The Extent of Cartesian Dualism

[TeddyKGB]

Reading Dennett's Consciousness Explained has got my mind-brain juices flowing.

It is a common thing to affirm that the apparent non-physicality of thoughts entails a non-physical mind. But is that all that can be said about the mind?

Dennett, obviously, goes to great lengths to describe a model that can physically account for thought. But he also explains where the dualist concept fails - namely, that the 'internal observer' is inconsistent with certain well-documented failures or limitations of perception.

What does the dualist have in response besides, "something non-physical occurs here"?

 

[Shane Roach]

?

Might as well just cut and paste this into the other thread and maybe elaborate some more? There's not much here... I have no idea what this post really is even about.

 

[TeddyKGB]

I was looking for a more comprehensive concept of dualism, something more substantial than, "something immaterial happens."

My hope of finding such, however, is fading.

 

[Shane Roach]

I was looking for a more comprehensive concept of dualism, something more substantial than, "something immaterial happens."

My hope of finding such, however, is fading.

I don't think you'll find one either. The very idea that you can simply define away the problem is what defeats your purpose here, not that there is some better explanation. People reject ideas like Mr. Dennett's because they are really just long, involved rationalizations for denything what is seen and heard and felt and tasted and sensed. That sort of "explanation" of things requires little in the way of refutation.

Simply because someone offers some sort of explanation that no one rebuts does not mean they are right. You of all people, who seem to have a deeper love of logic than I ever intend to, ought to know that that is a huge falacy of logic to assert that since no one has disproven an idea it must be true.

It is perfectly acceptable to me to simply remain open minded on the subject, and live life in the most sensible way I can, which tends to include ideas about thoughts and will being immaterial things.

I don't even think it is necessary to posit some sort of inner observer. The brain itself can BE the observer, but it is somehow functioning in a way to create an insubstantial thing, which turns out to be every bit as inexplicable to me as the idea that we have eternal souls in there is to you.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Are you trying to get responses from strict dualists only, or from anyone who thinks that there must be an immaterial portion of the person. I'm not a strict dualist by any means, as I think that the person as a whole and even what we call the "mind" depends on the body (as well as the soul.) So I'm not sure if you'd want to hear my responses. I certainly don't think of the soul as an "internal observer."

 

[TeddyKGB]

I don't think you'll find one either. The very idea that you can simply define away the problem is what defeats your purpose here, not that there is some better explanation.

So my asking for a better dualist model is "defin[ing] away" the problem?

People reject ideas like Mr. Dennett's because they are really just long, involved rationalizations for denything what is seen and heard and felt and tasted and sensed. That sort of "explanation" of things requires little in the way of refutation.

People reject ideas like Dennett's because they are not distillable into spiritual sound bites that are consistent with a soul that gets to live forever.

Simply because someone offers some sort of explanation that no one rebuts does not mean they are right. You of all people, who seem to have a deeper love of logic than I ever intend to, ought to know that that is a huge falacy of logic to assert that since no one has disproven an idea it must be true.

I don't think I have ever suggested that. What Dennett's model provides is a plausible naturalistic alternative to the "must be something immaterial" faction.

It is perfectly acceptable to me to simply remain open minded on the subject, and live life in the most sensible way I can, which tends to include ideas about thoughts and will being immaterial things.

Agreed. Although I find sensibility in challenging my long- and deeply-held notions, along with whatever else happens to be in my comfort zone.

I don't even think it is necessary to posit some sort of inner observer. The brain itself can BE the observer, but it is somehow functioning in a way to create an insubstantial thing, which turns out to be every bit as inexplicable to me as the idea that we have eternal souls in there is to you.

