• lorenzo sleakes
    34
    the idea that mental beings can emerge out of complex processes in the brain is fundamentally flawed and can never be tested. If material processes operating through known physical laws generate as a side effect sentient minds how can we ever measure the existence of those mental beings? Mental beings are private and can never be directly observed and are only inferred from their behavior, but according to emergence they have no effect on behavior since all their effects are really the byproduct of brain processes. Therefore conscious entities which merely pop into existence as epiphenomenal side effects of the brain software disappear into nothing since they cannot be measured, observed or inferred in any way. This is eliminative materialism whereby we achieve consistency by throwing away the introspective evidence.
    There is to be fair another form of emergence which aims to show that consciousness is actually efficacious and that it at least has some unique influence on motor action. Since pain and pleasure evolved it must have an evolutionary purpose. John Searle calls this emergence 2 as he says below:

    “This conception of causal emergence, call it "emergent 1," has to be distinguished from a much more adventurous conception, call it "emergent2." A feature F is emergent2 if F is emergent 1 and F has causal powers that cannot be explained by the causal interactions of a, b, c...If consciousness were emergent 2, then consciousness could cause things that could not be explained by the causal behaviour of the neurons. The naive idea here is that consciousness gets squirted out by the behaviour of the neurons in the brain, but once it has been squirted out, it then has a life of its own. [...O]n my view consciousness is emergent1, but not emergent2. In fact, I cannot think of anything that is emergent2, and it seems unlikely that we will be able to find any features that are emergent2, because the existence of any such features would seem to violate even the weakest principle of the transitivity of causation”

    I have to agree with Searle here. Emergent 2 is a worthy goal because it gives real causal power to qualia such as pleasure and pain.but it makes no sense. If the second to second reverberating of neural impulses is responsible for the squirting out of the conscious self and its ongoing maintenance then surely it is also responsible for every decision made by it.

    Is there any choice but eliminative materialism, one which can have the efficacy of consciousness and qualia and still be logically conistent? The only alternative is dualistic. The subjective self is a fundamental enduring non-emergent entity which experiences the qualitative virtual reality content created by the brain and can interact with the brain. I discuss in this paper. http://philpapers.org/rec/SLETLO-2
    Only subjective agents that exist with the same fundamental elemental status as say an electron can truly be efficacious and therefore have effects that can be measured and known. This implies that the known physical laws are not complete. However, with what is known about the probabilistic nature of quantum physics it is certainly possible that real mental entities can exert an independent force thereby influencing the probability distributions of matter.
  • noAxioms
    1.3k
    "However, with what is known about the probabilistic nature of quantum physics it is certainly possible that real mental entities can exert an independent force thereby influencing the probability distributions of matter."
    This is indeed the open door to the sort of thing required. The information provided by the mind can be made available via such means. There is an empirical test for it then: To find a construct in biological beings that is sensitive to and amplifies such data so that the information can be leveraged. Evolution is quite good at this. If there was beneficial information to be had in altered wave functions, detectors and amplifiers would quickly give survival benefits. Such detectors would not evolve if no actual information was derived from the wave functions. If evolution is not your thing, then a properly engineered being would similarly have these detectors as part of the design.

    If the data is mere qualia feedback, the brain is probably the best place to find these detectors. If actual mental function (cognition, memory) is immaterial, the logical place for the detectors is directly in the muscles and other endpoints where the free will of the mind is to be directed. The brain has no need of it.

    My personal favored interpretation of QM has a necessary side effect that such beings, sensitive to immaterial alteration of wave function, must exist, and the only question is if we are that kind of creature or not.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    I don't know if it's the same guy posting on a bunch of different boards under different names, but I keep running into people assuming that materialists are epiphenomenalists or emergentists in the epiphenomenal sense--as if that would make sense in the first place.

    A lot of us materialists are saying that brain structures in particular processes are IDENTICAL to mind. Not that mind is an "effect" of the same. If we're going to have worthwhile discussions on this stuff, don't we need to start with getting accurate the views we're going to be discussing?
  • lorenzo sleakes
    34
    Terrapin
    I am not sure what you mean by IDENTICAL. Is there some way in which the phenomenal qualities of colors, sounds, feelings and the private subjective worlds in which they appear are identical to the objective particles and their interactions ? Is it some new law that we havent discovered yet? Even if there was some bridging principle then wouldnt according to materialists, the physical causes be primary and the mental entirely dependent on it and therefore emerge out of it?
  • tom
    1.5k
    I am not sure what you mean by IDENTICAL. Is there some way in which the phenomenal qualities of colors, sounds, feelings and the private subjective worlds in which they appear are identical to the objective particles and their interactions ?lorenzo sleakes

    When you are defeated by a computer at chess, what has occurred is IDENTICAL with the physical processes that have taken place inside your laptop. Nevertheless, what has *also* happened is that an abstract object - a computer program - has beaten you at an abstract game.

    We understand a large class of abstractions well enough to be able to instantiate them on suitable hardware. When we do this, we have two compatible descriptions: the microphysical and the abstract, which need to be in some sense IDENTICAL, though only one is explanatory.

    The qualia you mention are just a software feature we don't yet know how to implement.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    I am not sure what you mean by IDENTICAL.lorenzo sleakes
    A=A, or, say, A=B, where "B" is simply another name or another way of making verbal reference to A. A classic example of that is Frege's "morning star" and "evening star." They're both Venus. Venus is identical to Venus. The extension is identical in an A=A sense.
    Is there some way in which the phenomenal qualities of colors, sounds, feelings and the private subjective worlds in which they appear are identical to the objective particles and their interactions ?
    No one said that extramental phenomena are identical to mental phenomena. What I pointed out was that as mental phenomena, they're identical to brain states (to materialists or physicalists, or which I am one). That's because "mental state" and "brain state" pick out the same thing extensionally, just like "morning star" and "evening star" do.
    Even if there was some bridging principle then wouldnt according to materialists, the physical causes be primary and the mental entirely dependent on it and therefore emerge out of it?
    No. According to materialists/physicalists the physical stuff--namely, a BRAIN in particular states is identical to mental stuff. They're the same thing. It's just two different names for the same thing, or two different ways/contexts of talking and thinking about it, a la "morning star" and "evening star."
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