How do Naturalists/Materialists account for the immateriality of morals, laws of logic or information?

[stevevw]

Seems incompatible given that they have no physical properties

All we have is our conscious experience of morality and conscious experience cannot be accounted for by logic and materialism. Through our experience of the world and living together we have articulated moral laws through embodying them. This cannot be explained by any naturalistic process.

 

[Ken-1122]

All we have is our conscious experience of morality and conscious experience cannot be accounted for by logic and materialism.

Why not?

Through our experience of the world and living together we have articulated moral laws through embodying them. This cannot be explained by any naturalistic process.

Why not?

 

[stevevw]

Why not?

Why not?

Because you can't measure experience in a lab as you can only know experience be having it and asking the subject what it is like to have those experience. How can you measure scientifically of say the experience of beauty of a sunset or the joy of music.

 

[Ken-1122]

Because you can't measure experience in a lab as you can only know experience be having it and asking the subject what it is like to have those experience. How can you measure scientifically of say the experience of beauty of a sunset or the joy of music.

Logic does not require scientific measurements of those things you mentioned.
Isn't it natural for humans to appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or the joy of music?

 

[stevevw]

Logic does not require scientific measurements of those things you mentioned.

OK you can't apply logic to something like beauty or pain as its subjective. What one person thinks is beautiful another won't.

Isn't it natural for humans to appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or the joy of music?

Its not really naturalistic because it goes against the idea that naturalistic processes can produce such a thing as conscious experience which is phenomenal and immaterial in nature. Whereas naturalistic processes are material and consciousness itself isn't.

 

[Ken-1122]

Its not really naturalistic because it goes against the idea that naturalistic processes can produce such a thing as conscious experience which is phenomenal and immaterial in nature.

How do you know conscious experiences cannot be processed through natural processes?

 

[stevevw]

How do you know conscious experiences cannot be processed through natural processes?

Because you can't find the joy of music in natural processes like the neurons of the brain or physics. These are mindless matter whereas consciousness is of mind and alive to the subject and not the object. Its a different sort of thing altogether by category and nature. One is about quantities like matter and the other is about subjective qualities like joy. It would be like equating joy or pain coming out from a block of cheese. Even the pioneers of science said that qualitative experiences like consciousness do not belong in the realm of scientific study as they are a different sort of phenomena.

So it is with morality. It is a qualitative phenomena that we experience and then we embody it into our lives. The only way we can really understand this is to ask the subject directly and observe how the subject/s have integrated this into their lives throughout history through their experiences and the stories they have told about their experiences.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Because you can't find the joy of music in natural processes like the neurons of the brain or physics.

Why not? "Joy" is an emotion, like other emotions, that is a cocktail of neurochemicals. Why can't music trigger that release?

 

[Bradskii]

Because you can't find the joy of music in natural processes like the neurons of the brain or physics.

Yes, you actually can. If you look at something that gives you pleasure then certain chemicals are released that gives you that sensation. And that sensation can be triggered by giving you a hit of a chemical without experiencing any sensory input. If you didn't get that shot (perhaps dopamine) then you wouldn't feel any pleasure.

Edit: as I notice that HB just explained.

 

[stevevw]

Why not? "Joy" is an emotion, like other emotions, that is a cocktail of neurochemicals. Why can't music trigger that release?

The experience of joy is subjective and cannot be determined by objective science. Nowhere in a neuron do we find the experience of joy. You are merely associating brain activity with experiences but that doesn't explain how a mindless process can create experience which is a concept of the Mind.

 

[stevevw]

Yes, you actually can. If you look at something that gives you pleasure then certain chemicals are released that gives you that sensation. And that sensation can be triggered by giving you a hit of a chemical without experiencing any sensory input. If you didn't get that shot (perhaps dopamine) then you wouldn't feel any pleasure.

Edit: as I notice that HB just explained.

