If you have a belief, in that you are convinced of something being true, it is a simple fact that you can not confirm the truth of your belief until you go and interact with the world.
If I say "Snow is white" I cannot confirm it without going out on a winters day and actually looking at the snow.
I have no idea what Consicousness or Souls are, can you explain it to me without using the words: Though, Self, Feeling, Spirit, Awareness, God, Life and any other related terms?
@BlackMetalPoser There is certainly no direct material evidence of an immaterial soul (by definition), and we cannot rule out the possibility an immaterial soul is somehow affecting our material brains - although the models work just as well without this addition.
This is quite hard to follow. As a software tester, Ive come to view (the many) personalities of a mind in the same way. We might one day have a deterministic measure of 'beauty' in the same way a GUI can be either good or bad. But it's a way off. Human personality is the Peacock's Tail - a grandiose adornment to an otherwise simple animal.
The fact that this video makes a dichotomy between materialist reductionism and soul-based spirituality, only shows that askegg does not understand this problem. I will elucidate. : If you propose that consciousness is operated by a secondary substance called "the soul" your basic paradigm is still reductionist, you have merely added more parts to the human parts. Abandoning reductionism completely, requires a mental gymnastic trick that is very difficult to grasp.
@otonanoC Not sure you followed what I was saying. I do not think materialist reductionism is self refuting - at least according to my current understanding of them. Yes, adding a soul does not help the situation, but I had planned to address this in a video on determinism.
Abandoning reductionism DOES NOT mean you tack on another part of the human called "the soul" to the existing parts. That is not addressing the issue. To abandon reductionism, you must look yourself in the mirror and declare that objects we experience do not reduce to their parts. This will, at first, come to you as a form of insanity. But keep the insanity going. Sustain it. Soon you will realize what the world is like without reductionism, but it will be uncomfortable at first.
The problem with your assessment is that the "hardware" also arises from the "software" in the instance of our world. What we call "material" is a subjective quality of the mind, and depends on that quality. A computer never "experiences" its software. We do. And no current material theory can account for that. "Emergence" is like saying that a computer not only has hardware, but created software simply by being turned on. . . which is not how a computer works.
Great video, but the primary issue is still not being addressed. In effect, you have somewhat demystified the correlation of consciousness to neural activity. But you still leave the problem of how consciousness is even possible completely unattended.
I don't know, but computers don't have eyes, ears, emotional centers, ect. There isn't a reflexive aspect to the "processing" in a computer as far as I can tell. But it is interesting that programs can mimic human-like mental activity.
@circusOFprecision Not quite what I was getting at. Computers have inputs and outputs. They process information like our brains do. Is it possible a sufficiently advanced computer could be conscious? How could we tell just by looking at the activity of the circuits? How can we tell my looking at the activity of our own brains? In fact, how do we tell at all? If an AI could pass the turing test, is it conscious?
'Sufficiently advanced' is the key phrase in your comment. Bacteria have inputs and outputs. Although the logic of these processes is more vague and apparently simplistic, couldn't bacteria be conscious? Are they 'sufficiently advanced'? Is a computer? Or maybe the internet? Where is the line? Or is consciousness more than just information processing? That's what I am getting at. When and how does the internal dimension of awareness arise? Does a turing test merely mimic or experience?
Now we are getting into some nuances. I would say bacteria are not sufficiently complex to sustain consciousness, but I could not say for sure. I must be careful here or people will misconstrue what I am saying and covert it into some spiritual woo woo.
"Or maybe the internet?"
Maybe. The question is "how do we really know if another entity truly has consciousness?"
Your example saying that software is part of the hardware is the best analogy to the relationship between thoughts and the human mind that I've ever heard! Nice!
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
Very nicely done. I find it amazing that anyone even still - believes - in mind brain dualism. Once the peer reviewed FMRI research was able to look at the all of the previous 2400 years of black box mind/brain philosophy + research, a very clear picture of no mind just brain is what is left (or as Askegg stated there is no ghost only the brain as it is functioning). This n(s)ewage quantum bs is just the - silly belief - that an unobserved falling tree in air does not physically move the air.
I find your reasoning sound, but I'm curious to read further into this. What papers have been published that provide the evidence of the Theory of Mind/ Australian Materialism that you mention.
As an atheist/freethinker I am open to possibilities, but until there is an explanation that, with evidence, shows that anything other than science does a better job explaining reality, I will remain a Naturalist too. But I'm interested in the evidence, hence my question.
@Rickymjam Hey there. I have seen your comments all over the place :) I do not have any direct links to the Australian theory of mind handy, but I say an interesting article the other day. I will fish it out for you.
In numerous discussions I've had with theists, when they assert dualism, namely, that their exists spirits that are independent of the physical world, I simply ask them to provide me with one example of a sentient being / consciousness that exists without a body.
They often reply back, "God"
I then reply that they have no actual proof of god's existence, so the challenge still stands
But this never seems to diminish their satisfaction that they have resolved the challange
@choline500 "But since mental state of a certain type can be multiply realized, there is no such one-to-one correspondence."
I never suggested a one-to-one correspondence between brains was necessary. It is only necessary that such characteristics occur within a single brain.
After all, the fact that different organisms, different electrochemical compounds can realize the same thought, same pattern of inference points to the fact that the mental state isn't reducible to the physical state. Reduction presupposes that there must be bridging laws between the mental and the physical. It requires that there are type-type correspondence between the mental state and the physical state.
@askegg "Mental states and physical states are exactly the same thing."
In other words all that exists is information -no matter. As matter is reducible to empirical information -which is intrinsically phenomenal in nature. (ie. qualia)
@JohananRaatz "In other words all that exists is information -no matter."
What does this "information" exist in? How can you quantify information if it has no properties or attributes? How can you "measure" it, or observe it?
I'd like to see how brain scientists explain a deductive inference from E(x)(Fx∧Gx) to ￢(x)(Fx→￢Gx) and give us sufficient evidence to show that whenever we do this particular type of inference, our brain activity exhibit the same underlying pattern.
Observing the pattern of neural activity of someones brain may give you a good prediction as to when she or he feels pain, But it doesn't take us farther. No one has ever had a slightest idea as to what the content of her thought is just by looking at her brain activity. And no one will because the content of our thought are constituted in part by the environment. See Putnam's twin earth argument for details.
@choline500 "No one has ever had a slightest idea as to what the content of her thought is just by looking at her brain activity."
An argument from ignorance. Do you have any evidence to suggest a "spirit" is involved? Please define "spirit" and how we can test for it before responding.
@askegg I've never suggested that a spirit is involved. Don't get me wrong. To know that some parts of our brain is actively involved in the recognition of human face doesn't mean that we know exactly what some one is thinking about by just looking at his brain activity. To know that lefthemisphere of our brain is involved in linguistic ability doesn't mean you know which distinctive parts of brain has made an inference from a singular existential statement to a universal generalization.
@choline500 If a thought or concept is not material, then what is it? You seem to be suggesting they are neither material or "spiritual", so what do you propose they are?
I never suggested we know enough about brain composition and structure to map particular patterns to discrete thoughts. I am saying all the evidence is pointing to thought as a function of brain activity. If you have data to refute this idea, please present it.
@askegg I think you are probably confusing reprensentation with realization. They are totally different concept. Different electrochemical substances can and do realize the same thought, but unlike sentence in a natural language, they don't represent anything. Simply by looking at someone's electroencephalogram, you have absolutely no idea how you can form an infinite number of sentences out of finite resources.
@choline500 I am not, but many watching the video are. While we cannot currently perform a brain scan with sufficient detail and understanding to derive the individuals thoughts, given our current knowledge I see no reason this is not theoretically possible (although I do not think it's practically achievable, and I will be addressing this in future videos).
@findo "That sounds awfully like an argument from ignorance/ wishful thinking."
