*quality!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

too bad human experience is dualistic.

I've always loved his videos. It's good to see that he's still making them.

>> ^bluecliff:
too bad human experience is dualistic.


Go on..

I want to upvote this, because it's a topic I'm very interested in and it's a well-presented argument, but I disagree with some of his conclusions.

He challenges dualists for incorrectly equating soul=consciousness=mind, saying that terminology is very important, but at ~7:30 he equates personality with consciousness, which I don't think is a given. This is possibly because he's challenging a particular subset of dualism.

Another terminology problem is that the term "awareness" is never mentioned, presumably equated with consciousness, another non-given.

One argument that he deconstructs is the "cells are replaced so we're not even the same body" argument. Surprisingly, he doesn't mention that brain cells have traditionally been held NOT to do so, though this may have been an abandoned argument in light of recent studies that suggest some regrowth\repair may be possible. (In case my wording was confusing, this is an argument that would support his position.)

The problem with his argument is that consciousness (or at least awareness) IS non-physical, at least given our existing model. Our model of the physical universe does not account for awareness.
It DOES account for behavior. The body (including the brain) is a machine, albeit an organic one, and machines behave physically. Awareness, though, is a hole in the model. That doesn't prove dualism, but it allows for it until we're able to plug that hole.

My personal philosophy is more of a stopgap - acknowledged to possibly be incomplete or incorrect, but consistent with what's "known".
I have no problem accepting the physical model of the universe - evolution, etc. And I have no problem accepting that my body would function just fine without "me", right down to a "personality". The sensory organs feed electrical impulses up through the thalamus into the sensory cortexes, out into the prefrontal cortex and back to the motor cortex. (Oversimplified - it's all intertwined.) All the while making the synapses necessary for associations to be imprinted. I can believe that these "behaviors" were selected through evolution, right down to the development of language and abstract "thought".
Structures that tend to reproduce themselves will tend to reproduce themselves. Structures that are more effective at reproducing themselves will do so more effectively.
But it's just a structure. An amalgamation of individual cells each doing exactly what it's expected to do as an individual cell. There's no point in the process at which awareness is accounted for.

What I believe does take some elements from the Christian religion of my upbringing, which should come as no surprise. Christians are told that we leave our bodies, the vessels, behind when we leave this earth and proceed "into Heaven" to be "one with God." I believe that means everything about this earth is left behind. Not only the physical body and the physical brain, but everything contained in it, which constitutes our accumulated earthly experience - memories, personality. Why? Specifically for those reasons stated above: personality is a functional concept, alterable by physical and chemical changes. The question remains - if memory and personality are lost, what remains? What, indeed.
That said, I do believe there is something separate from the physical existence of the body (and brain) that accounts for awareness. I believe it to be, I guess I'll say an "element" of awareness. It's been suggested that the areas of the brain responsible for "consciousness" are sensory organs as much as the eyes or ears - because of their unique structure able to detect this outside influence.

The problem there, obviously, is that implies a physical influence by what's already been defined as a non-physical object.

I've separated that comment out into its own paragraph because if you really want to discredit dualism, that's all you need to say.
The counter-arguments tend to deal with current physical unknowns, shenanigans in the realm of quantum physics. That "consciousness" or "awareness" exerts its influence on the electrical behavior of the cells in the prefrontal cortex through quantum "nudges". That argument utilizes another hole in the existing deterministic physical model of the universe.

It's also been suggested that consciousness is all post-hoc. That everything we experience has already happened, even if it's fractions of the second later. That we "feel" like we've made decisions but really we're just experiencing the machinations of the brain's processes after the fact. This works pretty well for dualism, because then you no longer have to account for influence on the process. (However, it blows a hole through the theories of most dualists, who are arguing for a soul and the free will that accompanies it.)
Essentially, in this model of dualism, awareness simply detects what the brain is doing, possibly in a specific area of the brain (most likely the prefrontal cortex) - piecing it together into a coherent narrative simply for the purposes of experiencing it. When the brain is damaged, or its behavior altered, awareness is still simply detecting what the brain is doing. This accounts for alterations in personality due to disease, etc. It is however, purely academic, because if it has no influence, then who cares? Only the curious.
There's an island in the middle of the East river - North Brother Island. I've never been there, and I'll never go there. Few people ever will. It has no influence on me, but I'm curious about it because I find it fascinating. It's so far removed from my typical experience - and that's what makes it compelling.

Ok, I've typed too much already and I realize I never really specified what my viewpoint was.
My viewpoint is probably best described as agnostic - I know there are aspects of this discussion that are currently unknowable, so I ascribe to several options that seem to be equally believable.
I guess it's the "prefrontal cortex as awareness-sensory organ" with or without "quantum influence on output by awareness", combined with "awareness is distinct from personality and memory", which allows for some interesting (if not necessarily deep) philosophical musings on what happens to that elemental awareness once it's separated from the earthly body.

I never knew Gillian Anderson to be a dualist.

>> ^ReverendTed:
"awareness is distinct from personality and memory"


If your philosophy is based upon awareness as a non-physical entity, then how do you explain the fact that babies are not as aware of their surroundings as adults are? Or that Alzheimer's patients are not as aware as people of the same age? When I'm asleep, I am not aware as I am while awake. When I am high, I am not aware as when sober. If "awareness is distinct from personality and memory," can one be aware without a constant level of understanding?

In that model, awareness only "receives" or "detects" the damaged, impaired, or less-developed view of the world that a damaged, impaired or less-developed brain produces. But are you any less "aware" when you're drunk or dreaming? Less inhibited, less in control, and the perception is muddled, but you're still experiencing it as a unified whole.
A more compelling argument against the model, in my opinion, are those times when awareness is lost completely.
When you lay your head on your pillow and then wake up what seems like only an instant later without having dreamed at all, or when you wake up the morning after passing out from intoxication.
That said, they're still explicable within the confines of the model. During those times, you may have awareness, but no memories are formed (in the brain), so once your brain begins forming memories again, it seems as if that time has been lost.>> ^thinker247:
If your philosophy is based upon awareness as a non-physical entity, then how do you explain the fact that babies are not as aware of their surroundings as adults are? Or that Alzheimer's patients are not as aware as people of the same age? When I'm asleep, I am not aware as I am while awake. When I am high, I am not aware as when sober. If "awareness is distinct from personality and memory," can one be aware without a constant level of understanding?

