Vitalism is True (I think)

[DisingenuousChristian]

Q: "Why does opium cause sleep?"
A: "Because of its soporific power."

The preceding so-called “parody” answer is actually the only kind of answer one may give to the question “why does opium cause sleep?” or for that matter, why any kind of soporific-inducing substance causes sleep.

Those who ridicule this as a non-answer, as opposed to the purportedly more sophisticated version which identifies various minute causes in the brain, simply miss the point of the matter which is that sleep by its very nature is something mental in kind, and something mental in kind can only be given an equally mental explanation; namely, that sleep is the effect of a cause which is soporific in quality, and not any other cause – for enervation, deprivation, intoxication and so on are all mere anterior causes which have as their end result this soporific quality and final cause – without which sleep could not be actualized in any degree whatsoever.

Those who mock this explanation as unimaginative and “vitalist” really have no true understanding of what a real explanation is in relationship to such facts. They fail to see that the more subtle and non-physical something is (namely, the mental), the more meaningless is the question of imagination in relation to such. For what is more bereft of imagination as the question: what spurs one to do, emotionally, the things one does? In all respects other than sleep, when one is consciously spurred to actions, there are emotions involved, and one might venture to also say that fatigue is a type of emotion. Is there a reason other than these emotions for why humans react as they do? Of course there are. Reasons for acting come to mind. As well as physical causes. But are they the final causes or are they merely anterior causes which either furnish the final cause, or lay the groundwork for the final cause?

When one is in a rage is the final cause of his wanting to murder the fact that his wife was raped by the accused, or because he has legs and a circulatory system that leads him onto such a course? Or is it rather simply for the fact of rage, and that human beings act accordingly as their emotions dictate? In the final analysis, what is mental can only effect the mental, and anything physical is an external outlier, totally on the peripheries of what is occurring in the mental realm. It is true that the person might feel no rage towards the assailant, had the victim not been his wife. It is also true that even uncontrollable rage could be curtailed eventually by lacking the physical means to accomplish goals like murder. All this is true. What is not negated however is the mental fact of rage which is self-validating and as it were self-subsisting. How often has it been seen that a person was beaten senselessly over and above any demands of justice, but the beater was still feeling “enraged” enough to even mar the corpse of his foe? Is there a cognizing part of him which thinks any longer that he is exacting “revenge” or making a reasoning “stamp” on the moral perpetrator? Or is he instead fallen into an emotional barrier which does not signify anything rational in those moments of total white heat?

One here may just as accurately ask “what is the cause of rage” by answering that it is “the fact of enragement.” Other causes exist in relationship to the final cause, it is true. But they serve only as the precondition for its actualization. And in fact we soon enough see that in the mental sphere like can only meet with like; that is, cause and effect are intertwined such that to differentiate them qualitatively is as futile an exercise as seeking out the principle of life due to various organic causes.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Why do you believe that the mental is non-physical? Isn't physicalism ontologically simpler, and perhaps having more explanatory power? I mean look at brain science, at least its a start at an explanation, whereas "soul" has problems of its own, like the nature of the causal relationship with the physical. So for me odds favour the physicalist explanation. At least it has four legs and can walk.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I would disagree, saying that opium causes sleep because of its biochemical effects on the brain. The whole mind-body duality idea is a relic of the past, and needs to be dropped. The mind is a product of the body, an emergent phenomenon of the decision-making function of the brain. How it emerges is a mystery, but emerge it does.

 

[The Nihilist]

Opium causes sleep by interacting with the mind via the pineal gland. Der.

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

Why do you believe that the mental is non-physical?

Why do you believe the mental is physical? Both seem like fair questions, but why should one default on the physical side when this is in no way obvious? It isn't as though non-physical things don't exist; look at numbers and universals.

Isn't physicalism ontologically simpler, and perhaps having more explanatory power?

To some extent I agree. In the preceding I argue that physical causes do give an explanation of our experiences, but only in the form of anterior or preliminary causes which furnish the final cause which is mental or non-physical. At a certain point physical reasons "bottom out" as it were, because they can no longer reach the necessary point where "like meets like" or where there is adequate similarity between the cause and the effect. As in, for instance, the joyful (flowers) and the thing enjoyed (the smelling sense) or the example I gave, the soporific cause (in the physical form of opium) and the end result or effect (in the form of the state of sleep or growing fatigue leading to sleep).

