43. From the desk of James Randi (Podcast)

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

There is. And it predates nearly all parapsychology lab trials, so it is not post hoc either. Nobel Laureate philosopher Henri Bergson's theory that the brain is a filter of consciousness, not the soruce of consciousness. Here telepathy is not evolving to become stronger, the brain evolved to filter it out.... it is viewed more like brain filter leakage. The effects are expected to be borderline.

That does not constitute a theory. It is simply an idea plucked out of thin air.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

Well, first of all, not having a scientific theory doesn't necessarily mean a phenomenon doesn't exist. We still have no sound scientific basis for a theory of consciousness, still we assume it exists (well most of us do). Second, parapsychologists do have some tentative hypotheses concerning psi, springing from the various reports that have been made of the phenomena during the centuries. Psi was not discovered by accident.

You can't expect a science in it's infancy, with minimal resources, to be as well-developed as a field such as physics or medicine. You also have to remember that if psi phenomena do exist, a natural explanation may lie far far away in the future, just as an explanation for continental drift came a long long time after the phenomenon was discovered.

To summarize, science isn't complete yet, and you can't expect it to be able to give answers to everything at this point.

You don't seem to understand.

a) Aspirin was known to inhibit platelet aggregation via the inhibition of thromboxane A_2. In fact John Robert Vane was awarded a Nobel prize in 1982 for this discoverey.
b) Platelet aggregation was known to be a factor in heart disease and strokes.

This lead to the generation of the hypothesis that aspirin might provide protection against heart attacks and strokes.

This is the way that science works. You don't just pull ideas out of thin air. You build upon past research and move forward.

This is exactly the opposite of what occurs with "psi". There is no theory of "psi" that transparently generates predictions.

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

You don't seem to understand.

a) Aspirin was known to inhibit platelet aggregation via the inhibition of thromboxane A_2. In fact John Robert Vane was awarded a Nobel prize in 1982 for this discoverey.
b) Platelet aggregation was known to be a factor in heart disease and strokes.

This lead to the generation of the hypothesis that aspirin might provide protection against heart attacks and strokes.

This is the way that science works. You don't just pull ideas out of thin air. You build upon past research and move forward.

This is exactly the opposite of what occurs with "psi". There is no theory of "psi" that transparently generates predictions.

What's the point? There's no scientific theory of consciousness, either. Still there's a lot more research going on about the brain than about psi. And we all know consciousness exists (most of us, anyway). Not being able to put forth a theory doesn't mean a phenomenon doesn't exist.

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

That does not constitute a theory. It is simply an idea plucked out of thin air.

I agree it can't be called a scientific theory at this point, but it's not true it's "plucked out of thin air." It builds on observations made time and time again throughout history. Now, whether these observations are correct is another matter, but you can't deny they're there. It's simply inaccurate to say that there was no basis for constructing such a (philosophical) theory.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Larry

To me, idealism seems to be the most likely option because:
It beautifully solves the mind-body problem by encapsulating both body and mind in the mind (as in a dream).

It solves it as long as you think "poof! it works" is a solution. There isn't even a glimpse of a theory of how the mental might operate. And I daresay there never will be.

Materialism however has, in the end, to posit some kind of dualism in order to account for consciousness, as I see it (or denying it completely, which is even more absurd).

What materialism denies is that consciousness is a separate thing, therefore leading to dualism.

You people all talk about consciousness in a dualistic manner, as if it is surely a separate thing that materialism has to find. If consciousness is a collective term for a set of brain processes, then there is no separate thing.

~~ Paul

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

It solves it as long as you think "poof! it works" is a solution. There isn't even a glimpse of a theory of how the mental might operate. And I daresay there never will be.

Perhaps. The same is true for materialism, though. It is hard to see how you could ever explain consciousness arising from physical processes. Furthermore, explaining how matter arises from nothing seems equally difficult (even though this isn't technically a scientific problem, as you can only explain properties of fundamental forces of nature, not how they arise).

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

What materialism denies is that consciousness is a separate thing, therefore leading to dualism.

That's the problem. All attempts to say consciousness is the same thing as physical processes fail in my opinion, because these are clearly two different things. You have to posit that nature has dualistic properties if you're ever going to explain consciousness in physicalistic terms. How could there else be conscious experience? Why wouldn't everything "go on in the dark"?

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

You people all talk about consciousness in a dualistic manner, as if it is surely a separate thing that materialism has to find. If consciousness is a collective term for a set of brain processes, then there is no separate thing.