Not really. It's a conclusion based on the current evidence. If you have something which refutes this position, then I am sure lots of people want to hear it.
@askegg The problem is that It looks to me as if you are arguing for the mind-identity theory, while on the video you are saying your position is emergentism. I take emergentism to be a form of dualism in that it still maintains a rigid distinction between mental property and physical property, the former not reducible to the latter. It's a property dualism very different from Cartesian substance dualism, but it is still a dualism.
@askegg "If a thought or concept is not material, then what is it? - duh: non-material.. who says that = spirit? It seems like your very question begs materialism by asking 'what' it is. If concepts are material, can you physically investigate them with tools like microscopes etc?
"I am saying all the evidence is pointing to thought as a function of brain activity." - that doesn't mean that the mind is the brain (non-sequitur) or that the things we think are 'nothing but' physical constructs.
@askegg "I haven't proven anything, but no one has disproven it either." - can you explain why this is acceptable for your argument, but why you would almost certainly reject such an argument for say, a human spirit?
Concepts are the way in which we think about things. Concepts aren't patterns of neural activity. Patterns of neural activity isn't normative. It is physical through and through, while some of our logical rules are clearly normative. You will win a nobel prize if you find a certain pattern of neural activity that corresponds to a rule of inference such as modus ponens, modus tonens, etc.
@askegg actually no, not in the least. Your claim that "concept exist as neural activity" is vague at best or flat out false. Ontological status of universals has been hotly debated from the time of scholastics til now. But concept? What do you mean by "concept exists"? I can't think of a single philosopher who poses a question as to whether concept exists or not. Maybe you mean Fregean "Gedanke"? No one has ever translated that word as "concept" though.
Right. And that neurological activity can be manifested in another meaning of concept: a logical structure as embodied in symbolic communication.
They're really the same thing - neurologically, your brain's internals just use different symbols, represented by electrochemical markers rather than squiggles of color or groupings of logical 1's and 0's. Kind of like how you can store a number in a thousand ways, concepts are equally encodable.
@Fordi Agreed, with one small caveat. Even during communication a "concept" does not leave the physical realm, although it is encoded differently as it changes mediums. I know you go on to make this point, but clarity avoids confusion for some readers.
@askegg wow, a concept of color, for example, is a thought? It is obviously not propositional in character, but it is thought??? I think you should learn more about philosophy and logic than neuroscience to speak about what concept is. You use the word concept, thought etc in a very loose way. A sentence or an utterance represents a proposition (or a thought). No electrochemical marker has ever been proven to represent anything.
@choline500 I admit to not being a professor of philosophy or a neuroscientist, but I am guessing you are not either. If I was in a antagonistic mood I could therefore just as easily dismiss your assertions.
Nevertheless, I admit there is sufficient confusion in the terms used to warrant these disagreements. Sure, a concept (in a pure philosophical sense) is not a material entity - I never suggested they were. In this presentation I propose the idea thoughts are *encoded* in the physical.
@choline500 Your comment regarding "electrochemical markers not proven to represent anything" is somewhat akin to a single electrical signal in a computer not "representing anything". By themselves they do not, but enough of them in a certain configuration can produce representations of all the symbols we are familiar with - language, punctation, pictures, sound, motion, etc.
Quite the most outstanding set of analogies I've heard, put forth simply. The idea that your body & brain could die, yet some "thing" could continue to exist let alone with continuity of identity would be like proposing that my computer hard drive could die and some avatar of my computer's operating system would live on. Although I don't consider my computer to possess consciousness, (especially not this netbook), the comparison of computer data to thoughts and feelings is very revealing.
@laraesque I have been thinking about drawing this out to trans-humanism, but first I want to cover determinism and a few other ideas I have wanted to explore for a long time.
People should be more specific in if they're speaking of something "existing" physically or conceptually.
If I told you to imagine a horse, you could picture one and have that thought exist physically as the relationship of electric/chemical signals between your neurons. If I told another to do the same, their image (and signals) would be different.
A particular thought can exist physically, but the IDEA of that thought ("a picture of a horse") exists as a concept throughout the instances.
If what emerges is the property of a system formed by sub-system (lower-level) parts, the system itself will possess different attributes/functional laws than those which characterized the sub-system parts prior to their organization into a system. When the system is in place it will gain new properties, not directly from its components, but the structure itself. Therefore the emergent entity, while in continuous causal dependency from its supporting parts, gets a brand new set of properties.
Also note that in philosophy of mind, they make a rigorous distinction between propositional attitudes (thinking, believing, desiring etc) and raw feelings (qualia). We need a very different approach to each of these mental domains. Computational model has been very successful in explaining how we infer from one proposition to another, but not in explaining qualia (such as pain, visual redness etc)
The view expressed on this video is called "emergentism". This view is not fully materialist theory. It does embrace the view that there is a mental state ontologically dintinct from pure brain state, so it is a form of dualism. What it differs from Cartesian dualism is it doesn't ascribe any causal power to mental state. Mental state supervenes on brain state and it is causally inefficacious.
after all, connectionism has never been a dominant trend in philosophy. Computational model has been much more popular and much more successful as an empirical model for human consciousness. But consciousness by itself has wide variety of meanings. We need to be clear on what we mean by consciousness in the first place.
gay passe crap, science, reality etc are just consequences or literal artefacts of language. langugage comes first and only. we see and consider everything via language which is a literal tool and therefore immaterial. this shit is so old.
@askegg - the concept of nonexistence for one, the future, the past, typical vain knee jerk reaction, fair dinkum, i just find this pseudo-intellectual stuff super gay because its narcsissistic and sentiment based and besides I don't actually fkng care at all.
@askegg - the concepts of nonexistence, the future, the past for fuks sake, typical vain knee jerk reaction to criticism, fair dinkum I just find this pseudo-intellectual stuff super gay and tinged with narcsissism and sentinment, chicks aren't into this wanky shit, besides I just don't fukng care at all. also leave me the fuk alone now.
@askegg "Concepts do exist in the physical realm."
Yes, one of the cool consequences of neutral monism is that what we consider to be "physical" is in fact reducible to information which strangely enough seems to have an "abstract" or "Platonic" existence. I think it's kind of cool to have a universe made purely of information instead of matter. It seems very elegant in a way.
Must say.. the first quote from Prof. Ward feels very clunky: the way you've cited it doesn't make grammatical sense, and if I didn't already know that Ward was not a proponent of Scientism, I might have been confused. It's shame you don't give his actually argument as to why he thinks quantum physics dissolves materialism. And he's not a dualist either, btw - as far as I know, he's an Idealist.
I find it interesting that people will criticize a position (that actually attempts to explain natural phenomena) by saying it has short comings--but the alternatives explain lesser still and often absolutely nothing. We can show how materialism, naturalism, and empiricism have consistently and continually increased our understanding. Never once has any alternative done the same. If we ever come to understand such things it will be by materialism, naturalism, and empiricism.
Nice video. If the so called ghost in the machine, is in fact a part of the machine, how do we know, that the machines we create does not contain this? :)
I agree with the religion's statement, religion is is also a science. I do wish to add a paragraph stating that religion is fucking an inept form of science.
I see many of my fellow non-religious mates, making a distinction between religion and science as if religion also isn't a quest for the meaning of life.
The difference between religion and 'convention science' is that religion has failed at providing an answer to the Universal Question. Science is still looking!
@littleyellowkite You're thinking too simplistically. That's like saying: "why don't people die when eating apple seeds if they have cyanide". Think about the orientation of the field, its size, strength, shape etc. There are magnetic fields all over the place where; the EM force is one of four characterized forces in the universe and it defines aspects of what makes matter, of course including your brain chemistry, work.
@littleyellowkite The magnetic impulses uses in the "god helmet" are very targeted at very precise areas of the brain. An MRI is basically one large powerful magnetic field which rotates. Very different beasts.
