Interaction ("mind body") problem

[GrowingSmaller]

People dismiss dualism because they do not see how a non-physical mind can interact with matter.

But how does matter interact with matter. Sure we have some theories, but if I ask "why is that the case?" when you answer, and repeat the process, I think we are ultimately going to end up with mysterious interaction. Does that mean that there is a body-body problem? Or is analogous to saying we cant explain why it rains because we can't explain where the Big Bang came from?

Also, as far as current science goes I think that it has a mind body problem too i.e. how does mental causation effect the physical? For example how does the sensation/qualia of disgust cause me to physically spit out rotten fruit from my mouth?

 

[KCfromNC]

People dismiss dualism because they do not see how a non-physical mind can interact with matter.

But how does matter interact with matter. Sure we have some theories, but if I ask "why is that the case?" when you answer, and repeat the process, I think we are ultimately going to end up with mysterious interaction. Does that mean that there is a body-body problem?

No, because despite not knowing the minute details of matter-matter interaction we know them well enough to accurately model and predict the large majority of interactions we do see. That's a pretty good indication that while we're not perfect we do have a pretty good idea what's going on.

Also note that I can keep asking "but why?" about anything and eventually people will run out of answers (or more likely patience - c.f. behavior of two year old children). That doesn't mean we don't have a good understanding - sometimes it just means that there is no additional level of why.

Matter-spirit interactions, on the other hand, are impossible on their face. Or if you somehow define them to work somehow, then you're stuck with a complete lack of explanation for why we don't actually observe even the slightest hint of them happening here in reality.

So in one case we have good but imperfect knowledge, in the other we have either a paradox or zero knowledge at all. The two cases are hardly comparable.

Also, as far as current science goes I think that it has a mind body problem too i.e. how does mental causation effect the physical? For example how does the sensation/qualia of disgust cause me to physically spit out rotten fruit from my mouth?

No one claims that modern neuroscience knows everything. That's far different from the dualist mind-body problem where instead of a lack of complete understanding we have a contradiction inherent in the very idea. For the two problems to be similar, you'd need concrete reasons to think that not only do monists not understand a process but that there's something inherently impossible in the non-dualist view of the mind.

 

[sandwiches]

People dismiss dualism because they do not see how a non-physical mind can interact with matter.

I dismiss dualism because I have yet to see any reason to believe in the "non-physical," whatever that means.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

No one claims that modern neuroscience knows everything. That's far different from the dualist mind-body problem where instead of a lack of complete understanding we have a contradiction inherent in the very idea.

Are you saying that we can know a priori that dualism is false i.e. that it entails a logical contradiction?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I dismiss dualism because I have yet to see any reason to believe in the "non-physical," whatever that means.

Some people believe in abstract objects ("abstracta"), like numbers may be. Are you sayingthat their thoughts are not false, but rather incoherent?

 

[sandwiches]

Some people believe in abstract objects ("abstracta"), like numbers may be. Are you sayingthat their thoughts are not false, but rather incoherent?

Neither.

Now, are you saying that, like numbers, the "non-physical" is merely a logical construct that exists only in our minds as just another thought or idea?

 

[variant]

People dismiss dualism because they do not see how a non-physical mind can interact with matter.

But how does matter interact with matter. Sure we have some theories, but if I ask "why is that the case?" when you answer, and repeat the process, I think we are ultimately going to end up with mysterious interaction. Does that mean that there is a body-body problem? Or is analogous to saying we cant explain why it rains because we can't explain where the Big Bang came from?

Also, as far as current science goes I think that it has a mind body problem too i.e. how does mental causation effect the physical? For example how does the sensation/qualia of disgust cause me to physically spit out rotten fruit from my mouth?

People dismiss substance dualism because consciousness appears to be an emergent property of a physical system (the brain), and we have no evidence of anything else going on or a good reason to think there is.

We can tell wether someone is a psycopath based upon how nurons are fireing.

Alterations in the phsyical structure of the brain can cause massive differences in things like personality/intelligence.

Further, brain states can be measured so that someone looking at the brain from the outside in can tell what sort of desision you make before you know yourself.

Further by useing magnets researchers can make it more likely that you will lie or tell the truth.