You had me until "somehow functioning." I think if consciousness needs an immaterial thing, posit an immaterial thing. But if naturalistic models explain things in terms we already understand (although the combination might be unfamiliar), immateriality ends up looking like post hoc rationalization to hold on to emotionally satisfying spiritual components.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Are you trying to get responses from strict dualists only, or from anyone who thinks that there must be an immaterial portion of the person. I'm not a strict dualist by any means, as I think that the person as a whole and even what we call the "mind" depends on the body (as well as the soul.) So I'm not sure if you'd want to hear my responses. I certainly don't think of the soul as an "internal observer."

I feel confident you can add to the discussion either way.

 

[MoonlessNight]

I feel confident you can add to the discussion either way.

Okay then. I'm going to be leaving soon and won't be able to respond until after the weekend, and I don't really want to give a reply without thinking it out first. But I will try to put my thoughts together and give a response on Sunday or Monday.

 

[Shane Roach]

So my asking for a better dualist model is "defin[ing] away" the problem?

Well, yeah, if you are using it as a way to skirt the question of how ideas, consciousness, perception and so forth are, or at least appear to be completely insubstantial, yes. What is it that you want someone to be able to tell you about something that is invisible and weightless and by definition not possible to experiement with in physical terms but yet still is percieved other than, "I percieve that I percieve."

People reject ideas like Dennett's because they are not distillable into spiritual sound bites that are consistent with a soul that gets to live forever.

I kind of doubt that, as I know in my experience the belief in the insubstantiality of the conscious self preceded my belief in a specifically Christian faith by many years. It does however hold a lot of weight in my opinion as to whether there is a spiritual realm to begin with. I have to reiterate, I don't call it irrefutable proof, but it seems more convincign to me than the naturalistic models. Aside from all that, it also happens to be yet another argument from judgements about other people's motives and not much of a conceptual thing in itself, but that is getting to be par for the coarse here!

I don't think I have ever suggested that. What Dennett's model provides is a plausible naturalistic alternative to the "must be something immaterial" faction.

Agreed. Although I find sensibility in challenging my long- and deeply-held notions, along with whatever else happens to be in my comfort zone.

You keep putting quotes around "must be something immaterial" and suggesting that you are the only one that operates out of your comfort zone. These, also, are really nothing more than hollow rhetoric. I think it must be something material because ideas, emotions, will or the illusion of it, and so on and on, all happen to be demonstrably immaterial.

You had me until "somehow functioning." I think if consciousness needs an immaterial thing, posit an immaterial thing. But if naturalistic models explain things in terms we already understand (although the combination might be unfamiliar), immateriality ends up looking like post hoc rationalization to hold on to emotionally satisfying spiritual components.

Because, I repeat, ideas, emotions, will or the illusion of it, and so on, are all demonstrably immaterial things.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Well, yeah, if you are using it as a way to skirt the question of how ideas, consciousness, perception and so forth are, or at least appear to be completely insubstantial, yes. What is it that you want someone to be able to tell you about something that is invisible and weightless and by definition not possible to experiement with in physical terms but yet still is percieved other than, "I percieve that I percieve."

We should start by using different terminology. Calling a thought a "thing" is instantly prejudicial; it provokes us to consider thoughts as entities that can be disconnected from the physical processes of the brain and, therefore, in need of a unique form of existence.

I kind of doubt that, as I know in my experience the belief in the insubstantiality of the conscious self preceded my belief in a specifically Christian faith by many years. It does however hold a lot of weight in my opinion as to whether there is a spiritual realm to begin with. I have to reiterate, I don't call it irrefutable proof, but it seems more convincign to me than the naturalistic models.

Of course it does. You have a prejudice towards extra-natural events; it is an understandable counterpart to a worldview that already presupposes extra-naturality.

Aside from all that, it also happens to be yet another argument from judgements about other people's motives and not much of a conceptual thing in itself, but that is getting to be par for the coarse here!

That is true, but then, you did do it first.

You keep putting quotes around "must be something immaterial" and suggesting that you are the only one that operates out of your comfort zone. These, also, are really nothing more than hollow rhetoric.

You may very well operate outside your comfort zone with abandon; you just did not mention it before, so I did.