If our consciousness is but a vast pattern of neural connections, like some sort of massive spider-web of interconnected signals and patterns, do we truly have any free will? Does free will emerge as well like the consciousness from the brain's physical workings, or is it simply an illusion, puppeteered behind the scenes by the combination of neural input and psychological stimuli and instinctual drives?
Or do we have free will, but it is limited by our brain's shortcomings and our own?
@Chaosblade777 Very good questions. IMHO, free will is, after all, just an illusion. Everything we decide is condicioned by our gentical predispositions or past experiences in our lives.
I remember learning about brain in high school; how neurons are just transmitting information from one to another. Even then I wondered where is that first neuron that creates first impulses to be transmited by other neurons (that first neuron would be free will). IMO, free will just doesn't exist...
@AdmiralPeacock So you mean that only some of our actions are free while others are determined based on what our brains are doing? Where would you draw the line between the free and determined parts of our self, then?
@Chaosblade777 I mean to say, we are our brains. You made an unsupportable distinction between self ("our own") and our brain - I was commenting on that distinction. Evidence for my assertion lies in the well document fact that personality can and often is affected by changes to the brain - injury, illness, biochemical variations and/or substances being the prime causes. If "self" was a separate constitute, such as a "soul", the "self" would be far more resilient to physical influence.
@AdmiralPeacock The only analogy I have heard to address this issue is the one of an antenna. A damaged physical body cannot "tune in" to the soul properly, hence the personality changes. This view raises a number of claims which require evidence before it could be taken seriously.
@askegg Yeah I know, but I'm not going to grant their baseless assumption of a soul any credence. I'm not going to validate their need to play make-believe while dealing with important issues.
@AdmiralPeacock Sorry, I share your point, I was just referring to our self as the consciousness formed from our brain's interactions and governed by the physical nature of the brain. I argued that that could mean that one's decision making and thinking completely emerges from the cause-and-effect chain in the brain's workings which extends into the sub-conscious and conscious mind, "free will" being just a long series of casually effected actions with no direct input from the conscious mind.
The problem with any theory that attempts to model an objective reality is that it is a linguistic construct. The ultimate problem of materialism is the gap between what is being observed and the abstractions by which we can describe it. There seems to be a 'bootstraping' problem with trying to comprehesively model the phenomina of consciousness.
Great, thank you for this. Glad to see somebody else understand this.
I think it was nykytyne2 trying to argue the opposite recently, with the idea that philosophy is like some separate reality from science and the scientific method couldnt explain everything.
I admit, he said alot more and some went over my head, but while some things may remain a mystery for centuries neuroscience will continue to break down past beliefs and philosophies
2:37, "Ideas exist materially" Are we back to Plato, Hegel? Only for them ideas existed 'ideally', in an ideal but 'real' sphere.
Ideas, thought, consciousness are neurological activity in the brain! The very, very complex brain, comprising billions of neurons, which make billions of bonds...
This is a well articulated account which nevertheless seems not only greatly inadequate but intuitively somehow wring. You say a lot but not enough. Material is not fundamentally 'dynamic' whereas 'running software' is. Motion is not reducible to material any more than 'light' is reducible to the behaviour of a light source. You do not deny the existence of a magnetic field so do you suggest that it is actually somehow ‘materialistic’?
@MarkLucasTube - By Materialism we mean we don't believe in supernatural elements of mind which somehow interacts with or emerges out of as property's or predicates with matter.
@TheUnillogical I know, but those who do view materialism with suspicion are in my opinion, as well as theirs, justified in doing so. Not because of the plausibility of "supernatural" claims but because of the incoherance of materialistic ones. Just as mathematics can never account for itself in its own terms neither can materialism do so in its. Or so it seems to me.
@MarkLucasTube - Oh yeah if you've ever studied the theory of mind at least which really is what this is mostly about regardless of what position you take you have a set of criticisms that haven't really been solved or are implications of the theory's which you just have to live with. In my case I don't see cause to reify mental propertys or predicates or a magical mind substance to account for mind when materialism to me seems to have the bases covered.
@TheUnillogical Materialism by no means has “the bases covered”. It is mostly a prejudice of the rational mind. The material ‘stuff’ of the world cannot be its own basis when all material is actually just a ‘property’ of the chemistry of ‘its’ constituents - which in turn are fundamentally and demonstrably non-materialistic. The ‘real’ world cannot be any more ‘material’ than electrons and quarks are material. The ‘rightness’ of my right hand can only be as real as the leftness of my left hand.
@MinervaInTheBrain Not really, as gravitational force is one of the 4 physical forces that exert themselves on the atom. The other 3 are the electromagnetic, the "strong" force, and the "weak" force. These forces dictate the structure and behavior of matter at the atomic level, and so are part of the basis of how we define the material in Materialism.
Thanks Askegg. That was a really thought-provoking vid.
I found the cake ingredients analogy particularly satisfying, although I can imagine a theist saying 'ingredients don't evolve into cakes - the cake has a designer.' :)
Never heard of this theory, but It sounds like some of my ramblings about the mind and its existence, but those just head in the direction of what would happen if the mind were to be moved from the brain to either another brain or computer system.
@9noitulover There is no duality between mind and body, it only appears that way to us because we happen to have evolved a brain that is capable of experiencing abstract thought and language. We identify with the abstraction, this sort of constructed selfhood (mind, soul, ego, or whatever you want to call it), and thus tend to believe that it has an independent existance of it's own.
and thus does this video rule against austrian economics
I've been calling austrian economics the creationism of economic study but it's funny how venomfangx puts forth similair arguements for religion against science like spouting scientism, while videos against religion argue against such ideas and support empiricism which seems to make my comparison of austrian economics to a religious ideologue more justified
Just making a comparison between the two fields of thought I found funny, and as I see it the austrian economist Hayeks views of scientism were flawed as well, and had many contradictions within the framework he laid out in his arguement for it and how he did built his own theories
I am curious, have you ever watched the anime series "Ghost in the Shell"?
If not I highly recommend it, for goes along with what was covered this video; and perhaps a bit more. Assuming you can find the time to watch the TV series of season one and two.
i don't get this silly idea of consciousness as the be-all-and-end-all of reality. reality was here a long time before minds were. there's no reason it couldn't have continued to exist without any minds at all.
i was in a discussion about this recently with some people who insisted quantum physics suggests this absurd idea. i'd like to see this thoroughly debunked. these were people who claimed not to be religious, that "cold" science was another religion, and who seemed to think anything with a hint of "eastern" was automatically worth looking into. i tried to tell them that eastern spiritualism is a western idea.
@neomp5 I know... Only supreme arrogance would assume that the universe exists for the benefit of, or at the behest of, conscious and intelligent beings.
@neomp5 Your confusion is understandable, and I somewhat agree with you; however, reality would be a menaingless construct if we were not conscious to think about it. Reality is a concept defined by conscious entities, and thus, existence, without consciousness, isn't really something most people would care too much about, haha.
@neomp5 I think what I was getting at is that, sure stuff will likely exist even if all conscious beings ceased to exist, but it would be meaningless to discuss that in the first place, since we wouldn't be there to assign value to anything, or have these hilarious discussions about it. : P
which is why i said "though it does make it a lot more fun"
but value, and fun, mean nothing outside of our minds and lives. if we weren't here to assign value, everything would be valueless. my point is that there would be nothing wrong with that, it would simply be the state of things.
"If truth, beauty and goodness are things that really exist..."
They aren't. Truth is just a conceptual constraint, beauty is subjective, and goodness can be described as an emergent conditional of massively interactive game theory. None of these things "exist" in the material sense. There's no reason they should. They don't "exist" anymore than God or Harry Potter or Venn Diagrams - as constructs used to describe events, ideas and phenomena.
many things exist without existing in a material sense. many things have just as much impact as material things without existing materially, but also without being mere constructs as you describe. goodness does exist as a fact of human relationships, just as gravitational attraction exists as a physical fact of planets and asteroids.