Let me ask you this: Why do our brains give rise to consciousness "now" and not sometime else? According to relativity theory, there is no universal now (that is, my "now" can be someone else's past or future), so our brains shouldn't know when to be conscious.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Larry

Perhaps. The same is true for materialism, though. It is hard to see how you could ever explain consciousness arising from physical processes. Furthermore, explaining how matter arises from nothing seems equally difficult (even though this isn't technically a scientific problem, as you can only explain properties of fundamental forces of nature, not how they arise).

Scientists are working hard to explain various aspects of consciousness. There are many ideas being tested, whereas I don't really see any idealist scientists testing theories of the mental. That might be because there aren't any idealist scientists.

That's the problem. All attempts to say consciousness is the same thing as physical processes fail in my opinion, because these are clearly two different things.

It's not clear to me at all that they are two different things. Just because something is going on inside your head doesn't make it fundamentally different from everything else. It just seems that way.

Let me ask you this: Why do our brains give rise to consciousness "now" and not sometime else? According to relativity theory, there is no universal now (that is, my "now" can be someone else's past or future), so our brains shouldn't know when to be conscious.

I don't know where you got this from, but if it's true then our bodies shouldn't know when to exist, either. Just because time is different for different entities does not suddenly make it the case that things don't "know" when to exist.

~~ Paul

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Scientists are working hard to explain various aspects of consciousness. There are many ideas being tested, whereas I don't really see any idealist scientists testing theories of the mental. That might be because there aren't any idealist scientists.

A matter of paradigm?

As for physicalist ideas being tested, I don't see that happening. I see correlates between mind and brain being explored and verified, but those can be interepreted in several ways.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

It's not clear to me at all that they are two different things. Just because something is going on inside your head doesn't make it fundamentally different from everything else. It just seems that way.

Fair enough. I guess it comes down to personal preference in the end. Still, for reasons outlined below, I prefer idealism.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I don't know where you got this from, but if it's true then our bodies shouldn't know when to exist, either. Just because time is different for different entities does not suddenly make it the case that things don't "know" when to exist.

Well, what defines "time", as far as I can tell, is consciousness. Consciousness can only exist "now". Bodies, however, can exist whenever they like to, because time is only a meningful concept if there is a consciousness to "fixate" it at a certain place. Bodies without consciousness are "fleeting" when it comes to time, they don't exist at a certain time. And here is the crux of the problem. If consciousness equals the brain, it doesn't make sense that it should exist "now", whereas its physical counterpart can exist at any point in time.

[David Bailey]

Paul,

I know that if Ian's android was ever constructed, I would have to seriously consider accepting the physicalist view again - I wonder what would push you over into a dualist/idealist position?

Do you at least see why Larry Boy feels it is intuitively obvious that mental stuff is not merely physical?

Plotting where all sorts of mental events happen within the brain can give a misleading impression of understanding. It is worth bearing in mind that:

Neural plasticity would seem to mean that a lot of the locations where things happen in the brain are provisional - movable if necessary.

Knowing what goes on where does not tell you anything about how it happens.

The various methods measure such things as excess glucose uptake - so there may be relevant activity at lower levels in other parts of the brain too.

You always berate others for not having a theory of consciousness - but you don't have one either - nobody does! All you do, (IMHO) is pretend that consciousness is something else, akin to a computation, and try to explain that instead! A physical theory can't begin to explain something that is fundamentally different from the various entities that exist in that theory. The problem is that you can't explain the tiniest bit of consciousness from physical theory - the two just don't connect anywhere - but this has happened repeatedly in science - each time a new theory with new elements has come to the rescue - why are you so sure this will not happen again?

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

As for physicalist ideas being tested, I don't see that happening. I see correlates between mind and brain being explored and verified, but those can be interepreted in several ways.

Perhaps, but the ideas are still being tested. What do you think thousands of neurophysiologists are doing?

Well, what defines "time", as far as I can tell, is consciousness. Consciousness can only exist "now". Bodies, however, can exist whenever they like to, because time is only a meningful concept if there is a consciousness to "fixate" it at a certain place. Bodies without consciousness are "fleeting" when it comes to time, they don't exist at a certain time. And here is the crux of the problem. If consciousness equals the brain, it doesn't make sense that it should exist "now", whereas its physical counterpart can exist at any point in time.

Sorry, me no get.

~~ Paul