As for the quotes, that is just a syntactical thing so that I can use the phrase without obliterating my sentence structure.

I think it must be something material because ideas, emotions, will or the illusion of it, and so on and on, all happen to be demonstrably immaterial.

Yes, but so are computer programs and football plays and musical compositions. We give labels to things that are useful, recognizable patterns of matter; that does not mean they have unique existence apart from their components.

Because, I repeat, ideas, emotions, will or the illusion of it, and so on, are all demonstrably immaterial things.

See what I mean about calling them "things"?

 

[David Gould]

I do not see how thoughts are demonstrable immaterial. We know that two things exist: material things and the things that material things do. Now, there may be immaterial things, too.

However, if a thought is a process of the brain, it falls into the latter category. I cannot see how being in that category makes thoughts immaterial.

However, if they are demonstrable so, demostrate it.

 

[Madcoil]

Squid.

 

[FreezBee]

Reading Dennett's Consciousness Explained has got my mind-brain juices flowing.

It is a common thing to affirm that the apparent non-physicality of thoughts entails a non-physical mind. But is that all that can be said about the mind?

Dennett, obviously, goes to great lengths to describe a model that can physically account for thought. But he also explains where the dualist concept fails - namely, that the 'internal observer' is inconsistent with certain well-documented failures or limitations of perception.

What does the dualist have in response besides, "something non-physical occurs here"?

Not having read Dennett's Consciousness Explained may be reason why I don't quite see, what you're after.

Computers don't think - so they have no consciousness.

Humans think - so it's assumed - so they have a consciousness, a self-awareness.

As I recall Cartesian philosophy from my highschool days, he made a distinction between things with extension, that is physical things, and things without extension like thoughts - say I think about USA, do my thoughts cover as much ground as USA?

If I eat pork, am I a swine? Of couse thoughts have a physical substratum, but they are not identical to that substratum. I cannot say that Dennett is a reductionist, since I have not read his book, but I can say that reductionism has some serious explanations to do. Talking 'bout books: the thoughts in that book, are they identical to the ink in that book? If so, would an online version be thoughtless? If identical to the letters instead, I would say that not everything should be taken literal - maybe the thoughts of Dennett, but not necessarily the thoughts of everybody else. Explain humor, ironi, sarcasm. and so on.


cheers

- FreezBee

 

[Shane Roach]

We should start by using different terminology. Calling a thought a "thing" is instantly prejudicial; it provokes us to consider thoughts as entities that can be disconnected from the physical processes of the brain and, therefore, in need of a unique form of existence.

"Running" is a gerund. It is a way of making a verb into a noun grammatically, among I suppose possibly other things. Point is, to discuss running as a thing in itself is not the same as separating it from the things we associate with it. No one speaks of running and then forgets they need legs for it.

This struggle to somehow find a problem with the words being used is exactly what I mean by attempting to define away the problem.

Of course it does. You have a prejudice towards extra-natural events; it is an understandable counterpart to a worldview that already presupposes extra-naturality.

Or do you have a prejudice against extra-natural events? It seems to me you have a prejudice against seeing anything in terms other than the utterly mechanistic, and it drives your search to try to make sense of the world in those terms. I don't see why either of our motives have to play any part in this discussion though.

Yes, but so are computer programs and football plays and musical compositions. We give labels to things that are useful, recognizable patterns of matter; that does not mean they have unique existence apart from their components.

See what I mean about calling them "things"?

Computer programs, football plays and musical compositions all have in common that they exist entirely in the realm of thought. It is only when the program is set to physical use through design that it ceases to be so. Likewise the football play, or the music.

 

[Shane Roach]

I do not see how thoughts are demonstrable immaterial. We know that two things exist: material things and the things that material things do. Now, there may be immaterial things, too.

However, if a thought is a process of the brain, it falls into the latter category. I cannot see how being in that category makes thoughts immaterial.