I mean look at brain science, at least its a start at an explanation, whereas "soul" has problems of its own, like the nature of the causal relationship with the physical. So for me odds favour the physicalist explanation. At least it has four legs and can walk.

Actually, "brain science" as you so call it does not offer an explanation so far as an actual account of why opium or any intoxicant renders us unconscious. It can only go so far as to detail the steps within the human body which proceed on the basis of this interaction.

As I said in the OP, this is all imagination and imagination is "meaningless" when it comes down to the mental. This is in no small degree because we can't really "imagine" why the opium molecule, when it binds to certain receptors in the brain, gives us the experience of sleep. It merely does because there is a commonality between the state of being and its cause. And on that basis is why I maintain "like meets with like" and that the effect can only be non-different from the cause, which is efficacious due to this identity.

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

I would disagree, saying that opium causes sleep because of its biochemical effects on the brain. The whole mind-body duality idea is a relic of the past, and needs to be dropped. The mind is a product of the body, an emergent phenomenon of the decision-making function of the brain. How it emerges is a mystery, but emerge it does.

Great! Now, I gave you my argument, you give me yours!

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

Opium causes sleep by interacting with the mind via the pineal gland. Der.

That's... not much of an explanation as far as I can see.

 

[sandwiches]

omething mental in kind can only be given an equally mental explanation

Why?

 

[sandwiches]

Why do you believe the mental is physical? Both seem like fair questions, but why should one default on the physical side when this is in no way obvious? It isn't as though non-physical things don't exist; look at numbers and universals.

Numbers and ideas are the abstractions of physical processes, such as that of a brain or a computer, for instance.

Are the computational processes in a computer "non-physical?"

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

Why?

Because the physical is not the mental, put simply.

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

Numbers and ideas are the abstractions of physical processes, such as that of a brain or a computer, for instance.

Are you saying that the sum of the angles of a triangle is not 180 degrees unless someone thinks it?

Are the computational processes in a computer "non-physical?"

I don't think it's been proved computers have a mental life. We are talking as of now about human minds, not computers.

..Though if a computer did have a mental life, as I think Chalmers has postulated, then that mental life would be non-physical, sure.

 

[Resha Caner]

I would disagree, saying that opium causes sleep because of its biochemical effects on the brain. The whole mind-body duality idea is a relic of the past, and needs to be dropped. The mind is a product of the body, an emergent phenomenon of the decision-making function of the brain. How it emerges is a mystery, but emerge it does.

Not so - and a point I tried to make in another thread that got derailed by minutiae. Rather, I would say the 2 sides are at an impasse. Since physicalism cannot demonstrate all functions of the mind, they have not disproven its transcendence. They have merely postulated a physical cause.

On the flip side, that failure on the part of physicalism does not prove dualism. Further, I have yet to see someone who supports dualism make an airtight case for it. At best they expend a lot of words and can only conclude from it that it is possible, not that it is necessary. I think there are arguments for dualism that could sway some skeptics, but not all.

An impasse.

I've been working on an argument of my own, but it's not ready yet. The part of developing that argument that I find most interesting is that many physicalists appear to put up a Catch 22, and then refuse to acknowledge it as such. And yet, the irony is that physicalists themselves are also in a sort of Catch 22. To acknowledge their condition is a Catch 22 would be to virtually concede dualism.

An impasse.

[edit] FYI, my personal opinion follows somewhat of a middle road. I think us much more physically based than most Christians probably would. It doesn't really bother me to think the mind (the soul) may be completely physical. Yet I do believe the spiritual exists.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Not so - and a point I tried to make in another thread that got derailed by minutiae. Rather, I would say the 2 sides are at an impasse. Since physicalism cannot demonstrate all functions of the mind, they have not disproven its transcendence. They have merely postulated a physical cause.

On the flip side, that failure on the part of physicalism does not prove dualism. Further, I have yet to see someone who supports dualism make an airtight case for it. At best they expend a lot of words and can only conclude from it that it is possible, not that it is necessary. I think there are arguments for dualism that could sway some skeptics, but not all.

