Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Consul]

Consul said: The materialists can tell a coherent and plausible natural story of the origin and place of mind and consciousness in the world

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If they can, I have yet to see it.

You just need to read good (popular) science books!

The narrative you quoted is certainly not coherent and plausible: "The important point about the standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a wholly physical process."
There is no reason why a simple and "wholly physical" process should evolve to become something other or more than what it is, there is no conceivable physical impetus for that and in fact it runs contrary to physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics.

There's no reason why not, because the biological and psychological self-organization of matter doesn't violate any physical laws. Well, if it did, there wouldn't be any living or/and experiencing organisms—but there are, so it doesn't.

Consul said: In 2019 there is little difference between flat-earthers, climate-change deniers, antivaxxers and those who deny that "all psychological phenomena (including subjective experience) result from and depend on the electrochemical activity of the central nervous system."

The assertion in quotes has not been validated so those those who believe it are also being irrational.

You can't be serious! Given the ample scientific evidence for it, there is no reasonable doubt that the brain makes the (conscious) mind; so you aren't epistemically justified in not believing this, let alone in believing its negation.

When scientists have created an intelligent self-aware organism, you may make that claim.

I may make that claim independently of their having done so in the lab.
By the way, when Mr. Scientist and Mrs. Scientist have sexual intercourse, they can thereby easily create "an intelligent self-aware organism."
There is absolutely no reason to believe that human ontogenesis involves nonphysical factors!

[Consul]

A few responses: 1) there were a number of points made in the post which was in the main a response to what i consider very speculative: your claim that we will have less social problems if people stop believing something different than your model of brain/self identity. 2) are you not a determinist? or if you allow for quantum randomness or statistical causation do you see this as allowing for free will?

IOW is your concern about the hypothetical social problems caused by not believing your model consistent with your beliefs and your physicalism/materialism`?

Sure, though modern physics, via its indeterminism, offers nothing like free will.

I don't see much free will physicalism on the internet or elsewhere. So while possible (if of questionable consistency) is it relevent?

First of all: "'Free will' is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are 'What is it to act (or choose) freely?', and 'What is it to be morally responsible for one's actions (or choices)?' These two questions are closely connected, for freedom of action is necessary for moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient."

("Free Will," by Galen Strawson. In The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, 286-294. London: Routledge, 2005. p. 286)

Materialism-cum-determinism is compatible both with incompatibilism and with compatibilism about free will:

"As a theory-neutral point of departure, then, free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the manner necessary for moral responsibility."

For example, Daniel Dennett endorses compatibilist materialism.

I strongly tend to believe that persons (normally) have that ability, and that (a certain degree of) freedom of action or (nonabsolute) agential, personal autonomy is compatible with deterministic materialism.

What is clear is that random events cannot give me any degree of freedom or self-determination, since I'm still unfree in case my actions and choices are determined randomly and thus uncontrollably by me.

Do I believe in universal determinism?
It matters what physics, particularly quantum physics, has to say about this issue:

"…This small survey of determinism's status in some prominent physical theories, as indicated above, does not really tell us anything about whether determinism is true of our world. Instead, it raises a couple of further disturbing possibilities for the time when we do have the Final Theory before us (if such time ever comes): first, we may have difficulty establishing whether the Final Theory is deterministic or not—depending on whether the theory comes loaded with unsolved interpretational or mathematical puzzles. Second, we may have reason to worry that the Final Theory, if indeterministic, has an empirically equivalent yet deterministic rival (as illustrated by Bohmian quantum mechanics.)"

Well, now I'm none the wiser, especially as we have to deal in this context with complicated questions concerning the nature of causation. Are all causal relations strictly deterministic, or is there also indeterministic or probabilistic causation?

To be honest, I'm afraid I haven't yet thought hard enough about these questions; so I cannot tell you whether I'm a thoroughgoing determinist or not.

That said, I see reasons to believe in spontaneous immanent causation, and I find David Armstrong's interpretation of so-called probabilistic causation as "probability of causing" very plausible, which is deterministic about the producing of effects by their causes, but probabilistic about the occurrence of the causes or causings.