However, if they are demonstrable so, demostrate it.

Obviously, my inability to demonstrate absolutely the error of your reasoning does not mean I am wrong and you are right. You must also at some point take up the burden of proving that thoughts, which are percieved as weightless, having no substance, existing in the mind but yet not being strictly defined as the set of organic processes therein, are indeed entirely subsumed in the physical.

You must do this in the face of the fact that they can not be held, measured, seen, or in any other way percieved.

Tall order, I would think, and small wonder the effort is to avoid the task and define the question away.

 

[TeddyKGB]

"Running" is a gerund. It is a way of making a verb into a noun grammatically, among I suppose possibly other things. Point is, to discuss running as a thing in itself is not the same as separating it from the things we associate with it. No one speaks of running and then forgets they need legs for it.

This struggle to somehow find a problem with the words being used is exactly what I mean by attempting to define away the problem.

All right, call it a thing if you want. Just do not jump from there to assuming that calling something a thing means it has independent existence that needs to be explained.

Or do you have a prejudice against extra-natural events? It seems to me you have a prejudice against seeing anything in terms other than the utterly mechanistic, and it drives your search to try to make sense of the world in those terms. I don't see why either of our motives have to play any part in this discussion though.

I do not know what an "extra-natural event" is. Or better yet, I do not know what one isn't. I can come up with all kinds of crazy scenarios that violate naturalistic cause-and-effect, any of which I can arbitrarily call "non-natural." How is that supposed to help me?

Computer programs, football plays and musical compositions all have in common that they exist entirely in the realm of thought. It is only when the program is set to physical use through design that it ceases to be so. Likewise the football play, or the music.

I don't think I agree. "I right dive option strong" is a set of movement instructions for 11 people; that we call the 11 parts a "play" is merely shorthand.

 

[David Gould]

Obviously, my inability to demonstrate absolutely the error of your reasoning does not mean I am wrong and you are right. You must also at some point take up the burden of proving that thoughts, which are percieved as weightless, having no substance, existing in the mind but yet not being strictly defined as the set of organic processes therein, are indeed entirely subsumed in the physical.

In what sense are thoughts perceived as weightless, having no substance, existing in the mind bu yet not beign strictly defined as the set of organic processes therein? You may perceive them that way; I don't. As far as I am concerned, thoughts are processes of the brain. These processes are chemical or electrical in nature, or a combination thereof.

You must do this in the face of the fact that they can not be held, measured, seen, or in any other way percieved.

They can be perceived. Brain scans perceive them. The fact that brain scans perceive them differently to the way we do does not change the fact that brain scans perceive them.

Tall order, I would think, and small wonder the effort is to avoid the task and define the question away.

You were the one who claimed it was demonstrable. I was calling you on that claim.

 

[Shane Roach]

All right, call it a thing if you want. Just do not jump from there to assuming that calling something a thing means it has independent existence that needs to be explained.

I didn't jump to the conclusion, I simply have never in my life heard of any explanation for the observed phenomenon of thoughts and feelings and ideas that unifies them wholly with the potasium/sodium chemical-electric processes of the brain.

I do not know what an "extra-natural event" is. Or better yet, I do not know what one isn't. I can come up with all kinds of crazy scenarios that violate naturalistic cause-and-effect, any of which I can arbitrarily call "non-natural." How is that supposed to help me?

This is an especially confusing use of the quotation marks around a phrase you seem to be having trouble putting into a sentence grammatically, since you coinded the term and applied it to my motives.

My point is merely that your motives nor my motives have anything to do with the truth or falsehood of either of our beliefs.

I don't think I agree. "I right dive option strong" is a set of movement instructions for 11 people; that we call the 11 parts a "play" is merely shorthand.

I have no idea what you are asserting or denying with this. The play, in its pre-verbalized form, is an idea. The fact that you can make shorthand for it should not really confuse that?