Silvio Berlusconi's teeth subscribe to substance dualism - some think that they are inside his head, while others know that they are not.

The only dualistic aspect between body and mind is that of hardware and software.

The brain is full of chemical reactions and electrical impulses, in the same manner as a computer is composed of silicon and electrical impulses. in the computer the electrical impulses are interpreted to be programs and processes forming a higher level "language" in several stages. The brain seem to interpret some of ours as consciousness, memories, thoughts. We, obviously, have no special insight introspectively into how our brain works, since we are limited by its own interpretation of itself. By studying neuroscience, we might be able to decipher how this interpretation happens, but one thing is fairly evident, there is no ethereal element to it. There is no connection from the material to the immaterial. If there is something immaterial, and I doubt it, it has no dicernable influence on the material world and in the end, is not really important (though it would be interesting).

>> ^gwiz665:
but one thing is fairly evident, there is no ethereal element to it.
How is this "evident"? The physical model does not accommodate unified experience. Just as you suggested, the body and the brain are simply organic machines. They should only "do" - impulse in, algorithm run, impulse out, and there is no reason for them to "be aware" of it. There is no step in the prescribed process where a cell does anything more than pass along an electrical stimulus to some other cells. (Which, again, I'm fine with - it's just that awareness remains completely unaccounted for.)

This makes some broad generalisations to make a point specifically against religion.

Most quantum theory also enters this area of non-physical substance. By this measure we should stop all research and say "only what we can physically percieve is real".

Dark matter is considered to exist because it is inferred by the nature of the physical universe. In yet it has not been physically proven to have substance.

Quantum entanglement was impossible in earlier physics. Physical objects should not be able effect each other in a seemingly non-physical way.

Most mathematical theories of the universe require non-physical substance to complete the picture. Extra dimensions, time as a 4th layer, Branes of time and space.

If non-physical can exist outside the our 3 physical percievable dimensions it says more about our tools for detection than it does about the known vs. unknown of the universe.

> ^ReverendTed:
The problem with his argument is that consciousness (or at least awareness) IS non-physical, at least given our existing model. Our model of the physical universe does not account for awareness.




As far as awareness being non-physical, it depends on what definition you're using for "non-physical".

"Thoughts" are not generally considered to be physical things, but they come from a physical source. Computer software is similar... while the software is only a pattern, it cannot run without its physical basis (the computer). Likewise, the mind (as far as we know) cannot exist without a physical basis. If the brain is destroyed, so is the mind.

His point seems to be that there is no reason or need to believe there is any part of a person's consciousness or awareness that lives on past the death of the physical body (other than a desire to believe in an afterlife). It is certainly true that we do not yet have a complete, verified theory of consciousness or perception, but that does not mean that there is evidence for any form of cognition that does not require a physical component.

Maybe we are all just blobs of meat with electrical impulses. Our feelings, loves, hates, memories, poetry, art, music, maths, science are all just outputs of chaotic automated software.

We can be 'good' and productive without god or the metaphysical. But why should we bother? to provide stable environments to increase the replication of more blobs of meat with awareness software? You're just saying that because your chemical codes drive you to survive and replicate.

We're all just congealed chemical processes. There is nothing good nor bad yet thinking makes it so.

^raverman
You're misunderstanding the concept of non-physical. Non-physical means just that: Not in the realm of physics. Such a substance will be impossible to observe by any physical experiment, or to infer from what it causes to happen in natural processes. All of the examples you cited have been proposed because of their effect on the physical world, which makes them physical.

What non-physical substances are supposed to do is to affect the bodies of conscious beings. Since the bodies themselves are considered physical, however, this is a logical paradox.

>> ^Almanildo:
What non-physical substances are supposed to do is to affect the bodies of conscious beings. Since the bodies themselves are considered physical, however, this is a logical paradox.

Another possibility is that we're just getting our definitions in a bind. What some might be referring to as "non-physical" might simply mean some aspect of the physical universe (some additional property or "layer") that we simply have not yet discovered or observed.

The crux of my argument is that the current model simply cannot account for the concept of unified experience, or awareness, or consciousness, or whatever we're calling it.

> ^raverman:
We can be 'good' and productive without god or the metaphysical. But why should we bother?




My version of this question is "life is complicated enough, why invest in unsupported ideas?"

It's true that we cannot observe "dark matter", but no one can rightly say dark matter absolutely exists. It's just an attempt to explain the measurements we have showing that there is more mass in the universe than we can account for. Our observations will improve, so the theory will either be improved or replaced.

A belief in gods is very similar in spirit. It is an attempt to explain the workings of the observable world. Like dark matter, we cannot observe gods directly... they are just a possible explanation for why seemingly impossible (highly improbable) events occur. Lots of people are "good" and productive without any belief in gods, in many cases because the behavior of police can be tested. Some people's "personal software" may not deal well with the idea of no afterlife, but that does not mean there is evidence for one.


I do believe that my personal preferences are due to both evolution and my life experiences. I have a rather strong instinct to avoid death, but I have no logic-based reason to fear death other than its effects on those I care about. My "caring for others" is probably automatic as well... it kept the human race going this long at least. Our physical theories fit our observations well enough... I see no reason to believe in souls based on our currently-available scientific data. I am completely comfortable considering the possibility that I am nothing but a combination of meat and electrical impulses, along with the ability remember past experience and see patterns in those memories.

Eventually I will die. I will worry about gods when their existence makes an observable impact on my personal reality.

I'm sorry Ted, I sort of skipped over your long post and went on to argue with raverman, never realizing you had just said exactly the same thing I was typing.

Now that I've read it, I commend you for your clarity. As you say, the only real problem here is awareness. I don't know how to explain that, but it seems to me that any dualist theory will only postpone the problem. How does non-physicality allow something to account for awareness any more than something physical? If you can't answer that question, in my mind there's no reason to worry about that kind of thing at all, despite my curiosity.