An impasse.

I've been working on an argument of my own, but it's not ready yet. The part of developing that argument that I find most interesting is that many physicalists appear to put up a Catch 22, and then refuse to acknowledge it as such. And yet, the irony is that physicalists themselves are also in a sort of Catch 22. To acknowledge their condition is a Catch 22 would be to virtually concede dualism.

An impasse.

I think Occam's Razor solves the dillemma: since we know the physical exists apart from the mental, but not the mental from the physical, Occam's Razor says it is illogical to postulate more entities than are necessary - in this case, some transcendent 'mind'.

The question isn't "Does the body emerge from the mind?", but rather, "Does the mind emerge from the body?", and this is important: the issue is the origin of the mind, not the body, so why should we go postulating some utterly untestable entity when we have a much more concrete explanation?

I like to point to drugs as evidence for physicalism - if the mind is not generated by the brain, why does the minds functionality so very susceptible to alterations by the brain? Indeed, why is it only the brain that alters the mind? Change the brain, change the mind.

It's not just a case of changing the 'filter' (the brain) through which this transcendent mind views the world, as the mind itself is altered. I've experienced drug use before, and I can tell you, it's not just that your brain ceases to properly interpret visual data for the mind - your mind, your conciousness, is altered, duuuude.

Hopefully that makes sense, and isn't deflatable in a short sentence I find the mind-body problem absolutely fascinating, in any case.

 

[Resha Caner]

I think Occam's Razor solves the dillemma: since we know the physical exists apart from the mental, but not the mental from the physical, Occam's Razor says it is illogical to postulate more entities than are necessary - in this case, some transcendent 'mind'.

Circular reasoning, my friend.

The question isn't "Does the body emerge from the mind?", but rather, "Does the mind emerge from the body?", and this is important: the issue is the origin of the mind, not the body, so why should we go postulating some utterly untestable entity when we have a much more concrete explanation?

As much as you dislike it, some things are untestable. I claim my mind has been changed by a spiritual cause. You can postulate physical reasons for the change, but you can never prove them because the event is past. That is true of all past events for which all we have is human testimony. It becomes a historical problem, not a scientific one.

Indeed, why is it only the brain that alters the mind? Change the brain, change the mind.

It is not that we know of no spiritual cause. It is that you reject my spiritual cause, and insist on a scientific answer to a historical problem. So, here comes the Catch 22. If I could produce scientific proof, you would then claim the cause was physical. If I cannot, you claim it doesn't exist. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Further herein lies the difference between my claim and some other mind-body claims. With respect to what constitutes the human brain, as I said earlier, I wouldn't be surprised if someday someone could produce a complete physical explanation of the properties of mind. I have some ideas myself on that (i.e. why someone might mistake a physical experience as a spiritual one), but they're rudimentary at this point.

Still, as I've said a thousand times, it's not an absence of evidence. It's just that non-believers won't accept the evidence. So, Ockham has nothing to do with it. If Graham Chapman happens to have a coconut, the most likely explanation is that he bought it from a grocer. However, this does not mean King Arthur (or European swallows) are nonexistent. Given the possible existence of Arthur and European swallows, it is possible (even if it is unlikely) that of the millions of Englishman who possess coconuts, that Arthur was the one instance where it was received from a swallow. Unlikely things do happen, and it is a mistake to insist that all things must be commonplace.

I've experienced drug use before, and I can tell you, it's not just that your brain ceases to properly interpret visual data for the mind - your mind, your conciousness, is altered, duuuude.

Sorry to hear that.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Circular reasoning, my friend.

How so? The mind-body problem only exists if both the body and the mind are acknowledge to exist. The problem is which causes the other.

As much as you dislike it, some things are untestable. I claim my mind has been changed by a spiritual cause. You can postulate physical reasons for the change, but you can never prove them because the event is past. That is true of all past events for which all we have is human testimony. It becomes a historical problem, not a scientific one.

Not at all. Some things are untestable, but neither the past nor the mind are such things.

The mind can be tested - we have performed experiments and found people can store about 7 items in their short-term memory. We have performed experiments and found damage to the brain (strokes, lobotomies, etc) can remove long-term memories, etc.