The term emergent seems to be nothing more than an adjective that indicates there is no formalism in materialism that predicts whatever is being talked about. Given that materialism proposes everything can be understood thru it's formalisms, the simple existance of somthing that needs to be called emergent refutes materialism's core tenents. Unless materialism can predict all emergent properties, it refutes itself simply by being an overly broad view of the universe.
The term "emergent" describes a property or pattern that results in repeated iteration over a game, usually one that has not been previously predicted for that game. It doesn't refute materialism at all, any more than the inability to predict the movement of a mote of dust in a lake implies that we don't understand fluid physics or brownian motion. That we can't track each of our own neurons, for example, doesn't imply that neuroscience is bunk.
@Fordi I am not suggesting that neuroscience is bunk. I am suggesting that the existance of what neuroscience studies is not predicted by materialism. Therefore materialism is ether wrong or woefully inadequate which are both forms of refutation. Materialism is fine when it sticks to things it predicts. It's failing is when people try to apply it to things it doesn't handle.
Materialism is simply a seive by which we filter out nonsense: because of the impracticality of assuming non-material events have real effect, we don't bother entertaining claims about the non-material for which evidence isn't presented.
Neuroscience isn't exactly predicted by any alternative -ism, either.
Meanwhile, neuroscience has increasingly been confirming that the "mind" is just what the brain does - something that, were materialism not true, would also be false.
@Fordi So you talk of non-material things (confirming that you believe they exist) and then disreguard them because you are having trouble getting them to fit nicely in a formalism that requires them to be the physical phenomenons. Hum, I wonder why.
So an interesting question: What do you think are the differences between materialism, scientism, and real science?
Attempting to wrench the meaning of "existence" away in a way that allows you to be meaninglessly cynical does not support your argument. That's all I have to say about that drivel.
Materialism is the exclusion of non-material explanations from investigation. Science is a method by which to separate the real from the unreal. Scientism is the view that science does this better than any other mechanism thus far constructed (and is a view I subscribe to, surprise, surprise).
@beechgrovejoe Talking about non-material things--angels for instance--is not confirming that one believes they exist, and you know it, so quit lying. What do you think you gain by this childishness?
If you have a belief, in that you are convinced of something being true, it is a simple fact that you can not confirm the truth of your belief until you go and interact with the world.
If I say "Snow is white" I cannot confirm it without going out on a winters day and actually looking at the snow.
I have no idea what Consicousness or Souls are, can you explain it to me without using the words: Though, Self, Feeling, Spirit, Awareness, God, Life and any other related terms?
Magnetohydrodynamics 1 month ago
@BlackMetalPoser There is certainly no direct material evidence of an immaterial soul (by definition), and we cannot rule out the possibility an immaterial soul is somehow affecting our material brains - although the models work just as well without this addition.
askegg 6 months ago
This is quite hard to follow. As a software tester, Ive come to view (the many) personalities of a mind in the same way. We might one day have a deterministic measure of 'beauty' in the same way a GUI can be either good or bad. But it's a way off. Human personality is the Peacock's Tail - a grandiose adornment to an otherwise simple animal.
calmreason 6 months ago
The fact that this video makes a dichotomy between materialist reductionism and soul-based spirituality, only shows that askegg does not understand this problem. I will elucidate. : If you propose that consciousness is operated by a secondary substance called "the soul" your basic paradigm is still reductionist, you have merely added more parts to the human parts. Abandoning reductionism completely, requires a mental gymnastic trick that is very difficult to grasp.
otonanoC 8 months ago
@otonanoC Not sure you followed what I was saying. I do not think materialist reductionism is self refuting - at least according to my current understanding of them. Yes, adding a soul does not help the situation, but I had planned to address this in a video on determinism.
askegg 8 months ago
Abandoning reductionism DOES NOT mean you tack on another part of the human called "the soul" to the existing parts. That is not addressing the issue. To abandon reductionism, you must look yourself in the mirror and declare that objects we experience do not reduce to their parts. This will, at first, come to you as a form of insanity. But keep the insanity going. Sustain it. Soon you will realize what the world is like without reductionism, but it will be uncomfortable at first.
otonanoC 8 months ago
I've been discussing this a long time and I love your software/hardware analogy. As a programmer, i'm quite ashamed I didn't think of it myself :-p
qtzlctl2012 9 months ago
The problem with your assessment is that the "hardware" also arises from the "software" in the instance of our world. What we call "material" is a subjective quality of the mind, and depends on that quality. A computer never "experiences" its software. We do. And no current material theory can account for that. "Emergence" is like saying that a computer not only has hardware, but created software simply by being turned on. . . which is not how a computer works.
0Fear 9 months ago
Great video, but the primary issue is still not being addressed. In effect, you have somewhat demystified the correlation of consciousness to neural activity. But you still leave the problem of how consciousness is even possible completely unattended.
circusOFprecision 10 months ago
@circusOFprecision What's it like to be a computer?
askegg 10 months ago
@askegg
I don't know, but computers don't have eyes, ears, emotional centers, ect. There isn't a reflexive aspect to the "processing" in a computer as far as I can tell. But it is interesting that programs can mimic human-like mental activity.
circusOFprecision 10 months ago
@circusOFprecision Not quite what I was getting at. Computers have inputs and outputs. They process information like our brains do. Is it possible a sufficiently advanced computer could be conscious? How could we tell just by looking at the activity of the circuits? How can we tell my looking at the activity of our own brains? In fact, how do we tell at all? If an AI could pass the turing test, is it conscious?
askegg 10 months ago
@askegg
'Sufficiently advanced' is the key phrase in your comment. Bacteria have inputs and outputs. Although the logic of these processes is more vague and apparently simplistic, couldn't bacteria be conscious? Are they 'sufficiently advanced'? Is a computer? Or maybe the internet? Where is the line? Or is consciousness more than just information processing? That's what I am getting at. When and how does the internal dimension of awareness arise? Does a turing test merely mimic or experience?
circusOFprecision 10 months ago
@circusOFprecision "Couldn't bacteria be conscious?"
Now we are getting into some nuances. I would say bacteria are not sufficiently complex to sustain consciousness, but I could not say for sure. I must be careful here or people will misconstrue what I am saying and covert it into some spiritual woo woo.
"Or maybe the internet?"
Maybe. The question is "how do we really know if another entity truly has consciousness?"
askegg 10 months ago
@circusOFprecision "When and how does the internal dimension of awareness arise?"
Great question. I do not know the answer, or have a clue how to go about finding out.
"Does a turing test merely mimic or experience?"
Both, I think - and that's part of the problem.
askegg 10 months ago
Your example saying that software is part of the hardware is the best analogy to the relationship between thoughts and the human mind that I've ever heard! Nice!
Rationalific 10 months ago
@Rationalific Thank you. I was rather impressed myself.
askegg 10 months ago
I agree, and I made a somewhat similar video - though I focused more on how a physical brain could create consciousness :
watch?v=77XBZHJcoK4
But I sure got a lot more stupid comments on my video than you have gotten.
zarkoff45 11 months ago
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
veerleke 1 year ago
@veerleke How many grams of knowledge, tradition, and culture go into a cake?
You are taking abstract concepts and treating them as real things. This is a category error.
askegg 1 year ago 5
@askegg i'll mail u about this because i m kinda spamming your comments now :)
veerleke 1 year ago
be omitting some very important non-physical ingredients after all.
veerleke 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
veerleke 1 year ago
Your cake example was interesting. Yes, u need the physical ingredients. BUT..u also need the non-physical 'ingredients' like knowledge, tradition, culture. Without these ingredients there would be no possibility and no NEED to make a cake. Non-human nature, animals will never make a cake.
Also all 4 ingredients have at some point been replaced by another product, still producing something people define as being a cake.
