Mental reality

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Who said it had to be nonsystematic? Maybe ancient people did it systematically. And it doesn't have to work perfectly. Grabbing a handful of leaves and eating them is somewhat of a crapshoot. That's why pharmaceutical companies purify products and establish dosage levels.

I don't care what they say. What did they actually do?

~~ Paul

But do you really want to postulate that they set up some approximation to double blind trials with enough customers to get statistical results, and then pretended that they got all their information from dreams! I find it really remarkable that those guys know about any but the most rudimentary plant cures.

David

[davidsmith73]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Here's the thing. Let's say idealism predicts something like this. We then have to look behind the TV and see if it has a back.

I'm having trouble with this TV set analogy, but I'll try going along with it. So, the thing we have just explained and predicted with idealism refers to what's happening on the TV screen, yes? And you are asking us to "look behind the screen" and see what is generating the patterns on it? It seems to me that this would only lead us directly to the set of axioms that we used to construct our mathematical description of what's happening on the screen.

Do you think that physicalism would suddenly fall apart, or would further investigation reveal an explanation for why there is no back?

This is the bit where I'm having most trouble. What are you refering to when you talk about the "back of the TV"? A set of observations? Or part of a mathematical description that accounts for the CGI representation?

And even if the explanation required new physical laws, would they somehow be impossible to formulate? Would they appear to be supernatural?

Sorry Paul, I don't really understand where you're coming from here. Could you explain a bit further?

[David Bailey]

Maybe a more useful analogy would be one of the two Mars rovers - because there is information travelling in both directions.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

But do you really want to postulate that they set up some approximation to double blind trials with enough customers to get statistical results, and then pretended that they got all their information from dreams! I find it really remarkable that those guys know about any but the most rudimentary plant cures.

They didn't need to conduct double blind tests. They just had to eat plants that actually improved people's conditions.

The whole dream thing is a story handed down over generations. Is that how they actually discovered the plants? Even if that's what some shaman says now, there might be sociological reasons for maintaining the story. Does Santa Claus really deliver packages at Christmas? No.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by davidsmith

I'm having trouble with this TV set analogy, but I'll try going along with it. So, the thing we have just explained and predicted with idealism refers to what's happening on the TV screen, yes? And you are asking us to "look behind the screen" and see what is generating the patterns on it? It seems to me that this would only lead us directly to the set of axioms that we used to construct our mathematical description of what's happening on the screen.

Sorry, I knew the TV set was a bad choice. I was addressing this statement of yours:

In others words, idealism might predict that some observations could actually identify things that are partially physical (physical in the idealist sense) which happen when the illusion of physical reality does not quite manifest "properly".

Are you suggesting that there might be some partially formed physical objects that are the result of incomplete manifestation of physical reality by the ideal mind? If so, then I was suggesting a partially formed TV set, but what a stupid choice of objects!* Let's talk about a partially formed box of cereal instead.

But first tell me if I'm on the right track.

~~ Paul

* Damn TV analogy.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

They didn't need to conduct double blind tests. They just had to eat plants that actually improved people's conditions.

The whole dream thing is a story handed down over generations. Is that how they actually discovered the plants? Even if that's what some shaman says now, there might be sociological reasons for maintaining the story. Does Santa Claus really deliver packages at Christmas? No.

~~ Paul

You try going into the forest and finding handfuls of plants that make you feel better - I mean, even with a few tribal members to practice on - what are your chances. Remember, if you kill many of them, you will probably end up in the pot as a witch! Seriously, I think the task is awesome!

My point is, if they didn't learn in a dream, how the hell did they do it?

To repeat, why don't we settle on the Mars rover analogy instead of the TV - because communication is bidirectional?

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

You try going into the forest and finding handfuls of plants that make you feel better - I mean, even with a few tribal members to practice on - what are your chances. Remember, if you kill many of them, you will probably end up in the pot as a witch! Seriously, I think the task is awesome!

But you're talking as if this process started from scratch 3,597 years ago when some tribesman accidently ate a plant that cured his hives or something. It started back when we were amoebas interacting with free-floating chemicals in the environment. It continued when we were ape precursors chowing down on various plants. It blossomed when people learned how to pass knowledge from generation to generation.

My point is, if they didn't learn in a dream, how the hell did they do it?

Aaaaaarrrggh! I give up. This is crazy talk based on lack of imagination about how organisms learn to consume food from their environment. Why do you think birds don't eat poisonous berries? Did shaman birds have dreams?

To repeat, why don't we settle on the Mars rover analogy instead of the TV - because communication is bidirectional?

Forget the TV set! It has nothing to do with communication at all. I'm talking about partially rendered reality and chose a TV set without a back. It was a huge mistake on my part. One of the biggest blunders of my life. Let's use a cereal box without a back.

~~ Paul

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

To me, a purely physical reality seems hard to believe in, because you end up believing in conscious computers (possibly made of clockwork), and all values are basically illusions.

David,


Are you saying "a purely physical reality seems hard to believe in" because

1) our description of physical reality is incomplete and does not yet explain consciousness,

or

2) because you think that ultimately our scientific understanding of the universe will never include an explanation of consciousnsess,

or

3) that when we can explain consciousness it will be so fundamentally different we will not include it in our category "physical reality"?

or

4) none of the above?