@gwiz


it's an experience thing. There's "I" and there's "you" (or the outer world). it has very little to do with logic and concepts.
I feel myself. I "am" this thing which I call "myself." Whil, onthe other hand I am not this or that outer thing.
I think that's a thing we all experience and feel. And I don't think we can jump across this precipice through logical acrobatics.

I don't know if there are two substances or just one, in the universe. but there is some sort of fundamental difference between X and Y, between Mind and Matter. And even if this is an illusion (of evolution, the mind, whatever) , I think it's an illusion we are living, and we can't live without.

If elementary particles undergoing quantum effects isn't physical, then I don't know what is.

>> ^raverman:
This makes some broad generalisations to make a point specifically against religion.
Most quantum theory also enters this area of non-physical substance. By this measure we should stop all research and say "only what we can physically percieve is real".
Dark matter is considered to exist because it is inferred by the nature of the physical universe. In yet it has not been physically proven to have substance.
Quantum entanglement was impossible in earlier physics. Physical objects should not be able effect each other in a seemingly non-physical way.
Most mathematical theories of the universe require non-physical substance to complete the picture. Extra dimensions, time as a 4th layer, Branes of time and space.
If non-physical can exist outside the our 3 physical percievable dimensions it says more about our tools for detection than it does about the known vs. unknown of the universe.

I am very tired, so this post may be extremely error-ridden.

Notes as I proceed through the video:

Uh-oh. QualiaSoup's first point seems quite wrong-headed. He claims that "non-physical substance" illegitimately smuggles in the physical concept of "substance." But here I think he's problematically confusing our everyday colloquial use of the word "substance" with the philosophical meaning(s). To speak of a substance in philosophical jargon is merely to say that the "substance" is that which underlies all other properties of a thing and make it what it is. Thus, Spinoza was able to say that there is only one substance, underlying all materiality but not itself material. Leibniz made a somewhat similar claim, but allowed for the existence of an infinite number of substances called monads.

Second, even if it's true that speaking of a "non-physical substance" requires an analogy from physical substance, it's not at all obvious that this is problematic. Insofar as the non-physical shares some subset of properties with the physical, or has similar but somewhat different properties, one may legitimately borrow physical language to speak of it. The substance dualist might easily accept that there is some shared subset of properties.

Next, QS claims that substance dualists often conflate mind, soul, and consciousness without substantiating argument. This is either a straw man or an attack on the very weakest defenders of substance dualism. Waste of time making this point.

Next, QS offers an apparently coherent account of the public and private access of "physical" and "mental" events respectively, as against the dualist argument that such an account seems impossible. However, it is not at all obvious that he genuinely succeeds. A robust dualist argument would proceed under the assumption that the contents of the mind can be inferred perfectly from the contents of the brain (this is acceptable even under substance dualism). Even under such conditions, it is not obvious that the processes so identified are identical to my conscious experience. It has been argued even by atheist physicalists like Thomas Nagel that there is something in subjective experience uncaptured by physical accounts. As Nagel says in his most famous essay, even the most robust physical theory seems incapable of telling us what it would be like to be a bat. A dualist account might provide us with a coherent way to deal with this problem in a way that physicalism is incapable of.

Next, some nonsense about split brains. Yawn. No ground is going to be gained or lost for dualism on these grounds; the most QS can show is that a monist account is equally capable of accounting for such phenomena. I suppose he's correct that this can't be used as a good argument against

Next, a discussion of replacement of all one's cells every seven years. Not only is it not the case that this happens, but this would be a particularly bad argument for dualism. Is QS just going after the easy objections to his position and leaving alone the strong ones?

Next, damage to the body causing changes and/or damage in mental functioning. So what? Under substance dualism, there must be reciprocal causal relationships between the brain and the mind. This kind of thing is just what one expects under substance dualism.



This may be QS's most poorly argued video. At the most compelling point in the video, QS offers an apparently coherent account of private and public access which, if the dualist position is correct, should not be at all likely, if even possible. And, to be sure, there are philosophers of mind who will agree with him, such as Daniel Dennett. Yet there are just as many who will not, including very prominent philosophers like David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. At every other point, he is either wrong or irrelevant.

>> ^Almanildo:
How does non-physicality allow something to account for awareness any more than something physical?.
Because there's no place for awareness in the current physical model of the universe.



Free will is another potential hangup with the current physical model (contradictory to it, in fact, where awareness is simply unaccounted for), but free will is easily dismissed as illusory, or a result of our limited perception of time.
Other seemingly-ethereal concepts like emotions and ideas are relatively easily explained by the model as chemical responses and imprinted patterns and associations.
There are even areas of the brain identified as dealing with the concept of "self" vs "non-self", though I believe this is more in terms of one's body.
These things, the model accommodates, awareness, not so much - at least, not yet.

Nothing does not exist.

>> ^ReverendTed:
The problem with his argument is that consciousness (or at least awareness) IS non-physical, at least given our existing model.

This is an extraordinary claim with no evidence to back it up. Not knowing something simply means not knowing something. You can't say that since we don't know precisely how consciousness arises, we know it is non-physical. Indeed I don't know how it could possibly be non-physical, certainly you'll never find evidence for such a claim since nothing non-physical can be observed as it can never interact with anything that is physical. As for the idea of awareness as an external observer drawing from the brain's functions, I don't see what such a model adds to our understanding of the world. Such awareness can have no influence on the world, as you yourself pointed out, and this means it is entirely unnecessary to introduce such fantasies in order to explain the world.

worst Yahtzee ever

^ReverendTed
I still don't think you've answered my question. You claim that there's no place for awareness in the current physical model, but you fail to give an argument for how a non-physical model would fare any better.

I personally disagree with your pessimism regarding a physical model of awareness. More importantly, I can't see how it would help to bring anything non-physical into this. What specific feature of non-physicality is it that accounts for awareness?

Dark matter wasn't introduced into our view of the universe just because ordinary matter didn't account for the behaviour of galaxies. What made most physicists accept the addition was the fact that it provided a model to explain the behaviour. That's what I'm seeking.

IBM (among others) is making some nice progress simulating brain function with the intent of reverse-engineering the processes of cognition. Perhaps that will shed some light on these questions.