The past can also be tested - if it couldn't, there'd be no such thing as forensic science. Not everything in the past can be run through a lab, of course, but that doesn't mean history isn't subject to the scientific method.

I'd even go so far as to say the event you attribute to a spiritual cause could be tested - suppose you believed that various physical goings-on were the result of poltergeists, but we then went back 10 years later and discovered, using science, that it was all a hoax (walkways behind the walls where people tried to trick you, etc). Now, it's true that it's still possible for your experience to be spiritual and the hoaxers are a happy coincidence - but as far as science is concerned, there is good evidence that your experiences weren't, in fact, spiritual, and science can conclude this despite the fact that the events happened in the past.

Could you also define 'spiritual cause', please?

It is not that we know of no spiritual cause. It is that you reject my spiritual cause, and insist on a scientific answer to a historical problem. So, here comes the Catch 22. If I could produce scientific proof, you would then claim the cause was physical. If I cannot, you claim it doesn't exist. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I'd say that boils down to semantics: if you could produce scientific proof, then by definition it's physical.

The 'spiritual', as far as I can tell, is 'that which involves the spirit'.
The 'physical' is 'that which can be tested by science'.
What can be tested by science is everything that could, potentially, no matter how indirectly, interact with us. A particle which cannot interact with us, not even as indirectly as interfering with B which interferes with C which causes a spike on a graph, is outside the purview of science. Ghosts, despite ostensibly being 'spiritual' (they involve the spirit, no?), are also 'physical' - they're really here and can be tested using scientific equipment.

So, your experience could be both spiritual and physical - unless you have a different definition of the terms.

Further herein lies the difference between my claim and some other mind-body claims. With respect to what constitutes the human brain, as I said earlier, I wouldn't be surprised if someday someone could produce a complete physical explanation of the properties of mind. I have some ideas myself on that (i.e. why someone might mistake a physical experience as a spiritual one), but they're rudimentary at this point.

Still, as I've said a thousand times, it's not an absence of evidence. It's just that non-believers won't accept the evidence. So, Ockham has nothing to do with it. If Graham Chapman happens to have a coconut, the most likely explanation is that he bought it from a grocer. However, this does not mean King Arthur (or European swallows) are nonexistent. Given the possible existence of Arthur and European swallows, it is possible (even if it is unlikely) that of the millions of Englishman who possess coconuts, that Arthur was the one instance where it was received from a swallow. Unlikely things do happen, and it is a mistake to insist that all things must be commonplace.

... what?

 

[KCfromNC]

Why do you believe the mental is physical?

Because there's a pretty clear evidence of connection between changes in the physical state of the brain and corresponding changes in mental state.

OK, now you can answer.

To some extent I agree. In the preceding I argue that physical causes do give an explanation of our experiences, but only in the form of anterior or preliminary causes which furnish the final cause which is mental or non-physical.

I'm still trying to figure out what you mean by non-physical in this sense.

At a certain point physical reasons "bottom out" as it were, because they can no longer reach the necessary point where "like meets like" or where there is adequate similarity between the cause and the effect. As in, for instance, the joyful (flowers) and the thing enjoyed (the smelling sense) or the example I gave, the soporific cause (in the physical form of opium) and the end result or effect (in the form of the state of sleep or growing fatigue leading to sleep).

How specifically does invoking the non-physical add anything in these cases?

Actually, "brain science" as you so call it does not offer an explanation so far as an actual account of why opium or any intoxicant renders us unconscious.

What specifically are they missing, and how do you know?

 

[Resha Caner]

How so? The mind-body problem only exists if both the body and the mind are acknowledge to exist. The problem is which causes the other.

Yes, exactly. You start off assuming there is no transcendant mind, and then lay out an argument that concludes there is no mind-body problem. (Maybe not the exact phrasing you would like, but that's the essence of it) Duh. Of course that's going to be your conclusion.

Not at all. Some things are untestable, but neither the past nor the mind are such things.

I'd be curious to know what you think is untestable ... yet exists. Also, note that I qualified what types of past events are scientificially untestable. I never said science is useless to all of history, but there are instances when it does not apply. You seem to indirectly agree with that.

The mind can be tested ...

