Can we have a science of the non-material

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Well math is not the set of squiggles on a page, any more than the Moonlight Sonata is a set of black blobs on a page - or a waveform emerging from a CD player. These things have an essence that seems to transcend any physical representation. These things are passive, but they sure seem to exist.

Music's physical representation is sound. The musical score is a recipe for producing the sound. As far as math is concerned, why isn't it just the set of squiggles?

Stapp has a scheme that I assumed you knew about, whereby a conscious entity interacts with a physical system merely by observing it or not. If you have a system in an eigenstate, but with gentle perturbations, repeated observations lock it in the initial state. Stapp thinks this mechanism alone might be enough to let the immaterial control the physical.

Sorry, I need more details in order to understand his concept. In particular, I have no idea what you're referring to with the word immaterial.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

It would be magical, meaning what? Against physical laws? How do we know that? We don't. But maybe magic contravenes our suppositions about how reality works.

Meaning that you cannot describe the mechanism by which the immaterial interacts with the material, not even logically.

As I told you in the other thread, we need to introduce other types of causes as explained by Aristotle and elaborated upon by Aquinas. In particular end causes or teleology. In short we need to abandon the mechanistic picture of the world.

Yeah, I know what you've told me. The point of this thread is for you to describe how it might work with a little more detail than "it's just magic."

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Paul, I think it would be better to assume dualism for the purpose of this thread. It is an exploration of what may follow IF THE WORLD IS DUALIST.

Hasn't dualism been pretty much squashed? No one can explain how the two fundamental ontological categories interact.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

Let's consider something like entanglement. Paul would consider this magical because there is no mechanism. A mechanism meaning some sort of influence which we can trace out.

But at least there are very clear laws describing how entanglement works, and it requires that the particles are in contact with each other at the beginning, and no one is claiming that the particles are anything but physical.

The problem is that people tend to use the word "mechanism" in a very loose sense.

You're right. When I use the word, some people hear it as "a bunch of cogs and levers." All I'm asking for is a logical description of what it means for something to be immaterial, what the attributes of the immaterial are, and how the immaterial interacts with the physical.

Also, I never understand how any of this makes the immaterialist feel better. The only way they seem to satisfy themselves is by assuming that the immaterial thing is consciousness in all its full glory. Otherwise there is still a problem obtaining an emergent property from a low-level building block.

~~ Paul

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Oh heck I just used "Transubstantiation" as an example. The Catholic church has a doctrine that the communion wafer actually becomes a piece of Christ's flesh. To make the idea seem less silly, they give it a fancy name! I would argue that some words in the philosophy of consciousness - such as epiphenomenalism serve a similar role!

Why wouldn't bread and flesh have an immaterial component?
You dismiss this out of hand by calling it silly. How is what you do here any different to the close-mindedness you accuse skeptics of?

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Miguel - tell me you are not a Catholic!

Knowing something does not equal believing it.

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Let's not sidetrack this thread on the very first page - because I think the question of how science could explore the non-physical is important!

The catholic church has spent over 1500 years developing a detailed picture of the immaterial. How do you know that they are wrong?
When you can answer that question you will have your science of the immaterial.

[Danny_D]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Music's physical representation is sound. The musical score is a recipe for producing the sound. As far as math is concerned, why isn't it just the set of squiggles?

These concepts have very little to do with the actual conscious experience. It is like explaining how my brain produces images but leaving out the part of how an experience of those images is formed. Similar to a PC, we can see what components light up at certain operations, but that doesnt mean it is conscious of it processes, it just produces images on the screen.

Concepts, reasoning, sense perceptions are all secondary, it is the conscious experience of those "stimuli" that give them meaning.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Danny

Concepts, reasoning, sense perceptions are all secondary, it is the conscious experience of those "stimuli" that give them meaning.

Indeed. And the question is: If we think that consciousness is somehow immaterial, how does it work?

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Indeed. And the question is: If we think that consciousness is somehow immaterial, how does it work?

~~ Paul

My sense is that it can't be a mechanism - both because I tend to think Penrose was on to something, even if there is still wriggle room in his proof, and also because I just don't see how real consciousness can be decomposable into parts that are not conscious - so in a sense, it will not be possible to say how it works.

However, I am not sure that will be so much different from science itself. Ultimately, the only 'explanation' that we have of matter is mathematical. The only sense in which you can say that the repulsion between two electrons (say) is 'explained' by the exchange of virtual photons, is that the maths works (I assume, I never got quite that far!). Nobody can be said to know how that process works, and even if the whole thing gets subsumed into string theory, I am sure that will also not explain how it works, other than in mathematical terms.

Indeed, the individual events of physics are not 'explained' at all - there is no explanation as to why one particular electron lands at a particular point behind a pair of slits.

So if we are prepared to accept that a physical event has no explanation at all, it doesn't seem too outrageous to suggest that some events are chosen by consciousness on way or another?

I guess a science of consciousness, might have to start as a purely observational science - like 19th century botany. However, I suspect that we might get a head start by going to some of the few remaining primitive tribes - rather as Daniel Pinchbeck did - and asking for some help!

David

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Miguel

Knowing something does not equal believing it.

True, but that is also not quite a denial!

Christianity is very much against any exploration of psychic matters, so perhaps that explains your point of view.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

My sense is that it can't be a mechanism - both because I tend to think Penrose was on to something, even if there is still wriggle room in his proof, and also because I just don't see how real consciousness can be decomposable into parts that are not conscious - so in a sense, it will not be possible to say how it works.

Then full-blown human consciousness is a fundamental existent.

However, I am not sure that will be so much different from science itself. Ultimately, the only 'explanation' that we have of matter is mathematical. The only sense in which you can say that the repulsion between two electrons (say) is 'explained' by the exchange of virtual photons, is that the maths works (I assume, I never got quite that far!). Nobody can be said to know how that process works, and even if the whole thing gets subsumed into string theory, I am sure that will also not explain how it works, other than in mathematical terms.

Sure, ultimately every explanation is a mathematical model. But meanwhile we can see electrons and manipulate them. If someone discovers a new behavior of electrons, we have an approach to figuring out how it works and adding it to the model. Science relies on the electron to be mechanistic right down to the list of fundamental attributes that can't be further explained.

Indeed, the individual events of physics are not 'explained' at all - there is no explanation as to why one particular electron lands at a particular point behind a pair of slits.

It's random, or possibly it's lawful but we don't know the law yet. Are you okay with consciousness being random or lawful?

So if we are prepared to accept that a physical event has no explanation at all, it doesn't seem too outrageous to suggest that some events are chosen by consciousness on way or another?

It's not outrageous if you are willing to investigate how it works. But since everyone is really, really hoping there is no mechanism, how are you going to investigate it? If you don't, then it's just magic.

I guess a science of consciousness, might have to start as a purely observational science - like 19th century botany. However, I suspect that we might get a head start by going to some of the few remaining primitive tribes - rather as Daniel Pinchbeck did - and asking for some help!

Huh?

If you don't want a mechanism, then you are inexorably led away from science.

~~ Paul