 

[Shane Roach]

In what sense are thoughts perceived as weightless, having no substance, existing in the mind bu yet not beign strictly defined as the set of organic processes therein? You may perceive them that way; I don't. As far as I am concerned, thoughts are processes of the brain. These processes are chemical or electrical in nature, or a combination thereof.

In the sense that the thought is not visible, nor can it be weighed, nor can one take hold of it with anything, nor be associated directly with the processes seen in the brain.

You believe thoughts are the very processes of the brain. Fine. That would be great if you actually described or explained it. Simply declaring that they are one and the same isn't helping me understand the concept much.

They can be perceived. Brain scans perceive them. The fact that brain scans perceive them differently to the way we do does not change the fact that brain scans perceive them.

Brain scans do not percieve thoughts. The detect activity in the brain. It is not until you communicate with the person involved that you can even so much as go about associating what sorts of things going on in the brain are involved with what sorts of perceptions or ideas.

You were the one who claimed it was demonstrable. I was calling you on that claim.

If I have never in my life seen an idea, and you can't show me one, and no one else can show me one, then I have to say that as far as I can tell that is proof of a rather scientific nature. If I have never in my life weighed or touched or audibly heard an idea, and yet have percieved ideas over and over in that immaterial sense in which I percieve all things that I percieve at all, explain to me where I am going wrong in extending that to the general case, at least as a working hypothesis? What sort of things do you present to counter the fact that no one in history has ever reached out and taken hold of an idea or perception?

 

[David Gould]

In the sense that the thought is not visible, nor can it be weighed, nor can one take hold of it with anything, nor be associated directly with the processes seen in the brain.

1.) Many things which exist are 'not visible' - the very air we breathe, for example. As such, I hardly see how that is relevent.

2.) Chemical/electrical processes do not have weight. The chemicals/electrons participating in them, however, do. So no problem there, either.

3.) Can you 'take hold' of the process of a light turning on? You can take hold of the consituent parts of the process, but the process itself is not something that lends itself to that.

4.) They can be associated directly with the processes seen in the brain. I do not have the book with me, but you should read, 'The Illusion of Conscious Will' by Daniel Wegner. I will try to remember to bring it in tomorrow to quote some interesting experiments that are being done on this.

There is this, for a start:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4715327.stm

You believe thoughts are the very processes of the brain. Fine. That would be great if you actually described or explained it. Simply declaring that they are one and the same isn't helping me understand the concept much.

Simply declaring that thoughts are non-physical doesn't help me understand the concept much, either ...

Brain scans do not percieve thoughts. The detect activity in the brain. It is not until you communicate with the person involved that you can even so much as go about associating what sorts of things going on in the brain are involved with what sorts of perceptions or ideas.

What is involved there is translation. In other words, when a certain brain function occurs, I detect it as a red car. The scanner needs that translated, as it does not have the same set up as I do. In other words, we are both looking at brain function. I am seeing a red car and it is seeing a set of squiggles. That set of squiggles is a red car thought.

If I have never in my life seen an idea, and you can't show me one, and no one else can show me one, then I have to say that as far as I can tell that is proof of a rather scientific nature.

I can say the exact same thing about God - thus, I have scientifically disproven God. And atoms. Oh, and just about anything at all smaller than human vision can detect.

Besides, this completely misses the point: thoughts are processes. Do we see processes? Or do we instead see things doing things and infer process from that?

If I have never in my life weighed or touched or audibly heard an idea, and yet have percieved ideas over and over in that immaterial sense in which I percieve all things that I percieve at all

It is great how you circularly use the idea that it is immaterial to prove that it is immaterial ...

explain to me where I am going wrong in extending that to the general case, at least as a working hypothesis? What sort of things do you present to counter the fact that no one in history has ever reached out and taken hold of an idea or perception?

Because they are not the kinds of things that you can reach out and take hold of. This is because they are processes, not things. Until you accept this point - at least for hypothetical purposes - I will not really be able to go much further. So how about you do that now?