kind.

...and no I'm not trolling you bilby, I just like to read what you write.

That finished, Read the first 'graph above Random Person. My guess is love is induced by imagery. scent, memory, and general hormonal readiness. If you've measured the others and then provide one, usually the picture of a stereotypcial hottie, you might say it's the picture. After further analysis you'll find differences in response depending on the other states so ......Whatchagonnadoo ... Cause is so hidden.