"W. E. Johnson…drew a distinction between two types of cause. He called the one transeunt causation (going across), and the other immanent (remaining within). Transeunt causation is the more ordinary sort of causation, when one thing brings about something in another particular (or sustains something, as when supporting something or keeping it in existence) and it can be argued that it is the only sort of causation there is. But I think that immanent causation is also actual. Spontaneous emission from an atom of uranium 235, radioactive decay, might be such a case. It is spontaneous because not produced by causal action from outside the atom. It doesn't matter that probability rules in this emission case. Probabilistic causation is causation when the law 'fires'. Does the 'spontaneous' suggest that there is no causation here? Well, it obeys a probabilistic law so why should it not count as a case of the uranium atom causing one of its constituent electrons, say, to be emitted?"

(Armstrong, D. M. Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 57)

"Causation is law-governed, but where the law is probabilistic only, exists only when, as one may say, the state of affairs falling under the antecedent of the law 'fires', that is, the potential cause actually brings about its effect. The moral to be drawn from this is that an irreducibly probabilistic power or disposition does not involve 'probabilistic causality' but rather a certain (objective) probability of common-or-garden, two-termed, causation. 'Probabilistic causality' should rather be thought of as a probability of causing, a probability that is irreducibly probabilistic. That is what a propensity is."
(p. 75)

"[T]he phrase 'probabilistic causality', which is often heard, is really inappropriate. What a probabilistic causal law gives us is not probabilistic causality but a certain probability that causation will occur, an ordinary causation which occurs whether the law governing the causation is deterministic or merely probabilistic."
(p. 238)

(Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.)

"I say ‘probability of causing’, rather than ‘probabilistic causality’. My idea is that the word ‘cause’ can remain univocal here. Causing, where it occurs, remains the same. A probability of causing is, I suggest, a probability of ordinary causing. It is just that the causing does not always happen, although conditions for it are ripe. Such a probability of causing would, of course, have to be an objective feature of reality, which some might object to."

(Armstrong, D. M. Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 42)

Footnote: By "ordinary causing" he means necessitarian causation, where—ceteris paribus—causes always necessitate their effects (with probability 1), even if the causes themselves occur only with some probability <1.

[Consul]

You can't be serious! Given the ample scientific evidence for it, there is no reasonable doubt that the brain makes the (conscious) mind; so you aren't epistemically justified in not believing this, let alone in believing its negation.

If you deny that the brain makes the (cognitive&conscious) mind, then what does make it?! Was it supernaturally conjured into existence?

[Felix]

Consul said: "you just need to read good (popular) science books!"

o.k. then, please point me to the "good science books" that explain how consciousness and self-awareness are manufactured in the brain strictly through electrochemical means as was stated: "all psychological phenomena (including subjective experience) result from and depend on the electrochemical activity of the central nervous system."

Consul said: There's no reason why not, because the biological and psychological self-organization of matter doesn't violate any physical laws."

We do not know how life originated, and how it may have progressed from very simple to complex life forms is unclear, therefore we cannot say whether any physical laws may have been violated in the process. But I fail to see how "psychological self-organization of matter" would qualify as the "purely physical process" that evolution is purported to be.

[Consul]

Consul said: "you just need to read good (popular) science books!"
o.k. then, please point me to the "good science books" that explain how consciousness and self-awareness are manufactured in the brain strictly through electrochemical means as was stated: "all psychological phenomena (including subjective experience) result from and depend on the electrochemical activity of the central nervous system."

It is undeniable that there is still an explanatory gap as to how (exactly) neurological mechanisms realize consciousness, but there is nonetheless no reasonable doubt that subjective experiences (sensations, emotions, imaginations) are realized by physicochemical processes in the brain—especially in the light of the ample scientific evidence for this assumption (provided by biology, physiology, neurology/neuropathology, anesthesiology, psychiatry/psychopathology, and psychopharmacology).

When you read books such as the ones mentioned below, the only scientifically plausible and defensible conclusion is that the brain is in fact the natural organ, the substrate, the seat&source of all mental/experiential phenomena.