So if u need a brain as a physical ingredient to get consciousness, u might
veerleke 1 year ago
Very nicely done. I find it amazing that anyone even still - believes - in mind brain dualism. Once the peer reviewed FMRI research was able to look at the all of the previous 2400 years of black box mind/brain philosophy + research, a very clear picture of no mind just brain is what is left (or as Askegg stated there is no ghost only the brain as it is functioning). This n(s)ewage quantum bs is just the - silly belief - that an unobserved falling tree in air does not physically move the air.
generationalist 1 year ago
I find your reasoning sound, but I'm curious to read further into this. What papers have been published that provide the evidence of the Theory of Mind/ Australian Materialism that you mention.
As an atheist/freethinker I am open to possibilities, but until there is an explanation that, with evidence, shows that anything other than science does a better job explaining reality, I will remain a Naturalist too. But I'm interested in the evidence, hence my question.
Thanks for your vids Andrew.
Rickymjam 1 year ago
@Rickymjam Hey there. I have seen your comments all over the place :) I do not have any direct links to the Australian theory of mind handy, but I say an interesting article the other day. I will fish it out for you.
askegg 1 year ago
In numerous discussions I've had with theists, when they assert dualism, namely, that their exists spirits that are independent of the physical world, I simply ask them to provide me with one example of a sentient being / consciousness that exists without a body.
They often reply back, "God"
I then reply that they have no actual proof of god's existence, so the challenge still stands
But this never seems to diminish their satisfaction that they have resolved the challange
How sad
LetReasonPrevail1 1 year ago
But since mental state of a certain type can be multiply realized, there is no such one-to-one correspondence.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 "But since mental state of a certain type can be multiply realized, there is no such one-to-one correspondence."
I never suggested a one-to-one correspondence between brains was necessary. It is only necessary that such characteristics occur within a single brain.
askegg 1 year ago
After all, the fact that different organisms, different electrochemical compounds can realize the same thought, same pattern of inference points to the fact that the mental state isn't reducible to the physical state. Reduction presupposes that there must be bridging laws between the mental and the physical. It requires that there are type-type correspondence between the mental state and the physical state.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 ".. the fact that different organisms, different electrochemical compounds can realize the same thought,"
And CPUs from different manufacturers can calculate the same equations. So what?
"pattern of inference points to the fact that the mental state isn't reducible to the physical state"
Beg to differ. If I were able to impose an exact brain state in your head I could replicate the thought it represents in you.
askegg 1 year ago
@choline500 " It requires that there are type-type correspondence between the mental state and the physical states"
Not really. It says there is no difference between types. Mental states and physical states are exactly the same thing.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg "Mental states and physical states are exactly the same thing."
In other words all that exists is information -no matter. As matter is reducible to empirical information -which is intrinsically phenomenal in nature. (ie. qualia)
JohananRaatz 1 year ago
@JohananRaatz "In other words all that exists is information -no matter."
What does this "information" exist in? How can you quantify information if it has no properties or attributes? How can you "measure" it, or observe it?
askegg 1 year ago
I'd like to see how brain scientists explain a deductive inference from E(x)(Fx∧Gx) to ￢(x)(Fx→￢Gx) and give us sufficient evidence to show that whenever we do this particular type of inference, our brain activity exhibit the same underlying pattern.
choline500 1 year ago
Observing the pattern of neural activity of someones brain may give you a good prediction as to when she or he feels pain, But it doesn't take us farther. No one has ever had a slightest idea as to what the content of her thought is just by looking at her brain activity. And no one will because the content of our thought are constituted in part by the environment. See Putnam's twin earth argument for details.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 "No one has ever had a slightest idea as to what the content of her thought is just by looking at her brain activity."
An argument from ignorance. Do you have any evidence to suggest a "spirit" is involved? Please define "spirit" and how we can test for it before responding.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg I've never suggested that a spirit is involved. Don't get me wrong. To know that some parts of our brain is actively involved in the recognition of human face doesn't mean that we know exactly what some one is thinking about by just looking at his brain activity. To know that lefthemisphere of our brain is involved in linguistic ability doesn't mean you know which distinctive parts of brain has made an inference from a singular existential statement to a universal generalization.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 If a thought or concept is not material, then what is it? You seem to be suggesting they are neither material or "spiritual", so what do you propose they are?
I never suggested we know enough about brain composition and structure to map particular patterns to discrete thoughts. I am saying all the evidence is pointing to thought as a function of brain activity. If you have data to refute this idea, please present it.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg I think you are probably confusing reprensentation with realization. They are totally different concept. Different electrochemical substances can and do realize the same thought, but unlike sentence in a natural language, they don't represent anything. Simply by looking at someone's electroencephalogram, you have absolutely no idea how you can form an infinite number of sentences out of finite resources.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 I am not, but many watching the video are. While we cannot currently perform a brain scan with sufficient detail and understanding to derive the individuals thoughts, given our current knowledge I see no reason this is not theoretically possible (although I do not think it's practically achievable, and I will be addressing this in future videos).
I think we are violently agreeing.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg That sounds awfully like an argument from ignorance/ wishful thinking.
findo 1 year ago
@findo "That sounds awfully like an argument from ignorance/ wishful thinking."
Not really. It's a conclusion based on the current evidence. If you have something which refutes this position, then I am sure lots of people want to hear it.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg The problem is that It looks to me as if you are arguing for the mind-identity theory, while on the video you are saying your position is emergentism. I take emergentism to be a form of dualism in that it still maintains a rigid distinction between mental property and physical property, the former not reducible to the latter. It's a property dualism very different from Cartesian substance dualism, but it is still a dualism.
choline500 1 year ago
@askegg "If a thought or concept is not material, then what is it? - duh: non-material.. who says that = spirit? It seems like your very question begs materialism by asking 'what' it is. If concepts are material, can you physically investigate them with tools like microscopes etc?
"I am saying all the evidence is pointing to thought as a function of brain activity." - that doesn't mean that the mind is the brain (non-sequitur) or that the things we think are 'nothing but' physical constructs.
findo 1 year ago
@findo "your very question begs materialism"
Nope. I put no restrictions on his answer.
"that doesn't mean that the mind is the brain"
No more than anything proves anything else.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg You really think you've proven that the mind is nothing but the brain?
findo 1 year ago
@findo I haven't proven anything, but no one has disproven it either. That's the way science works.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg Wait..
I wrote: "that doesn't mean that the mind is the brain"
You replied: "No more than anything proves anything else."
But then that is not saying you've proven it.. but that science works by accepting unproven things so long as they're not disproven? Are you sure?!
findo 1 year ago
@askegg "I haven't proven anything, but no one has disproven it either." - can you explain why this is acceptable for your argument, but why you would almost certainly reject such an argument for say, a human spirit?
findo 1 year ago
@askegg ""that doesn't mean that the mind is the brain"
No more than anything proves anything else."
Can you please explain what you mean by that, if you don't mean that you've proven that the mind is the brain.
findo 1 year ago
Concepts are the way in which we think about things. Concepts aren't patterns of neural activity. Patterns of neural activity isn't normative. It is physical through and through, while some of our logical rules are clearly normative. You will win a nobel prize if you find a certain pattern of neural activity that corresponds to a rule of inference such as modus ponens, modus tonens, etc.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 "Concepts are the way in which we think about things. Concepts aren't patterns of neural activity."
All the evidence so far suggest concepts exist as neural activity. If you have something which refute this position - let's hear it.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg actually no, not in the least. Your claim that "concept exist as neural activity" is vague at best or flat out false. Ontological status of universals has been hotly debated from the time of scholastics til now. But concept? What do you mean by "concept exists"? I can't think of a single philosopher who poses a question as to whether concept exists or not. Maybe you mean Fregean "Gedanke"? No one has ever translated that word as "concept" though.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 A concept is a thought within your brain. As I outlined, these manifest as neural activity.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg
Right. And that neurological activity can be manifested in another meaning of concept: a logical structure as embodied in symbolic communication.