The substance dualism argument is an "argument from ignorance". It rightfully points out that current theories of perception are not complete, but then begins filling in those gaps with unsupported speculation. The fact that our theories are not complete is not evidence for the existence of souls any more than a person's inability to identify a light in the sky is evidence of alien visitation.

Anything that affects the physical world is testable, even if we do not currently have the tools to see it. If there are immortal souls then we will find the exact way in which they affect the physical world.

However, there are always people who begin with a conclusion and then look for evidence that supports it, and for such people any hole in our established understanding is evidence for their belief. Those are they types of people QS's video seems to address. There may be souls or whatever people think are there beyond death, but until we have actual evidence supporting that position then any confidence in such speculation is misplaced.

>> ^brain:
If elementary particles undergoing quantum effects isn't physical, then I don't know what is.


That's the point, that today's "non-physical" is tomorrow's "physical." Dualists argue that consciousness results from physical interactions that we can't presently perceive, and that these interactions aren't limited to our perceivable dimensions.

@Almanildo, the problem with classical physics-based consciousness is that physics is deterministic, and our experience of consciousness is non-deterministic. We've recently gone from thinking that we were completely free-willed to a more complex understanding of brain chemistry and motor functions, but the basic experience of awareness and self-guided thought seem fundamentally impossible to pin as deterministic.

>> ^Psychologic:

The argument for/against souls is irrelevant to philosophical dualism. Regarding the cause of consciousness, dualism is simply saying "Your princess is in another castle."

>> ^ReverendTed:
>> ^gwiz665:
but one thing is fairly evident, there is no ethereal element to it.
How is this "evident"? The physical model does not accommodate unified experience. Just as you suggested, the body and the brain are simply organic machines. They should only "do" - impulse in, algorithm run, impulse out, and there is no reason for them to "be aware" of it. There is no step in the prescribed process where a cell does anything more than pass along an electrical stimulus to some other cells. (Which, again, I'm fine with - it's just that awareness remains completely unaccounted for.)


It is evident, because we cannot observe it directly OR indirectly. You'll agree with me, I presume, that we cannot observe something that is not material or physical, yes? Much like we cannot observe dark matter/energy (if that exists), but we can see the influence it has on the physical world.

We cannot see any influence on the physical brain from the consciousness, it goes the other way around . the physical brain determines the conscious thought.

And the consciousness is not aware of how the input/output works either, like I said, we have no introspective knowledge other than what the brain presents to "us". A car's speedometer does not know how much CO² the car releases into the world either. (Obviously there are some differences between a static closed thing like a speedometer and a dynamic, changing system like a brain, but it's a metaphor. )

There is no step in a computer either, which would account for how we can perceive programs on it - we just can, because we use certain filters and tables, which determines what that particular 1 or 0 means. You cannot see whether you run word, firefox or world of warcraft on a computer very easily, by looking at the electrical impulses, but that's the only way we have to analyze the brain right now.

Imagine having to reverse engineer a program on a computer, with only the hardware available? It's possible, but fuuck, it's hard. That's what neuroscience is trying to do (I think).

In the current (read: last fifteen years or so) state of the discussion of the philosophy of mind, the argument for or against dualism does not hinge upon whether science has yet provided a coherent account of consciousness--we all know it hasn't--but whether it can in principle provide such an account. It is not obvious that any advance in science could provide us with a satisfactory account of consciousness. It is thus not an argument from ignorance.

Granted, there are few substance dualists around in philosophy anymore--most dualists are property or predicate dualists. Nonetheless, the claim that dualism is simply an argument from ignorance applies equally to both.

>> ^Psychologic:
The substance dualism argument is an "argument from ignorance". It rightfully points out that current theories of perception are not complete, but then begins filling in those gaps with unsupported speculation. The fact that our theories are not complete is not evidence for the existence of souls any more than a person's inability to identify a light in the sky is evidence of alien visitation.

>> ^Lodurr:

That's the point, that today's "non-physical" is tomorrow's "physical." Dualists argue that consciousness results from physical interactions that we can't presently perceive, and that these interactions aren't limited to our perceivable dimensions.
@Almanildo, the problem with classical physics-based consciousness is that physics is deterministic, and our experience of consciousness is non-deterministic. We've recently gone from thinking that we were completely free-willed to a more complex understanding of brain chemistry and motor functions, but the basic experience of awareness and self-guided thought seem fundamentally impossible to pin as deterministic.

Postulating a new kind of physical interaction isn't substance dualism; you have to take the new stuff completely out of physics to call it dualist.


On the subject of determinism, we don't really know whether physics is deterministic. My belief is that it's not. However, it's not a given that determinism is even relevant for the problem of free will. Daniel Dennett argues (quite convincingly in my book) that it's not.

I think it's fairly obvious that quantum indeterminacy is generally incapable of showing that we have something like free will. There are arguments which may show that, under certain conditions, quantum indeterminacy is quite capable of generating something more or less like free will. Roger Penrose (the brilliant mathematician, physicist, and philosopher who co-formulated the Penrose-Hawking theorems) advanced such an argument, attempting in Shadows of the Mind to show quantum effects in microtubules of the brain are responsible for both consciousness and free will. However, further research into the physics of the brain showed this line of reasoning to be ultimately defunct.

>> ^Almanildo:
>>
However, it's not a given that determinism is even relevant for the problem of free will. Daniel Dennett argues (quite convincingly in my book) that it's not.

^HadouKen24
That doesn't address my main point, which is that determinism isn't really relevant.

>> ^Almanildo:

Postulating a new kind of physical interaction isn't substance dualism; you have to take the new stuff completely out of physics to call it dualist.

On the subject of determinism, we don't really know whether physics is deterministic. My belief is that it's not. However, it's not a given that determinism is even relevant for the problem of free will. Daniel Dennett argues (quite convincingly in my book) that it's not.


I don't see the point to that definition of substance dualism. How much farther removed from "physical" can you get than existing in a separate, invisible dimension? All the statements substance dualism makes about consciousness can still be true in a scenario where consciousness is part of an extra-physical dimension.