"The specific problem I want to discuss concerns consciousness, the hard nut of the mind-body problem. How is it possible for conscious states to depend upon brain states? How can technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter? What makes the bodily organ we call the brain so radically different from other bodily organs, say the kidneys—the body parts without a trace of consciousness? How could the aggregation of millions of individually insentient neurons generate subjective awareness? We know that brains are the de facto causal basis of consciousness, but we have, it seems, no understanding whatever of how this can be so. It strikes us as miraculous, eerie, even faintly comic. Somehow, we feel, the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness, but we draw a total blank on the nature of this conversion. Neural transmissions just seem like the wrong kind of materials with which to bring consciousness into the world, but it appears that in some way they perform this mysterious feat. The mind-body problem is the problem of understanding how the miracle is wrought, thus removing the sense of deep mystery. We want to take the magic out of the link between consciousness and the brain."

(McGinn, Colin. "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?" Mind 98/391 (1989): 349-366. p. 349)

The new neuroscience of consciousness is on its way to a naturalistic/materialistic solution to the hard problem of consciousness! And there are no good reasons (let alone philosophical a priori ones) to believe that a scientific closure of the explanatory gap (in naturalistic/materialistic terms) is impossible in principle!

"The hard-problem view has a pinch of defeatism in it. I suspect that for some people it also has a pinch of religiosity. It is a keep-your-scientific-hands-off-my-mystery perspective. One conceptual difficulty with the hard-problem view is that it argues against any explanation of consciousness without knowing what explanations might arise. It is difficult to make a cogent argument against the unknown. Perhaps an explanation exists such that, once we see what it is, once we understand it, we will find that it makes sense and accounts for consciousness."

(Graziano, Michael S. Consciousness and the Social Brain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 7)

* Consciousness Demystified, by Todd E. Feinberg and Jon M. Mallatt

* The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness, by Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka

* The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind, by Michael S. Gazzaniga

[Consul]

Consul said: There's no reason why not, because the biological and psychological self-organization of matter doesn't violate any physical laws."

We do not know how life originated, and how it may have progressed from very simple to complex life forms is unclear, therefore we cannot say whether any physical laws may have been violated in the process. But I fail to see how "psychological self-organization of matter" would qualify as the "purely physical process" that evolution is purported to be.

As I already said, there is still an explanatory gap concerning abiogenesis; but we know it was a purely physicochemical transition from non-biochemistry to biochemistry that involved no non-physicochemical factors or forces such as élan vital or Qi. Vitalism in biology is as dead as the dodo!

Likewise, there is no good reason to believe that apsychogenesis as the evolutionary transition (in nervous systems) from objective sensory information to subjective sensations involved any supernatural/hyperphysical factors, forces, or entities.

Both evolutionary abiogenesis and evolutionary apsychogenesis are free from any supernatural/hyperphysical "impurities"!

[Consul]

We do not know how life originated, and how it may have progressed from very simple to complex life forms is unclear, therefore we cannot say whether any physical laws may have been violated in the process.

I'm not a biologist, but, as far as I know, it is quite clear how life progressed from very simple to complex forms: random mutation + natural selection!

"In essence, the modern theory of evolution is easy to grasp. It can be summarized in a single (albeit slightly long) sentence: Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species—perhaps a self-replicating molecule—that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection."

(Coyne, Jerry A. Why Evolution is True. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 3)

The OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer: https://www.onezoom.org/

[Consul]

Likewise, there is no good reason to believe that apsychogenesis as the evolutionary transition (in nervous systems) from objective sensory information to subjective sensations involved any supernatural/hyperphysical factors, forces, or entities.

"If we want to understand consciousness and its basis, we should study its source—neural activity at its most rudimentary level, and then track the phenomenon, step by step, through to its more advanced manifestations, ultimately to us humans. So the approach would be the same as the one we have taken in addressing the problem of abiogenesis—start simple. A fascinating scientific journey awaits us."

(Pross, Addy. What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 178)

[Consul]

I don't know how "the existence of the subject" solves "the mystery of matter" unless you're defending subjective idealism/phenomenalism or panpsychism.