They're really the same thing - neurologically, your brain's internals just use different symbols, represented by electrochemical markers rather than squiggles of color or groupings of logical 1's and 0's. Kind of like how you can store a number in a thousand ways, concepts are equally encodable.
Fordi 1 year ago
@Fordi Agreed, with one small caveat. Even during communication a "concept" does not leave the physical realm, although it is encoded differently as it changes mediums. I know you go on to make this point, but clarity avoids confusion for some readers.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg wow, a concept of color, for example, is a thought? It is obviously not propositional in character, but it is thought??? I think you should learn more about philosophy and logic than neuroscience to speak about what concept is. You use the word concept, thought etc in a very loose way. A sentence or an utterance represents a proposition (or a thought). No electrochemical marker has ever been proven to represent anything.
choline500 1 year ago
@choline500 I admit to not being a professor of philosophy or a neuroscientist, but I am guessing you are not either. If I was in a antagonistic mood I could therefore just as easily dismiss your assertions.
Nevertheless, I admit there is sufficient confusion in the terms used to warrant these disagreements. Sure, a concept (in a pure philosophical sense) is not a material entity - I never suggested they were. In this presentation I propose the idea thoughts are *encoded* in the physical.
askegg 1 year ago
@choline500 Your comment regarding "electrochemical markers not proven to represent anything" is somewhat akin to a single electrical signal in a computer not "representing anything". By themselves they do not, but enough of them in a certain configuration can produce representations of all the symbols we are familiar with - language, punctation, pictures, sound, motion, etc.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg Functional (computational) states do represent. Purely physical states don't.
choline500 1 year ago
Terrific video. Totally agree with it.
MyFriendLeonard1 1 year ago
Good video, askegg.You should watch:
"MONISM VS DUALISM & PSYCHIATRY 1/4 DENNET & SEARLE"
watch?v=m9XzGz6N25Q
watch?v=RElSIYPfHus&feature=related
watch?v=7A_3F-Q-5WU&feature=related
watch?v=5F_J7RdBp4g&feature=related
German1184 1 year ago 6
Brilliant
ardamels01 1 year ago
Quite the most outstanding set of analogies I've heard, put forth simply. The idea that your body & brain could die, yet some "thing" could continue to exist let alone with continuity of identity would be like proposing that my computer hard drive could die and some avatar of my computer's operating system would live on. Although I don't consider my computer to possess consciousness, (especially not this netbook), the comparison of computer data to thoughts and feelings is very revealing.
laraesque 1 year ago
@laraesque I have been thinking about drawing this out to trans-humanism, but first I want to cover determinism and a few other ideas I have wanted to explore for a long time.
askegg 1 year ago
Exactly so. I'm so glad I subbed.
beachcomber2008 1 year ago
People should be more specific in if they're speaking of something "existing" physically or conceptually.
If I told you to imagine a horse, you could picture one and have that thought exist physically as the relationship of electric/chemical signals between your neurons. If I told another to do the same, their image (and signals) would be different.
A particular thought can exist physically, but the IDEA of that thought ("a picture of a horse") exists as a concept throughout the instances.
HelplessVictim 1 year ago
If what emerges is the property of a system formed by sub-system (lower-level) parts, the system itself will possess different attributes/functional laws than those which characterized the sub-system parts prior to their organization into a system. When the system is in place it will gain new properties, not directly from its components, but the structure itself. Therefore the emergent entity, while in continuous causal dependency from its supporting parts, gets a brand new set of properties.
eydos 1 year ago
Also note that in philosophy of mind, they make a rigorous distinction between propositional attitudes (thinking, believing, desiring etc) and raw feelings (qualia). We need a very different approach to each of these mental domains. Computational model has been very successful in explaining how we infer from one proposition to another, but not in explaining qualia (such as pain, visual redness etc)
choline500 1 year ago
The view expressed on this video is called "emergentism". This view is not fully materialist theory. It does embrace the view that there is a mental state ontologically dintinct from pure brain state, so it is a form of dualism. What it differs from Cartesian dualism is it doesn't ascribe any causal power to mental state. Mental state supervenes on brain state and it is causally inefficacious.
choline500 1 year ago
after all, connectionism has never been a dominant trend in philosophy. Computational model has been much more popular and much more successful as an empirical model for human consciousness. But consciousness by itself has wide variety of meanings. We need to be clear on what we mean by consciousness in the first place.
choline500 1 year ago
Great video askegg. Thanks.
TheEarthAbides 1 year ago
gay passe crap, science, reality etc are just consequences or literal artefacts of language. langugage comes first and only. we see and consider everything via language which is a literal tool and therefore immaterial. this shit is so old.
JuliaGillardOfficial 1 year ago
@JuliaGillardOfficial Show me any form of language which does not exist within the physical.
askegg 1 year ago 4
@askegg - the concept of nonexistence for one, the future, the past, typical vain knee jerk reaction, fair dinkum, i just find this pseudo-intellectual stuff super gay because its narcsissistic and sentiment based and besides I don't actually fkng care at all.
JuliaGillardOfficial 1 year ago
@askegg - the concepts of nonexistence, the future, the past for fuks sake, typical vain knee jerk reaction to criticism, fair dinkum I just find this pseudo-intellectual stuff super gay and tinged with narcsissism and sentinment, chicks aren't into this wanky shit, besides I just don't fukng care at all. also leave me the fuk alone now.
JuliaGillardOfficial 1 year ago
@JuliaGillardOfficial Watch the video again. Concepts do exist in the physical realm. They are patterns of activity within your brain.
Leave you alone? You're the one who came in here throwing around "gay", "narcissism", and "wanky shit". How about YOU fuck off.
Blocked.
askegg 1 year ago 20
@askegg Thank you for blocking the undereducated and very rude troll.
laraesque 1 year ago
@askegg Yeah, fuck free speech!
TheOctopus3 1 year ago
@askegg "Concepts do exist in the physical realm."
Yes, one of the cool consequences of neutral monism is that what we consider to be "physical" is in fact reducible to information which strangely enough seems to have an "abstract" or "Platonic" existence. I think it's kind of cool to have a universe made purely of information instead of matter. It seems very elegant in a way.
JohananRaatz 1 year ago
@JohananRaatz " I think it's kind of cool to have a universe made purely of information instead of matter."
I am not following this at all. Care to explain?
askegg 1 year ago
Must say.. the first quote from Prof. Ward feels very clunky: the way you've cited it doesn't make grammatical sense, and if I didn't already know that Ward was not a proponent of Scientism, I might have been confused. It's shame you don't give his actually argument as to why he thinks quantum physics dissolves materialism. And he's not a dualist either, btw - as far as I know, he's an Idealist.
findo 1 year ago
I find it interesting that people will criticize a position (that actually attempts to explain natural phenomena) by saying it has short comings--but the alternatives explain lesser still and often absolutely nothing. We can show how materialism, naturalism, and empiricism have consistently and continually increased our understanding. Never once has any alternative done the same. If we ever come to understand such things it will be by materialism, naturalism, and empiricism.
dookiecheez 1 year ago 3
great video keep 'em commin *mate* ;P
Leadman1989 1 year ago
Nice video. If the so called ghost in the machine, is in fact a part of the machine, how do we know, that the machines we create does not contain this? :)
F1R3S74R73R 1 year ago
I agree with the religion's statement, religion is is also a science. I do wish to add a paragraph stating that religion is fucking an inept form of science.
I see many of my fellow non-religious mates, making a distinction between religion and science as if religion also isn't a quest for the meaning of life.
The difference between religion and 'convention science' is that religion has failed at providing an answer to the Universal Question. Science is still looking!
LiBlub1 1 year ago
Brilliant video by the way, I've long been fascinated with the emergence and malleability of the mind.
GodlessInfinity 1 year ago
Fucking magnets...