I watched Dennett's talk, the salient point comes at the conclusion which is "free will exists in the sense that matters," which is to say "real" free will doesn't exist, and that the universe is still ultimately deterministic in his view.

>> ^Lodurr:
I don't see the point to that definition of substance dualism. How much farther removed from "physical" can you get than existing in a separate, invisible dimension? All the statements substance dualism makes about consciousness can still be true in a scenario where consciousness is part of an extra-physical dimension.
I watched Dennett's talk, the salient point comes at the conclusion which is "free will exists in the sense that matters," which is to say "real" free will doesn't exist, and that the universe is still ultimately deterministic in his view.

I guess I misunderstood your point. I thought that your statement that "we can't presently percieve" something meant that we might be able to percieve it in the future. But then I don't see your point about how today's non-physical is tomorrow's physical. If we can percieve it, it's physical. If we in principle can't percieve it, I argue that it's irrelevant, because it can't affect our bodies.


You're basically right about Dennett. Consider, though, that so-called "real" free will would be indistinguishible from Dennett's kind of free will, since you can never reproduce an event exactly.

>> ^Almanildo:
I guess I misunderstood your point. I thought that your statement that "we can't presently percieve" something meant that we might be able to percieve it in the future. But then I don't see your point about how today's non-physical is tomorrow's physical. If we can percieve it, it's physical. If we in principle can't percieve it, I argue that it's irrelevant, because it can't affect our bodies.
I need to make sure I know the direction the argument is coming from, because I'm not sure I'm reading the same message you intended to convey.



There are many things we know to exist that we technically can't perceive. Everything out of range of our sensory organs has to be modulated into an in-range format to be perceivable. Some of these things were only discovered once the means of modulation were invented, and others were postulated to exist before eventually being proven.
Tiny living creatures crawling under my fingernails? Absurd!
Beams of "invisible light" that can pass through my body? Preposterous!

In terms of "today's non-physical is tomorrow's physical", I believe what he means is that the current physical model is incomplete. Eventually, the model will be more complete. Everything that's in the revised model that wasn't in the old model represents that progression.

To answer a question you'd asked earlier, a couple of times - understanding that there's something present (and arguably perceivable) that isn't accounted for by the current physical model serves the purpose of reminding us that we're not done yet. Reminding us that there's a significant gap between what we already "know" and what we know is left to learn. That we cannot be content with the model we've got because it's missing some seemingly very critical parts.

>> ^Almanildo:
^HadouKen24
That doesn't address my main point, which is that determinism isn't really relevant.


Generally not, but under something like Penrose's conception of the mind, it would be. The arguments that quantum indeterminacy is insufficient for free will break down if the mind is fundamentally a quantum phenomenon.

EDIT: Fracking comment interface. Didn't mean to post this comment and can't figure out how to delete it.

>> ^Almanildo:

Postulating a new kind of physical interaction isn't substance dualism; you have to take the new stuff completely out of physics to call it dualist.


Well, you have to take it completely outside of physics to call it substance dualism. Under property and predicate dualism, it is be difficult or impossible to give a thorough account of the mind without speaking of the underlying physical processes which create or are associated with it.

>> ^HadouKen24:
In the current (read: last fifteen years or so) state of the discussion of the philosophy of mind, the argument for or against dualism does not hinge upon whether science has yet provided a coherent account of consciousness--we all know it hasn't--but whether it can in principle provide such an account. It is not obvious that any advance in science could provide us with a satisfactory account of consciousness. It is thus not an argument from ignorance.

One could have said the same on the theory of evolution before we found out about DNA. Before the discovery of DNA one couldn't possible concede of a satisfactory way to fully describe the origin of the species because there didn't exist a way to explain the way information could passed on through generations and how that information changed minutely to make the "survival of the fittest" possible.

One argument that he deconstructs is the "cells are replaced so we're not even the same body" argument. Surprisingly, he doesn't mention that brain cells have traditionally been held NOT to do so, though this may have been an abandoned argument in light of recent studies that suggest some regrowth\repair may be possible.

Cells are indeed replaced quite quickly at the periphery of our body, like the limbs, the stomach/intestine (remember that they technically face the exterior!!), but cells in mission critical organs like the brain and the heart are not repaired when they die, most of the time. Yes, in the brain cells are replaced and pathways are rewired, although with inevitable change, but the heart remains mostly the same, always beating. Thus even a minor heart problem can be crippling and irreversible. That's also why bypass surgery is sometimes the only solution when an artery attached to the heart becomes clogged (a recent study showed 40% regeneration of heart tissue over 70 years, while we thought 0% some years ago).

It's also been suggested that consciousness is all post-hoc. That everything we experience has already happened, even if it's fractions of the second later. That we "feel" like we've made decisions but really we're just experiencing the machinations of the brain's processes after the fact. This works pretty well for dualism, because then you no longer have to account for influence on the process. (However, it blows a hole through the theories of most dualists, who are arguing for a soul and the free will that accompanies it.)

If we look closely, we can see it cannot be otherwise. What you call "consciousness" here is really "conscious awareness", the intertwining of consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is intentional, though not really causal, and awareness is plainly passive. Consciousness is really like a recursive loop program, which has a variable (the object that is aimed at) which can refer to any kind of object in the world, be it the mental world or the perceptual, outside world. Consciousness cannot then be said to be responsible of the actions that follow it aiming at an object, nor can it be said strictly to be choosing what to aim at, but what we know is that this is where our illusion of freedom comes from: the selecting of objects to be aimed at intentionally. No doubt part of it is unconscious, like when you turn your head after seeing something move on your peripheral vision, but since consciousness is recursive, it must be able to change the reference of its own variable. That does not mean it has absolute freedom in choosing the new reference, in fact it can't be since we're not omnipotent, but it must have a means to do so, otherwise the very existence of self-awareness would be useless. If consciousness was strictly determined by the "outside" i.e. by external processes from elsewhere in the brain, then consciousness + awareness would not give rise to the kind of self-awareness that is evident in higher mammals. As we know, evolution does not do things for no reason, i.e. it must have a purpose, which gives an adaptation benefit. Here the adaptation benefit could be that by doing this we can reflect on some of our own thought processes and can influence their course (by "concentrating" on them, making them the aim of our intentional consciousness). It may also be that we can broaden our intentional objects to things which are not in our immediate senses/memory, i.e. imagination.