In short, as we learn more and more about the brain, we never discover anything non-physical that is going on and we discover more and more about the physical makeup of the brain.

 

[KCfromNC]

Are you saying that we can know a priori that dualism is false i.e. that it entails a logical contradiction?

Depends on the particular version of dualism used. In some cases yes. In other cases no, but those cases still have the problem of a complete lack of evidence in their favor. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in my original reply.

 

[AlexBP]

People dismiss substance dualism because consciousness appears to be an emergent property of a physical system (the brain), and we have no evidence of anything else going on or a good reason to think there is.

We can tell wether someone is a psycopath based upon how nurons are fireing.

Alterations in the phsyical structure of the brain can cause massive differences in things like personality/intelligence.

Further, brain states can be measured so that someone looking at the brain from the outside in can tell what sort of desision you make before you know yourself.

Further by useing magnets researchers can make it more likely that you will lie or tell the truth.

Could you point me to some books and articles that establish these things? Not that I think you're lying, but I've heard a lot of claims like these over the years and I've never seen any first-hand sources.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I have heard fof those findings.

IIRC psychopaths have damaged limbic systems.
Personality changes have been effected by lobotomy.
IIRC a decision reading one came out a couple of years ago, and a seach for "brain scan science mind read" ought to produce results (it seems that there are a few experiments doing similar things).

 

[GrowingSmaller]

The problem I have at the moment with reductionism is that both the mental (pains, sensations etc) and the non-mental (waves, metals) are reduced to the same underlying stuff. But from there we cannot go "bottom up" to mental life from theoretical equations. I agree that a psychologist can read mental life into brain states, but they -the inner states - do not follow from the equations themselves, where as to the best of my knowledge physical propeties (like the energy of a falling body) do follow from equations in a mathematical fashion. That does not mean dualism is true of course, however it seems in one sense to be as magical to say "soul affects body" as it is to say "pleasure drives behavior" in that both seem equally alien to the normal way of doing physical science. That is unless you can reduce pleasure to brain states, but then you have the challenge of both the mental and the non-mental being reduced to similar (or identical) things which seems to be a blind spot for science. Just like reducing a penny and a dollar coin to "metal" would not represent the whole picture.

 

[jayem]

Some of these might be relevant:

A famous study was reported in 1997. PET scanning, which evaluates glucose metabolism, showed reduced metabolic activity in various areas of the brains of 41 murderers, as compared with 41 age and sex-matched controls.

Brain abnormalities in murderers indicated b... [Biol Psychiatry. 1997] - PubMed - NCBI


Here's a 2009 article summarizing what's known about brain function and how neural networks may be responsible for moral behavior and decision making.

The Neurobiology of Moral Behavior: Review and Neuropsychiatric Implications


On a different topic, here's a news report on how an out-of-body experience can be triggered by stimulating a portion of the temporo-parietal junction on the right hemisphere.

Brain stimulation sparks out-of-body experience | Reuters


We're just scratching the surface. But the clear trend is that all mental and cognitive functions are directly a result of natural physiologic processes in the brain.

 

[variant]

The problem I have at the moment with reductionism is that both the mental (pains, sensations etc) and the non-mental (waves, metals) are reduced to the same underlying stuff. But from there we cannot go "bottom up" to mental life from theoretical equations. I agree that a psychologist can read mental life into brain states, but they -the inner states - do not follow from the equations themselves, where as to the best of my knowledge physical propeties (like the energy of a falling body) do follow from equations in a mathematical fashion. That does not mean dualism is true of course, however it seems in one sense to be as magical to say "soul affects body" as it is to say "pleasure drives behavior" in that both seem equally alien to the normal way of doing physical science. That is unless you can reduce pleasure to brain states, but then you have the challenge of both the mental and the non-mental being reduced to similar (or identical) things which seems to be a blind spot for science. Just like reducing a penny and a dollar coin to "metal" would not represent the whole picture.

You are over thinking things in order to be disatisfied with an incomplete answer.

The point is that there is no reason to believe that mental states are not produced by the physical brain and every indication that they are, so there is no mind body problem.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

The point is that there is no reason to believe that mental states are not produced by the physical brain and every indication that they are, so there is no mind body problem.