And as I explained this doesn't account for the conscious experience of joy itself. The experience of something like awe when seeing a sunset is not a chemical reaction. Its a subjective experience one has. This is known as the Hard problem of consciousness. The problem of understanding what it is about the brain which enables it to generate something as remarkable and unique as subjective phenomenal experience from something that is mindless and unconscious matter like brain tissue and wiring that doesn't contain those experiences.

In identifying the Neural Correlates of Consciousness with the ultimate basis of consciousness, this conventional approach is beset by two cardinal deficiencies. First, it severely restricts the spectrum of the possible causal mechanisms underlying consciousness, a restriction questionable on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Second, it remains orthogonal to the concerns driving the hard problem, unable to address these concerns head-on.

Another cause for skepticism regarding the view that the NCC provide the ultimate basis of phenomenal experience is the familiar hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). For given any set of neural configurations proposed as a proper physical underpinning for consciousness, there remains the question why such configurations should culminate in subjective experience. In the words of some notable early observers, the chasm between the physical and the phenomenal (as these are canonically understood by science, philosophy, and commonsense) appears to be “intellectually impassable” (Tyndall, 1879, 18), with the result being that the hypothesis that experience comes about through the irritation of nervous tissue “is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp” (Huxley, 1866, 193).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00371/full

 

[Hans Blaster]

The experience of joy is subjective and cannot be determined by objective science. Nowhere in a neuron do we find the experience of joy. You are merely associating brain activity with experiences but that doesn't explain how a mindless process can create experience which is a concept of the Mind.

Nowhere in the water molecule can we find the property of wetness. Same thing. It's time for you to learn about emergent properties. Come back when you have.

 

[Ken-1122]

Because you can't find the joy of music in natural processes like the neurons of the brain or physics.

(Ken)
You find joy in music through the natural process of hearing.

So it is with morality. It is a qualitative phenomena that we experience and then we embody it into our lives.

(Ken)
Morality is often through the natural process of empathy for those you care about.

 

[Bradskii]

And as I explained this doesn't account for the conscious experience of joy itself. The experience of something like awe when seeing a sunset is not a chemical reaction. Its a subjective experience one has.

It's both. It's definitely subjective. But it's definitely a combination of electrical and chemical reactions. It happens in the brain and the we know how the brain works. The pleasure one gets from a sunset doesn't happen anywhere else. And the pleasure we might experience isn't made less by knowing how it occurs.

This is Feynman along the same line of thinking:

'I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color.

It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.'

 

[stevevw]

Nowhere in the water molecule can we find the property of wetness. Same thing. It's time for you to learn about emergent properties. Come back when you have.

Congratulations you've just solved the hard problem of consciousness. Explaining consciousness as emergent is a logical fallacy. It just equates consciousness to neuron correlates. Same logic as someone who equates the emergence of life from God or a Genie from a bottle. Your also assuming that the material explanations are all there is so therefore consciousness must be emergent.

The problem it that emergence itself is a perceptual phenomenon and therefore relies on circular reasoning if presumed to be used to explain the origin of perception. If we posit that physics exists in the absence of any form of awareness or sensation, then by definition it could not 'seem' like anything other than exactly what it was, regardless of any accumulation of complexity.


WHY THE MIND CANNOT JUST EMERGE FROM THE BRAIN

There are emergent properties that are accepted. A classic example is the wetness of water. It’s emergent in the sense that if one studies water rigorously from the standpoint of physics, there’s nothing about it that is particularly wet.

You can study the quantum mechanical attributes of oxygen and hydrogen and all the chemistry and physics of water and not come out of that with anything that suggests that it’s wet. But when you put real water in front of you and dip your finger in it, it’s kind of wet. So people say that wetness is an emergent property of water.

The thing is, with the philosophy of mind, if the mind is an emergent property of the brain, it is ontologically completely different. That is, there are no properties of the mind that have any overlap with the properties of brain. Thought and matter are not similar in any way. Matter has extension in space and mass; thoughts have no extension in space and no mass. Thoughts have emotional states; matter doesn’t have emotional states, just matter. So it’s not clear that you can get an emergent property when there is no connection whatsoever between that property and the thing it supposedly emerges from.