You are right though that dualism is not that easily dismissed, but it is always in the end shown to be either naïve, unfounded or plainly superfluous (i.e. useless per Ockham's razor).

>> ^Haldaug:

One could have said the same on the theory of evolution before we found out about DNA. Before the discovery of DNA one couldn't possible concede of a satisfactory way to fully describe the origin of the species because there didn't exist a way to explain the way information could passed on through generations and how that information changed minutely to make the "survival of the fittest" possible.


One could have conceived of possible theories which might, if true, explain the transmission of genetic information. And in fact there were numerous hypotheses which were proposed and tested, including hypotheses defending vitalism.

The situation with contemporary dualists is quite different. They argue that no such theories are in principle possible, even as hypotheses which could explain things if true. One need not be a dualist to acknowledge that these arguments are often at least initially convincing.

> ^HadouKen24:
In the current (read: last fifteen years or so) state of the discussion of the philosophy of mind, the argument for or against dualism does not hinge upon whether science has yet provided a coherent account of consciousness--we all know it hasn't--but whether it can in principle provide such an account. It is not obvious that any advance in science could provide us with a satisfactory account of consciousness. It is thus not an argument from ignorance.




Argument from ignorance: claiming something is true because it has not been proven false. (or vice versa)

"We do not know" vs "we cannot know". Substance dualism is still filling in the gaps where there is no testable consensus. There is nothing inherently wrong with speculation... it's how we form theories and predictions to test. The problem is when people say "we don't know, so we're unlikely to ever know, therefore it means <insert opinion> is what is really going on".

Of course, it could take pages and pages just to define the exact definitions of the terms and phrases we are debating. I think most of the issue here is when someone mentions "dualism", "non-physical", etc, that different readers assume slightly different meanings. I may be addressing points that weren't even made due to my interpretation the the language used.

I'll try to be specific. My arguments target those who base their conclusions on a lack of evidence rather than reproducible experimental results or observations. I do not accept the argument that any part of consciousness is beyond the scope of science, because there is no evidence for it, other than the fact the we do not currently know everything about the mind. Such and argument my be stronger when cognitive research grinds to a halt despite unanswered questions, but research in that area is currently progressing faster than any other time in human history.

On the other hand, if all substance dualism states is "there are parts of human experience that science cannot currently account for" then I can't disagree. Just realize that such a statement is not evidence for anything.

In summary:

Speculation = fine.
Acceptance of speculation as reality = logical fallacy.

Psychologic, the current argument in philosophy is precisely about whether or not an empiricist, scientific mode of investigating the mind can ever solve the "hard" problems of consciousness (as opposed to the soft problems--how cognition in the brain works, how the brain assimilates language, how brain chemistry affects emotions, etc.). It is at best naive to decide at the outset that only a scientific account will do before examining whether such an account can in principle actually provide an answer.

If it cannot--and there are strong arguments that it can't--then one must find some other way of talking about consciousness. The dualist positions of philosophers like Donald Davidson and David Chalmers are one attempt at this. So are the non-reductive physicalist ideas of John Searle or Thomas Nagel. In a similar vein, one could perhaps revive the panexperientialist philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, as some have begun to do.

Finding a non-scientific way of talking about consciousness is not mere "speculation" as opposed to evidence-based reasoning. Those make the attempt formulate the strongest arguments they can based on the best premises they believe they have. In doing so, they open themselves up to substantial objections and counter-arguments which may indeed entirely defeat their positions.

Odd that this has sparked so much discussion; honestly I thought the information relayed in this video was common sense to more than not....

> ^HadouKen24:
Psychologic, the current argument in philosophy is precisely about whether or not an empiricist, scientific mode of investigating the mind can ever solve the "hard" problems of consciousness (as opposed to the soft problems--how cognition in the brain works, how the brain assimilates language, how brain chemistry affects emotions, etc.). It is at best naive to decide at the outset that only a scientific account will do before examining whether such an account can in principle actually provide an answer.




What other modes of investigation are you referring to, and what is their goal? If you're talking about the nature of subjective experience then I will agree that this is not necessarily a scientific endeavor, but it also doesn't address the origin or mechanics of awareness.

When non-scientific arguments are brought into discussions of physical reality then it seems to say "we don't need evidence to draw conclusions". I may be unaware of the "good" arguments out there though. What are some of the stronger ones, and what questions do they seek to address? What are the "hard" problems to which you refer?

Most of the arguments I have come across in this area have been used as a basis for declaring that "computers" can never be conscious. I haven't found any of them to be terribly convincing, but I can only speak for the positions I have been exposed to. The wonderful thing about science is that we learn far more when we come across events or behaviors that we cannot explain. I'll be quite happy when we can fully emulate brain function in a computer yet find that we still cannot account for certain aspects of awareness. That is when the subject should get very interesting.

Psychologic:

To initially approach the question of dualism from the perspective that it is essentially a "discussion about physical reality" is to assume your conclusion from the outset. The whole thing hinges on whether or not it is a discussion about physical reality, at least where "physical" is construed in the narrow sense as concerning the phenomena explainable by physics.

When I refer to the "hard" problem(s) of consciousness, I am using the distinction put forward by David Chalmers, between the "hard" problem--the explanation for the sense of internal experience that we have--and the "soft" problems regarding cognition, emotion, etc. It is not at all obvious why the chemical and electrical processes of the brain should give rise to or be associated with particular experiences.

Indeed, Chalmers makes this the bedrock of one of his arguments for dualism. We can, he says, conceive of the existence of what he calls p-zombies. A p-zombie is simply a human physiologically and behaviorally identical to any other--but entirely lacking this internal experience. If we can conceive of the existence of such a being, if we can know what it would be like for such a thing to be--and this is a point of philosophical contention--then it must be the case that our internal experience is not identical to the physical processes associated with it.