My view and is that we don't know enough about consciousness or physics to know if a purely physical reality is possible or not.

Without knowing how to explain consciousness isn't it hard to reject #1 and support items #2 or #3?

Although we are ignorant about what consciousness is, that ignorance doesn't mean the proecsses that generate consciousness don't follow mathematical laws like known laws of physics. Consciousness may be more fundamental than matter but that does not mean it is not unbound by natural laws, it just means we do not know what those laws are. If we could explain consciousness wouldn't that expand our description of physical reality to the point where it would then make it possible to believe in a purely physical reality? This depends on what the explanation of consciousness is.

Or, are you saying consciousness should be considered a different branch of knowledge and never be called "physics" or part of physical reality? Doesn't this also depend on what the explanation of consciousness is?

Or, do you believe consciousness is fundamentally incomprehensible?

Suppose for the sake of discussion we did have a "scientific" explanation of consciousness. Wouldn't that mean we could then understand the requirements for consciousness and could then, at least theoretically, describe a means of creating artificial consciousness, of creating conscious "machines". Once we know that requirements for consciousness couldn't we simiulate it on a digital computer and generate machine consciousness? This I suppose depends on the explanation for consciousness. Doesn't it?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by anonymous

David,


Are you saying "a purely physical reality seems hard to believe in" because

1) our description of physical reality is incomplete and does not yet explain consciousness,

or

2) because you think that ultimately our scientific understanding of the universe will never include an explanation of consciousnsess,

or

3) that when we can explain consciousness it will be so fundamentally different we will not include it in our category "physical reality"?

or

4) none of the above?

My view and is that we don't know enough about consciousness or physics to know if a purely physical reality is possible or not.

Maybe option 3 is closest to my opinion. However, when I say 'opinion', I am really quite tentative about a lot of this. Mental reality must, I feel, differ markedly from physics, because the latter runs on a set of equations (plus a dice). There is no place in such a scheme for actually experiencing anything - just perhaps computation. Any extension to physics that simply introduces new equations, leaves this problem unchanged - you still have a big complicated machine that might just as well be made of clockwork - perhaps with some kind of mechanical dice shaker!

People bend over backwards to try to 'explain' how someone can have 'free will' and yet be governed by a set of equations. My feeling is that all that sophistry has unfortunately helped to obscure the obvious - that at some level we are not governed solely by equations! Roger Penrose has a very interesting argument suggesting that mathematicians must understand (as opposed to manipulate) mathematics by a non-simulatable mechanism (thus ruling out AI). Of course, what he is implying is that thought in general is not simulatable (even in principle) on a computer - which also rules out brains using ordinary wet physics - because in principle this could be simulated.

To be fair, Penrose's argument has come in for a lot of criticism, and obviously such arguments can never be given complete rigour, but to me, there really does seem to be an interesting analogy between AI and Godel's theorem. Conventional AI systems are notoriously 'brittle' - you can get them to do the sensible thing under a range of conditions, but some tiny little change puts them off. Any particular instance of this is easily fixable - you just add an extra bit of code to your program - but the new program hits a very similar problem elsewhere, and you can never get rid of that brittle feel. That seems engagingly similar to the process of 'fixing' an axiom system by adding yet one more axiom (health warning - I am getting out of my depth here!!!!!).

Maybe neural net architechtures can break that argument - although they are usually implemented on a computer with a fixed set of 'axioms' - but in practice, my impression is that they have been most successful at organising sensory data - not simulating thought.

I am not sure who introduced the TV analogy, but in many ways it is very instructive - you have a piece of hardware with lots of complicated parts, and you could observe lots of correlations between what was on the screen and various electrical signals within - yet the whole essence of what you see on the screen has come from elsewhere.

David

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

People bend over backwards to try to 'explain' how someone can have 'free will' and yet be governed by a set of equations.

David,

Why do think you have free will?
How do you define free will?

Obviously whether or not we have free will is dependent on how one defines it. Sometimes I wonder if idea of free is just an artifact of language. Someone coined a term and now everyone either accepts it as inseparable from consciousness or a psychological illusion.

My opinion is that God doesn't control us like puppets so in that sense we do have free will. I'm not a philosopher but didn't the term "free will" originate among theologians addressing that question of how extensively God involves himself in the actions of mortals?

But after that phrase came into common usage and people developed science, we began to wonder if scientific laws control us in a deterministic way. Is it right to use the term free will in that different context? Is there a better more explanatory term?

I think that there are laws of psychology that explain behavior wether or not consciousness is purely physical so in a sense the result of decisions made through "free will" can be predicted. We are not free from laws of psychology. Some people will say this means we don't have free will.

What I am trying to point out is that the term free will is not sufficiently well defined. It can be used in different contexts which give it slightly different meanings.

I think some other people, like you, will say we are not controlled deterministically by the laws of psychology. If that is true it is not just semantics but free will must then really exist.

However, free will doesn't let us defy gravity, or live forever, or breath under water. Free will doesn't let us feel warm when submerged in ice water, or remain lucid when given narcotic drugs. Why should free will allow us to overcome biological urges? Why should free will allow us to overcome the laws of psychology?

Could an experiment be designed to prove free will exists or does not exist?

I think we do not yet know enough about consciousness to say whether or not a type of free will exists that would be independent of any type of natural law or predictive analysis.