GodlessInfinity 1 year ago
great vid totally agree
johnnyd101 1 year ago
If they are using strong magnetic fields to produce "religious experiences" then why is this not reported every time someone has an M.R.I?
littleyellowkite 1 year ago
@littleyellowkite facepalm
johnnyd101 1 year ago
@littleyellowkite You're thinking too simplistically. That's like saying: "why don't people die when eating apple seeds if they have cyanide". Think about the orientation of the field, its size, strength, shape etc. There are magnetic fields all over the place where; the EM force is one of four characterized forces in the universe and it defines aspects of what makes matter, of course including your brain chemistry, work.
badblueman 1 year ago
@littleyellowkite At a guess, different field strengths are used for an MRI than for the"god helmet".
Muljinn 1 year ago
@littleyellowkite The magnetic impulses uses in the "god helmet" are very targeted at very precise areas of the brain. An MRI is basically one large powerful magnetic field which rotates. Very different beasts.
askegg 1 year ago
If our consciousness is but a vast pattern of neural connections, like some sort of massive spider-web of interconnected signals and patterns, do we truly have any free will? Does free will emerge as well like the consciousness from the brain's physical workings, or is it simply an illusion, puppeteered behind the scenes by the combination of neural input and psychological stimuli and instinctual drives?
Or do we have free will, but it is limited by our brain's shortcomings and our own?
Chaosblade777 1 year ago 6
@Chaosblade777 Determinism - I am getting there. I think the next step after that might be trans-humanism.
askegg 1 year ago
@Chaosblade777 Very good questions. IMHO, free will is, after all, just an illusion. Everything we decide is condicioned by our gentical predispositions or past experiences in our lives.
I remember learning about brain in high school; how neurons are just transmitting information from one to another. Even then I wondered where is that first neuron that creates first impulses to be transmited by other neurons (that first neuron would be free will). IMO, free will just doesn't exist...
hypercub 1 year ago
@Chaosblade777 "Or do we have free will, but it is limited by our brain's shortcomings and our own?"
Both. We ARE our brains.
AdmiralPeacock 1 year ago
@AdmiralPeacock So you mean that only some of our actions are free while others are determined based on what our brains are doing? Where would you draw the line between the free and determined parts of our self, then?
Chaosblade777 1 year ago
@Chaosblade777 I mean to say, we are our brains. You made an unsupportable distinction between self ("our own") and our brain - I was commenting on that distinction. Evidence for my assertion lies in the well document fact that personality can and often is affected by changes to the brain - injury, illness, biochemical variations and/or substances being the prime causes. If "self" was a separate constitute, such as a "soul", the "self" would be far more resilient to physical influence.
AdmiralPeacock 1 year ago
@AdmiralPeacock The only analogy I have heard to address this issue is the one of an antenna. A damaged physical body cannot "tune in" to the soul properly, hence the personality changes. This view raises a number of claims which require evidence before it could be taken seriously.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg Yeah I know, but I'm not going to grant their baseless assumption of a soul any credence. I'm not going to validate their need to play make-believe while dealing with important issues.
AdmiralPeacock 1 year ago
@AdmiralPeacock Sorry, I share your point, I was just referring to our self as the consciousness formed from our brain's interactions and governed by the physical nature of the brain. I argued that that could mean that one's decision making and thinking completely emerges from the cause-and-effect chain in the brain's workings which extends into the sub-conscious and conscious mind, "free will" being just a long series of casually effected actions with no direct input from the conscious mind.
Chaosblade777 1 year ago
Quite an enjoyable refutation of the concept of soul.
RHYMEMAIDEN1 1 year ago
Emergentism - Popper, Mind is to brain as rotation to the wheel - Mario Bunge. VERY Good video on very complex and unsolved topic
humbleu 1 year ago
Do most philosophers believe that consciousness can't be reduced to materialism?
gt6303c 1 year ago
This Keith Ward guy is pretty much stupid.
bocckoka 1 year ago
The problem with any theory that attempts to model an objective reality is that it is a linguistic construct. The ultimate problem of materialism is the gap between what is being observed and the abstractions by which we can describe it. There seems to be a 'bootstraping' problem with trying to comprehesively model the phenomina of consciousness.
yeahwotevaman 1 year ago
Your choice in the music at the end is just awesome, can u let me know what tunes you have used?
Scanini 1 year ago
@Scanini I will put the music choices in the description.
askegg 1 year ago
Great, thank you for this. Glad to see somebody else understand this.
I think it was nykytyne2 trying to argue the opposite recently, with the idea that philosophy is like some separate reality from science and the scientific method couldnt explain everything.
I admit, he said alot more and some went over my head, but while some things may remain a mystery for centuries neuroscience will continue to break down past beliefs and philosophies
waltermh111 1 year ago
@waltermh111 The scientific method IS a philosophy, lol.
stardust005 1 year ago
"...magnets, how do they work..." lol. ICP are retards.
RedAlphaDingo 1 year ago 9
2:37, "Ideas exist materially" Are we back to Plato, Hegel? Only for them ideas existed 'ideally', in an ideal but 'real' sphere.
Ideas, thought, consciousness are neurological activity in the brain! The very, very complex brain, comprising billions of neurons, which make billions of bonds...
Wonderful video. Really well done!
Fav'ed
dewinthemorning 1 year ago
Well done!
david521598 1 year ago
Wonderful explanation, maybe just not to retarded Dualists. I love the software analogy.
bigboy45454545 1 year ago
This is a well articulated account which nevertheless seems not only greatly inadequate but intuitively somehow wring. You say a lot but not enough. Material is not fundamentally 'dynamic' whereas 'running software' is. Motion is not reducible to material any more than 'light' is reducible to the behaviour of a light source. You do not deny the existence of a magnetic field so do you suggest that it is actually somehow ‘materialistic’?
MarkLucasTube 1 year ago
@MarkLucasTube Materialism encompasses electromagnetic fields, photons, etc.
askegg 1 year ago 13
@MarkLucasTube - By Materialism we mean we don't believe in supernatural elements of mind which somehow interacts with or emerges out of as property's or predicates with matter.
TheUnillogical 1 year ago
@TheUnillogical I know, but those who do view materialism with suspicion are in my opinion, as well as theirs, justified in doing so. Not because of the plausibility of "supernatural" claims but because of the incoherance of materialistic ones. Just as mathematics can never account for itself in its own terms neither can materialism do so in its. Or so it seems to me.
MarkLucasTube 1 year ago
@MarkLucasTube - Oh yeah if you've ever studied the theory of mind at least which really is what this is mostly about regardless of what position you take you have a set of criticisms that haven't really been solved or are implications of the theory's which you just have to live with. In my case I don't see cause to reify mental propertys or predicates or a magical mind substance to account for mind when materialism to me seems to have the bases covered.
TheUnillogical 1 year ago
@TheUnillogical Materialism by no means has “the bases covered”. It is mostly a prejudice of the rational mind. The material ‘stuff’ of the world cannot be its own basis when all material is actually just a ‘property’ of the chemistry of ‘its’ constituents - which in turn are fundamentally and demonstrably non-materialistic. The ‘real’ world cannot be any more ‘material’ than electrons and quarks are material. The ‘rightness’ of my right hand can only be as real as the leftness of my left hand.
MarkLucasTube 1 year ago
Does Materialism defeat the idea of gravity too? Just wondering.
MinervaInTheBrain 1 year ago
@MinervaInTheBrain I am not sure what you are talking about.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg I posted halfway through the video (apparently cancel doesn't work after "post" is clicked.
MinervaInTheBrain 1 year ago
@askegg I believe that was sarcasm^^
LiBlub1 1 year ago
@MinervaInTheBrain Not really, as gravitational force is one of the 4 physical forces that exert themselves on the atom. The other 3 are the electromagnetic, the "strong" force, and the "weak" force. These forces dictate the structure and behavior of matter at the atomic level, and so are part of the basis of how we define the material in Materialism.