Another argument that consciousness cannot be explained by a scientifically reductionist account comes out of the work of Thomas Nagel, notably in famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and explored more thoroughly in The View from Nowhere. While Nagel himself is a confirmed physicalist, similar lines of argument have been advanced to defend dualist notions.

And, of course, there are the many other arguments--some good, some bad, none very decisive--regarding the existence of non-physical qualia.

This conversation makes me happy. I like this conversation. I am giving it a hug.

I'll try to approach this from another angle.

I know that I am 'aware'. That is, not only do I behave as though I was a concious being with self-awareness, I am indeed aware of what's going on. I don't know, however, whether any of you guys are. You certainly behave like it, but there is no way to know for sure.

However, there is no reason to believe otherwise. From an objective point of view, there is nothing about any other human being that is fundamentally different from me, therefore I have no reason to believe that any other human being is not 'aware', just like me.

Now, here's a thought experiment: Make a brain in a vat. Take a live person, somehow extract his brain from his body without killing the poor guy, and place it in a vat. Attach artificial sensory organs and life-support systems, such that all the information that flowed between the brain and the body now flows between the brain and an artificial machine. In the traditional philosophical experiment, the person shouldn't notice any difference, but that's not really important for my purposes. The important thing is that he can experience the outside world.

Is there any reason to doubt his awareness now? I can't see any.

Now continue to mess with our poor victim. Replace his prefrontal cortex with an equivalent ANN (Artificial Neural Network), made out of electronics. Whether or not that's possible, here's the next step:
Abandon the vat and simulate the entire configuration on a computer.

Now we have an ensemble of electronics instead of an ensemble of neurons. Still, the guy's behaviour is essentially the same. The objective facts can be correlated with the facts about the original person. He still has a prefrontal cortex, it just exists in computer memory instead of in a real configuration of neurons.

I still can't find any reason to doubt whether this person is aware. This seems to demonstrate that it's not the 'stuff' you're made of that's important; it's the abstract configurations between the functional units, no matter how the units themselves are manifested in reality. And that seems to argue against any important ontological difference between people and other things.

>> ^Almanildo:
Is there any reason to doubt his awareness now? I can't see any.

Scientific reductionism is unscientific.

As far as we can tell, my consciousness exists because of the unique configuration of everything at the time of my birth. There's no way we can scientifically eliminate factors and test to see if I would still be the consciousness that was brought into existence. If we ask what factors were necessary to bring me into existence, we have to say "everything."

If we conceive it is possible to artificially create consciousness, then we have some crazy scenarios to imagine. For example, "pulsing" a consciousness on and off in rapid succession and giving it no memory so each entry to the world is its first. Is it the same consciousness? Is there any suffering? Is there any change to the state of a consciousness without the necessary cues of memory and senses? Is there no additional energy cost to producing a million consciousnesses inside a neural network versus just one?

What is consciousness if it is completely textureless and featureless, depending entirely on its host brain for all its function? The answer "an illusion" has to be disqualified because this "illusion" is at the foundation of all we know and experience. There are illusions in our conscious experience, but if it were entirely an illusion there would be no reason for anyone to be experiencing it. The term "illusion" itself requires a viewer to be experiencing it, who presumably would be conscious as well.

I have no doubt science will inform us more on this subject, but if I had to predict it, I would say that reductionism just won't do. Consciousness must be some kind of energy, and follow similar laws of other energies, and not just be an infinitely reproducable phenomenon. If it is infinitely reproducable, then everything in existence has a consciousness value and ours is just higher or more concentrated. One of those two.

I enjoyed this video, but find that it has an unexamined assumption.

The presenter seems to be assuming that mind and thoughts are an epiphenomena of matter, but he is not examining this assumption. A case could be made that matter is an epiphenomena of mind.

Or, maybe he did not deal with this because this alternate view of reality is another Monist view.

Almonildo:
So here's where it gets muddy. Let's take your scenario of the entirely computerized brain, instead, this time, it's a COPY of an existing person's brain, rather than the end result of a sequential replacement of our unfortunate subject.
Would it be a crime, murder, to disconnect the power from that computer, or to destroy it?
I don't see it the same way, either - to assume the computer simulation would possess awareness. I don't know that would be a given. Possible - but not a given. (And I admittedly lean toward "doubtful".)
Taken further - a computer that simulates an "uninitiated" brain. Would it "develop" awareness? Would it behave differently if given the same sensory inputs? And how would we know? (Currently, we couldn't.)

The problem I have is that it doesn't make sense for it all to be correlated physically. Each individual cell fires or doesn't. An impulse is propagated or it isn't. The co-location of function ends at the macro level of "in the brain" or "in this area of the brain". Beyond that, the physical behavior of the brain is dispersed into individual cells. Awareness is obviously a product of many simultaneous stimuli which are never physically co-incident.

Here's another one: You propose that you can tell you're aware, but you cannot be sure of those around you. They act like they're aware, but it's impossible (so far, anyway) to say for certain. I can see two ways of looking at this.
One is to presume awareness because, as you say, you see no reason not to. To me that's like saying, "I have a 1'x1' black box with a white stripe. It contains duck trousers. Other black boxes must contain duck trousers because they also have white stripes."
Another way is to say that it suggests intuitively that awareness is distinct from behavior. We can't be certain anyone else is "aware" because the physical existence by itself isn't proof enough.

Another avenue that I might want to investigate further is lobotomies. Is it possible a lobotomized patient has been stripped of their awareness? I don't know enough about it to formulate a informed opinion on the subject. (In fact, the previous question might be terribly offensive to the lobotomized!)

Great video and well made; however, it fails to explain (or dismisses) basic human experience. Have you ever had the feeling that someone was looking at you? Have you heard of someone having an out of body experience (there was a study done by a surgery staff that placed a sign above the surgical table - out of sight of anyone - an amazing number of near death' patients told them what the sign said. Have you ever been caught looking at a girl's boobs across the room. Can her eyes (physical senses) discern the difference in your pupils? Perhaps not scientific but have we looked?

Well they get lots of points for production value. This seems to be the measure we are using in most of our science today.