The other problem with emergence is even more fundamental: When you think about the wetness of water as an emergent property of water, you are really talking about a psychological state. That is, you are saying, psychologically you didn’t expect water to feel wet but by golly, it does. So that’s emergent. But you can’t explain the psychological state [of perceiving wetness] itself as emergent.
Why the Mind Cannot Just Emerge from the Brain

 

[stevevw]

It's both. It's definitely subjective. But it's definitely a combination of electrical and chemical reactions. It happens in the brain and the we know how the brain works. The pleasure one gets from a sunset doesn't happen anywhere else. And the pleasure we might experience isn't made less by knowing how it occurs.

But your assuming that everything is material so therefore consciousness must have a material basis. IF consciousness is beyond the brain then we would expect a physical facilitator that receives and transmits consciousness. Therefore there is a physical aspect but it has not been shown that the physical brain creates consciousness. This is the Hard problem of consciousness.

There is no reason why mindless matter in the form of a zombie like human could function exactly like a human but without consciousness. I find strange that materialist can invoke something magical and immaterial in nature like subjective consciousness that cannot be reduced to the material.

This is Feynman along the same line of thinking:

'I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color.

It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.'

Feynman is making any argument for consciousness being material in nature he is making an argument for something like Panpsychism where everything has some degree of consciousness. The problem is in describing the beauty of a flower all the way down to its sub atomic particles requires consciousness in the first place.

 

[Bradskii]

But your assuming that everything is material so therefore consciousness must have a material basis. IF consciousness is beyond the brain then we would expect a physical facilitator that receives and transmits consciousness.

I love evidence. I base my beliefs on the best evidence I can find. If later evidence turns up that counters my beliefs, then...I change my beliefs. This seems an eminently sensible way to approach problems.

There is evidence that the brain is the centre of what we consider to be ourselves. And that there is zero evidence that there is something else that does that. So...I go with what we know, and I discount, or treat with extreme scepticism, that which is assumed without evidence.

 

[Hans Blaster]

But your assuming that everything is material so therefore consciousness must have a material basis.

And you clearly didn't do your lessons...

IF consciousness is beyond the brain then we would expect a physical facilitator that receives and transmits consciousness. Therefore there is a physical aspect but it has not been shown that the physical brain creates consciousness. This is the Hard problem of consciousness.

What on earth is a "physical facilitator"?

 

[stevevw]

And you clearly didn't do your lessons...

Not sure there is a lesson to learn. It is well know that the scientific method assumes reality is fundamentally material.

What on earth is a "physical facilitator"?

Its the idea that asserts the brain is a filter for consciousness beyond brain. Just like a radio is a filter for radio waves. So the brain acts like the radio box or TV where the physical structure (box, transistors and wiring) receives consciousness beyond the physical apparatus or facilitator rather than produce consciousness.

 

[stevevw]

I love evidence. I base my beliefs on the best evidence I can find. If later evidence turns up that counters my beliefs, then...I change my beliefs. This seems an eminently sensible way to approach problems.

Then why do you use such feeble evidence such as Feynman musings and the correlates of consciousness which does do explain the hard problem of consciousness (how those correlates can give rise to something that it feels like. Neurons or any mindless matter doesn't feel like anything. There's a lot of assumptions in what you are saying. This can be resolved with a simple question. Do you think that reality only consists of material matter.

There is evidence that the brain is the centre of what we consider to be ourselves.

If you mean the neural correlates of consciousness that isn't evidence anymore than the transistors in radios produces radio waves. They are categorically different.

And that there is zero evidence that there is something else that does that. So...I go with what we know, and I discount, or treat with extreme scepticism, that which is assumed without evidence.

I guess it depends on what evidence you choose. There is also support for consciousness beyond the material world in QM interpretations that propose the consciousness is non-local and influences reality. Wigner and Wheelers experiments for example, Wigner von Neumann theorem and there is also a wide range of evidence from various theories that extend from this. As well as from Ai research, biology and psychology. So I am not sure its so clear cut as you think.