ScienceWinsEveryTime 1 year ago
Magnets?
CaMaster 1 year ago
Thanks Askegg. That was a really thought-provoking vid.
I found the cake ingredients analogy particularly satisfying, although I can imagine a theist saying 'ingredients don't evolve into cakes - the cake has a designer.' :)
Happy holidays.
WolfriksWorld 1 year ago
All hail The Green Monkey!
TheD0ded0de 1 year ago
I am a strange loop.
ScienceWinsEveryTime 1 year ago
What movie was that at the end?
Also, fucking magnets!
ScaryGuy255 1 year ago
@ScaryGuy255 Brainstorm. Recommended.
askegg 1 year ago
Never heard of this theory, but It sounds like some of my ramblings about the mind and its existence, but those just head in the direction of what would happen if the mind were to be moved from the brain to either another brain or computer system.
9noitulover 1 year ago
@9noitulover There is no duality between mind and body, it only appears that way to us because we happen to have evolved a brain that is capable of experiencing abstract thought and language. We identify with the abstraction, this sort of constructed selfhood (mind, soul, ego, or whatever you want to call it), and thus tend to believe that it has an independent existance of it's own.
yeahwotevaman 1 year ago
and thus does this video rule against austrian economics
I've been calling austrian economics the creationism of economic study but it's funny how venomfangx puts forth similair arguements for religion against science like spouting scientism, while videos against religion argue against such ideas and support empiricism which seems to make my comparison of austrian economics to a religious ideologue more justified
neat!
Go Empiricism!
alucardthealchemist 1 year ago
@alucardthealchemist VFX's views in scientism are (obviously) flawed. Why would we go looking for "meaning" in a painting when it exists in his head?
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg I never said they were right =P
Just making a comparison between the two fields of thought I found funny, and as I see it the austrian economist Hayeks views of scientism were flawed as well, and had many contradictions within the framework he laid out in his arguement for it and how he did built his own theories
alucardthealchemist 1 year ago
awsome
smashbeans 1 year ago
I am curious, have you ever watched the anime series "Ghost in the Shell"?
If not I highly recommend it, for goes along with what was covered this video; and perhaps a bit more. Assuming you can find the time to watch the TV series of season one and two.
opaldragon75 1 year ago
@opaldragon75 I have seen a couple, or a movie version. I cannot accurately recall. Anyway, I enjoyed them.
askegg 1 year ago
i don't get this silly idea of consciousness as the be-all-and-end-all of reality. reality was here a long time before minds were. there's no reason it couldn't have continued to exist without any minds at all.
neomp5 1 year ago
@neomp5 I agree. Consciousness is not necessary for reality to exist.
askegg 1 year ago
@askegg
though it does make it a lot more fun.
i was in a discussion about this recently with some people who insisted quantum physics suggests this absurd idea. i'd like to see this thoroughly debunked. these were people who claimed not to be religious, that "cold" science was another religion, and who seemed to think anything with a hint of "eastern" was automatically worth looking into. i tried to tell them that eastern spiritualism is a western idea.
neomp5 1 year ago
@neomp5 I know... Only supreme arrogance would assume that the universe exists for the benefit of, or at the behest of, conscious and intelligent beings.
FSAthe1st 1 year ago
@FSAthe1st
at least conventional theists are unaware that they view themselves as god. these ramtha and chopra types go right out and say it.
neomp5 1 year ago
@neomp5 Your confusion is understandable, and I somewhat agree with you; however, reality would be a menaingless construct if we were not conscious to think about it. Reality is a concept defined by conscious entities, and thus, existence, without consciousness, isn't really something most people would care too much about, haha.
stardust005 1 year ago
@stardust005
i think it's safe to say that without minds, reality wouldn't be a concept at all. but it would exist.
neomp5 1 year ago
@neomp5 I think what I was getting at is that, sure stuff will likely exist even if all conscious beings ceased to exist, but it would be meaningless to discuss that in the first place, since we wouldn't be there to assign value to anything, or have these hilarious discussions about it. : P
stardust005 1 year ago
@stardust005
which is why i said "though it does make it a lot more fun"
but value, and fun, mean nothing outside of our minds and lives. if we weren't here to assign value, everything would be valueless. my point is that there would be nothing wrong with that, it would simply be the state of things.
neomp5 1 year ago
"If truth, beauty and goodness are things that really exist..."
They aren't. Truth is just a conceptual constraint, beauty is subjective, and goodness can be described as an emergent conditional of massively interactive game theory. None of these things "exist" in the material sense. There's no reason they should. They don't "exist" anymore than God or Harry Potter or Venn Diagrams - as constructs used to describe events, ideas and phenomena.
Fordi 1 year ago
@Fordi
"goodness can be described as an emergent conditional of massively interactive game theory"
That is, in a game with actors, "goodness" can be described (and measured) as events that do not threaten entities valued by actors.
Fordi 1 year ago
@Fordi My argument here was that concepts do exist, yet not in the manner many people think. Other than than, I have no major issue with your point.
askegg 1 year ago
@Fordi
many things exist without existing in a material sense. many things have just as much impact as material things without existing materially, but also without being mere constructs as you describe. goodness does exist as a fact of human relationships, just as gravitational attraction exists as a physical fact of planets and asteroids.
neomp5 1 year ago
The term emergent seems to be nothing more than an adjective that indicates there is no formalism in materialism that predicts whatever is being talked about. Given that materialism proposes everything can be understood thru it's formalisms, the simple existance of somthing that needs to be called emergent refutes materialism's core tenents. Unless materialism can predict all emergent properties, it refutes itself simply by being an overly broad view of the universe.
beechgrovejoe 1 year ago
@beechgrovejoe
"The term emergent seems..."
The term "emergent" describes a property or pattern that results in repeated iteration over a game, usually one that has not been previously predicted for that game. It doesn't refute materialism at all, any more than the inability to predict the movement of a mote of dust in a lake implies that we don't understand fluid physics or brownian motion. That we can't track each of our own neurons, for example, doesn't imply that neuroscience is bunk.
Fordi 1 year ago 3
@Fordi I am not suggesting that neuroscience is bunk. I am suggesting that the existance of what neuroscience studies is not predicted by materialism. Therefore materialism is ether wrong or woefully inadequate which are both forms of refutation. Materialism is fine when it sticks to things it predicts. It's failing is when people try to apply it to things it doesn't handle.
beechgrovejoe 1 year ago
@beechgrovejoe
Materialism is simply a seive by which we filter out nonsense: because of the impracticality of assuming non-material events have real effect, we don't bother entertaining claims about the non-material for which evidence isn't presented.
Neuroscience isn't exactly predicted by any alternative -ism, either.
Meanwhile, neuroscience has increasingly been confirming that the "mind" is just what the brain does - something that, were materialism not true, would also be false.
Fordi 1 year ago
@Fordi So you talk of non-material things (confirming that you believe they exist) and then disreguard them because you are having trouble getting them to fit nicely in a formalism that requires them to be the physical phenomenons. Hum, I wonder why.
So an interesting question: What do you think are the differences between materialism, scientism, and real science?
beechgrovejoe 1 year ago
@beechgrovejoe
Attempting to wrench the meaning of "existence" away in a way that allows you to be meaninglessly cynical does not support your argument. That's all I have to say about that drivel.
Materialism is the exclusion of non-material explanations from investigation. Science is a method by which to separate the real from the unreal. Scientism is the view that science does this better than any other mechanism thus far constructed (and is a view I subscribe to, surprise, surprise).
Fordi 1 year ago
@beechgrovejoe Talking about non-material things--angels for instance--is not confirming that one believes they exist, and you know it, so quit lying. What do you think you gain by this childishness?
HConstantine 1 year ago
@beechgrovejoe Do you have any evidence for the existence (is that would be the right term!) of anything that is immaterial?