Parts of it. You've already admitted the mind still has some mysteries. If you've found a way to test those mysteries, I'm anxious to hear about it. Maybe (most likely) science will find ways to do more in the future. But it would be special pleading to speak of anything other than what we know now.

I'm surprised you don't see the interesting irony in all this. What is one possible approach a dualist could take? To show a contradiction in the physicalist approach. OK, let's do that:

1. Assume neuroscience can explain mind phenomena X.
2. Use neuroscience to explain how the brain makes that connection to mind.
3. Neuroscience fails to make the connection, therefore the assumption is false - X can't be explained by a physical brain.

That would be the technique ... except ... you have a back door. Well, the special pleading begins, neuroscience is incomplete. We'll know that in the future.

I actually accept that using current neuroscience for the argument does not prove a mind-body problem. It merely establishes that we must leave the door open. What I don't understand is why people don't get that - why they think the issue is closed - since we can explain a few things it follows with absolute certainty that we will be able to explain all things. It does? Hmm.

... there is good evidence that your experiences weren't ...

I never told you what my experience was, so I doubt you know if there is good evidence against it or not. There seems to be a confirmation bias at work here.

Could you also define 'spiritual cause', please?

In a way that would satisfy you? Probably not. It is something I roll around in my head, though. When I come up with something, I'll let you know. I suppose we could discuss some of the preliminaries I've been pondering, but I don't expect they'll be convincing yet because of what I'm trying to point out in this thread. For example, ...

I'd say that boils down to semantics: if you could produce scientific proof, then by definition it's physical.

Yeah, exactly. You won't accept any evidence except that which you consider to be evidence of the physical. We've been through this before. By your thinking, anything that interacts with us is physical. If that is your assumption, we're not going to get far.

So, your experience could be both spiritual and physical - unless you have a different definition of the terms.

IMO, not "could be," but "is," and hence the difficulty of the problem.

... what?

You're not familiar with Monty Python? A shame. The point is, I see this problem of "common cause" all the time - the idea that since unusual causes are unlikely, that everything must have a common cause.

It's a real problem for history - the "common man" argument. Since all Frenchman are dutiful to the king, Napoleon would never have usurped royal authority, therefore accusations that he did are false. Those activities must have come from outside France, from its enemies - the Brits.

It's a bad argument. Most Frenchmen may have been dutiful to the king, but Napoleon wasn't. He was an uncommon man.

That's just a made-up example, but I see it happen from time to time. It appears you might be trying to apply the same argument to science - that all causes must be common.

 

[DisingenuousChristian]

Because there's a pretty clear evidence of connection between changes in the physical state of the brain and corresponding changes in mental state.

Of course there is, and I'm not denying that. What I say, rather, is that something mental (an emotion say) is in a medium all its own rather than an electrical impulse. They are correlated, no doubt. A physical cause has the end result of a mental effect. But the nature of the effect is in a closed system, the same way if you pierce the stillness of a pond the wave remains on the pond and doesn't get wrapped up with any other element. This might be 'epiphenomenalism' but I'm not sure if that totally articulates my position.

I'm still trying to figure out what you mean by non-physical in this sense.

Here is a straightforward example. Let's say you are hungry and start hallucinating a doughnut. You start eating, smelling, tasting the doughnut. For a long, long time. You even full after you've brushed off the last several crumbs. Was the doughnut physical? Of course not. It only appeared physical. Did the doughnut even exist then? Well, yes. It did or otherwise you would not even have had the experience of 'doughnut.' Was the existing doughnut therefore physical or a non-physical mental thought? Very logically, it was the latter.

How specifically does invoking the non-physical add anything in these cases?

My demonstrating that the mental is non-physical demonstrates that a purely physical cause is inadequate to account for the phenomenon of consciousness and mind!

What specifically are they missing, and how do you know?

I invoke the non-physical, because that's exactly what is missing. I know because we do have non-physical thoughts (like the doughnut example).

 

[Tinker Grey]

The hallucinated doughnut was a set of brain states which so far as I know is physical.

 

[Tinker Grey]

That is to say, the hallucinated donut did not impinge on the brain to make the brain perceive the donut. Rather, a brain malfunction (purely physical) caused strange behavior patterns. That is, the imagination of the donut is physical similar to imagining a unicorn.