No there is a mind body problem even if the mind and body are both physical. If there is not, then how does the quale of pain or pleasure cause or influance physical behavior? There is no answer to this in present understanding, so there is a problem to be solved even if the answer is expected to be physicalist.

 

[KCfromNC]

The problem I have at the moment with reductionism is that both the mental (pains, sensations etc) and the non-mental (waves, metals) are reduced to the same underlying stuff. But from there we cannot go "bottom up" to mental life from theoretical equations. I agree that a psychologist can read mental life into brain states, but they -the inner states - do not follow from the equations themselves, where as to the best of my knowledge physical propeties (like the energy of a falling body) do follow from equations in a mathematical fashion.

Since we don't have a complete theory of quantum gravity, I don't know how you can claim this in an absolute sense. Just like you can't claim that the magical inner states don't follow from a set of equations which we don't completely understand yet either. In any case, the world doesn't follow from anything - it just is. Science builds approximations of reality which let us do useful stuff. I have no idea why you think that us having an imperfect model means anything surprising - everyone knows we don't know everything.

As I mentioned in my original response, you're confusing a lack of a universal understanding with an inherent contradiction in what we do claim to know so far. The problem with modern neuroscience (and physics) is definitely the former.

That does not mean dualism is true of course, however it seems in one sense to be as magical to say "soul affects body" as it is to say "pleasure drives behavior" in that both seem equally alien to the normal way of doing physical science. That is unless you can reduce pleasure to brain states, but then you have the challenge of both the mental and the non-mental being reduced to similar (or identical) things which seems to be a blind spot for science. Just like reducing a penny and a dollar coin to "metal" would not represent the whole picture.

Brains are complex, as is the rest of biology. I doubt anyone disagrees. Sounds like you're setting up some kind of absurd reductionist strawman to beat up.

 

[KCfromNC]

No there is a mind body problem even if the mind and body are both physical. If there is not, then how does the quale of pain or pleasure cause or influance physical behavior?

I think you'll have to prove that this quale exists and causes physical behavior before I can see what the problem is.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I think you'll have to prove that this quale exists and causes physical behavior before I can see what the problem is.

Try sticking a pin in your thumb, then you will soon experience pain. The problem is how does that pain cause you to remove the pin? I am not interested in a reduction of pain to unconscious forces, because I believe the experience of pain has causal power so reducing it to something unconscious misses the point, and also basically contradicts itself by saying A and not-A (i.e. it would say that the conscious is not conscious after all). I want to know how conscious causation works, not analyse it into unconscious correlates of qualia/experience.

Sounds like you're setting up some kind of absurd reductionist strawman to beat up.

Don't worry I am not on a crusade. Probably you are just responding the my Christian icon as much as the discussion.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

In any case the world doesn't fiollow from anything - it just is.

Is that a magical explanation? If I were to say that the soul 's control of the body doesn't follow from anything, it just happens, then would that be similar?

 

[KCfromNC]

Is that a magical explanation? If I were to say that the soul 's control of the body doesn't follow from anything, it just happens, then would that be similar?

No, because there's no evidence of souls. There's lots of evidence of a natural universe.

But I have no idea how you got this from what I wrote. It wasn't an explanation of anything, just a statement that having limited understanding of the natural world doesn't mean that the supernatural is required.

 

[KCfromNC]

Try sticking a pin in your thumb, then you will soon experience pain. The problem is how does that pain cause you to remove the pin? I am not interested in a reduction of pain to unconscious forces, because I believe the experience of pain has causal power so reducing it to something unconscious misses the point, and also basically contradicts itself by saying A and not-A (i.e. it would say that the conscious is not conscious after all). I want to know how conscious causation works, not analyse it into unconscious correlates of qualia/experience.

And I'm not particularly interested in discussing it unless you can give me more than "I believe" as a reason to consider it. That leaves no room to talk about anything. Yes, I agree you believe this. And I have no reason to agree with you because I don't even really know what the objection is in the first place, other than you're not interested in believing the alternative.

Don't worry I am not on a crusade. Probably you are just responding the my Christian icon as much as the discussion.

Nope, I can recognize statements of faith like the one above regardless of the icons people use to identify themselves.