>> ^ReverendTed:
I want to upvote this, because it's a topic I'm very interested in and it's a well-presented argument, but I disagree with some of his conclusions.
He challenges dualists for incorrectly equating soul=consciousness=mind, saying that terminology is very important, but at ~7:30 he equates personality with consciousness, which I don't think is a given. This is possibly because he's challenging a particular subset of dualism.
Another terminology problem is that the term "awareness" is never mentioned, presumably equated with consciousness, another non-given.
One argument that he deconstructs is the "cells are replaced so we're not even the same body" argument. Surprisingly, he doesn't mention that brain cells have traditionally been held NOT to do so, though this may have been an abandoned argument in light of recent studies that suggest some regrowth\repair may be possible. (In case my wording was confusing, this is an argument that would support his position.)
The problem with his argument is that consciousness (or at least awareness) IS non-physical, at least given our existing model. Our model of the physical universe does not account for awareness.
It DOES account for behavior. The body (including the brain) is a machine, albeit an organic one, and machines behave physically. Awareness, though, is a hole in the model. That doesn't prove dualism, but it allows for it until we're able to plug that hole.
My personal philosophy is more of a stopgap - acknowledged to possibly be incomplete or incorrect, but consistent with what's "known".
I have no problem accepting the physical model of the universe - evolution, etc. And I have no problem accepting that my body would function just fine without "me", right down to a "personality". The sensory organs feed electrical impulses up through the thalamus into the sensory cortexes, out into the prefrontal cortex and back to the motor cortex. (Oversimplified - it's all intertwined.) All the while making the synapses necessary for associations to be imprinted. I can believe that these "behaviors" were selected through evolution, right down to the development of language and abstract "thought".
Structures that tend to reproduce themselves will tend to reproduce themselves. Structures that are more effective at reproducing themselves will do so more effectively.
But it's just a structure. An amalgamation of individual cells each doing exactly what it's expected to do as an individual cell. There's no point in the process at which awareness is accounted for.
What I believe does take some elements from the Christian religion of my upbringing, which should come as no surprise. Christians are told that we leave our bodies, the vessels, behind when we leave this earth and proceed "into Heaven" to be "one with God." I believe that means everything about this earth is left behind. Not only the physical body and the physical brain, but everything contained in it, which constitutes our accumulated earthly experience - memories, personality. Why? Specifically for those reasons stated above: personality is a functional concept, alterable by physical and chemical changes. The question remains - if memory and personality are lost, what remains? What, indeed.
That said, I do believe there is something separate from the physical existence of the body (and brain) that accounts for awareness. I believe it to be, I guess I'll say an "element" of awareness. It's been suggested that the areas of the brain responsible for "consciousness" are sensory organs as much as the eyes or ears - because of their unique structure able to detect this outside influence.
The problem there, obviously, is that implies a physical influence by what's already been defined as a non-physical object.
I've separated that comment out into its own paragraph because if you really want to discredit dualism, that's all you need to say.
The counter-arguments tend to deal with current physical unknowns, shenanigans in the realm of quantum physics. That "consciousness" or "awareness" exerts its influence on the electrical behavior of the cells in the prefrontal cortex through quantum "nudges". That argument utilizes another hole in the existing deterministic physical model of the universe.
It's also been suggested that consciousness is all post-hoc. That everything we experience has already happened, even if it's fractions of the second later. That we "feel" like we've made decisions but really we're just experiencing the machinations of the brain's processes after the fact. This works pretty well for dualism, because then you no longer have to account for influence on the process. (However, it blows a hole through the theories of most dualists, who are arguing for a soul and the free will that accompanies it.)
Essentially, in this model of dualism, awareness simply detects what the brain is doing, possibly in a specific area of the brain (most likely the prefrontal cortex) - piecing it together into a coherent narrative simply for the purposes of experiencing it. When the brain is damaged, or its behavior altered, awareness is still simply detecting what the brain is doing. This accounts for alterations in personality due to disease, etc. It is however, purely academic, because if it has no influence, then who cares? Only the curious.
There's an island in the middle of the East river - North Brother Island. I've never been there, and I'll never go there. Few people ever will. It has no influence on me, but I'm curious about it because I find it fascinating. It's so far removed from my typical experience - and that's what makes it compelling.
Ok, I've typed too much already and I realize I never really specified what my viewpoint was.
My viewpoint is probably best described as agnostic - I know there are aspects of this discussion that are currently unknowable, so I ascribe to several options that seem to be equally believable.
I guess it's the "prefrontal cortex as awareness-sensory organ" with or without "quantum influence on output by awareness", combined with "awareness is distinct from personality and memory", which allows for some interesting (if not necessarily deep) philosophical musings on what happens to that elemental awareness once it's separated from the earthly body.


Quantum physics = if the numbers don't add up invent your own reasoning, e.g., dark matter or alternative universes while claiming nothing exists that I can not prove. The lack of proof does not equal the lack of existence. Critical thinking seems to be lacking.

Quantum physics, consciousness, mind, brain, we're just reaching the limits of our understanding and falling to mysticism. Never say something is not-understandable, it will be. See: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-God-of-the-Gaps-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson

>> ^pedio:
Quantum physics = if the numbers don't add up invent your own reasoning
Or rather, if the numbers don't add up, develop a theory.

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I think QualiaSoup removed his video and replaced it with an HD version. Let's hope it's the same one.

It's not the same video. The old one was less than 10 minutes and has been removed from QS's channel. Fragments of the old one can still be found on YT in reaction videos to the original, but I can't find the whole thing. I hope you can remove this embed before someone declares dupe on the new one I just sifted: http://videosift.com/video/QualiaSoup-Substance-Dualism-Part-1-of-2

@dag @lucky760 Is it possible to remove an embed without replacing it?

[Edit: Also, since my sift of this embed is the same as this embed here, I cannot modify video details, which I'd like to do. Is there any way around that?]>> ^Almanildo:

I think QualiaSoup removed his video and replaced it with an HD version. Let's hope it's the same one.

Actually, I've found a lot of the parts, and it seems to be an update and extension of his first version, probably based on some reactions he's gotten. Should this be considered the same video on the Sift? If so, I don't mind duping my Sift. If not, then what I said above.

I guess I was rash in updating then. I would kill it, but the discussion that was had here was so great...