This reasoning is based on the following intuitive insights:

1. The subject's nonexistence is self-contradictory, so it must exist in one way or another.

2. If it can be demonstrated that the subject can only exist in the material world, this solves the problem of the existence of matter. I have suggested elsewhere that matter is the medium of the relationship between individual subjects, so that the world in its deepest meaning is the community of subjects. This is speculation of course.

Note that this way of thinking removes the mind-body problem and the problem of how consciousness arises from matter, because consciousness is just the subject's way of existing in the material world. This also explains why mind-body correlations are probably one-to-one.

I am not especially fond of panpsychism, and I do not see myself as a subjective idealist either. But it is better that someone else puts me into these categories, I just like to philosophize.

(So do I, by the way.)

Again, I reject your premise in 1 as false, because a world devoid of subjects is definitely not a logically impossible world.
Of course, if our world is Berkeley's world, then it depends for its existence on the existence of subjects, since it consists of nothing but a community of immaterial souls/spirits and their ideas (with ideas depending on subjects). So a Berkeleyan world devoid of subjects is impossible, but it's certainly not a necessary truth that all possible worlds are Berkeleyan worlds.

The Basics of Berkeley's Ontology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#3.1

[Consul]

[Consul]

The new neuroscience of consciousness is on its way to a naturalistic/materialistic solution to the hard problem of consciousness! And there are no good reasons (let alone philosophical a priori ones) to believe that a scientific closure of the explanatory gap (in naturalistic/materialistic terms) is impossible in principle!

Neuroscience of Consciousness Journal

Can neuroscience explain consciousness? By Anil Seth

[Tamminen]

Again, I reject your premise in 1 as false, because a world devoid of subjects is definitely not a logically impossible world.

Here we disagree, perhaps because we have different views about what the world is. The world seen as a spatiotemporal totality would lose its reason of existence, and therefore its very existence, if it were not a world in relation to some subject somewhere, some time. Note that the whole world need not be an object of any subject's consciousness, it only must be the world where some subjects are conscious of something. And the logic that proves the impossibility of the world without subjects is not our ordinary formal logic, because it is based on understanding where the limits of logic are, and the possibility of the world without subjects is beyond the limits of logic. So the "proof" is more like dialectical or transendental than logical, and I have tried to sketch its key points in several posts. Here we must do Cartesian meditations, not logical calculus.

Again, I reject your premise in 1 as false, because a world devoid of subjects is definitely not a logically impossible world.
Of course, if our world is Berkeley's world, then it depends for its existence on the existence of subjects, since it consists of nothing but a community of immaterial souls/spirits and their ideas (with ideas depending on subjects). So a Berkeleyan world devoid of subjects is impossible, but it's certainly not a necessary truth that all possible worlds are Berkeleyan worlds.

The Berkeleyan world looks too spiritual to me. My world is very concrete, because as the community of subjects it has to be material, and matter is very concrete, as we all know when we kick a stone for instance. The relationship between the subject and the material universe needs further analysis of course.

[Consul]

The new neuroscience of consciousness is on its way to a naturalistic/materialistic solution to the hard problem of consciousness!

Anil Seth prefers to speak of the real problem of consciousness: https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem ... e-real-one

[Felix]

I said: "We do not know how life originated, and how it may have progressed from very simple to complex life forms is unclear, therefore we cannot say whether any physical laws may have been violated in the process."

Consul: "I'm not a biologist, but, as far as I know, it is quite clear how life progressed from very simple to complex forms: random mutation + natural selection!"

I didn't meant to imply that evolution is some sort of supernatural process. However, we have no direct evidence that random mutation plus material selection would lead to the speciation we see. Doesn't mean that it didn't, just that it is not an established theory as you've suggested. So far our artificial evolutionary experiments, e.g., with fruit flies and bacteria, have failed to validate Darwinian theory. When it comes to the study of very complex subjects like evolution and consciousness, the typical reductionist scientific approach does not seem to go very far. It's rather like making tooth-picks with a hatchet.

[Sculptor1]

Start watching after 7:11 minutes where it actually starts.