I can make no sense of the notion that possibility for forming relationships between distinct objects is possible abstractly but is not also possible in a physically real sense. — M-Theory

But I'm simply arguing that logic is the relationship of ideas. Logic can be represented physically, but it is not in itself physical. (And besides - what is 'physical'? That's an enormous can of worms, which the World's Largest Machine is still trying to unravel.)

I know this is very deep question, and we're not going to solve it here. But my case rests on the fact that without the ability to make rational inferences, to say 'this means that', and so on, we can't come to any conclusions about 'what the brain does', or even 'what is physical'. Logical inference, in that sense, is epistemically prior to any kind of scientific analysis - without logic you couldn't get to first base in science of any kind. So in what sense is logic 'founded on the physical? In reality, the opposite obtains: our definition or notion of the physical, is founded on logic.

We assume nowadays that science has an in-principle account of how 'the brain produces thought'. That after all is the central dogma of scientific materialism. But as the critics of materialism (e.g. Thomas Nagel in his most recent book) argue that this dogma doesn't stand up under rational scrutiny.

I have never seen any argument such that by force of logic we must conclude that the mind and brain are not terms indicating the exact same phenomena. — m-theory

I think it's moot whether mind is 'a phenomena' at all, but that is another large question.

But studies like this:

"In the 2006 study, Owen and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate if a 23-year-old woman in a persistent vegetative state would respond to a series of pre-recorded spoken statements. Owen and his colleagues found that the statements produced brain activation patterns that were very similar to those observed in healthy volunteers, in regions known to be important for the processing of speech."

Only tell us about observable phenomena, while consciousness isn't actually third-person observable. — Terrapin Station

You asked why would I "think" that a person in a coma is conscious, those ones are generally considered acceptable motivations to think so. If you want to assume the radical skeptic position that wouldn't acknowledge any consciousness until you are able to feel it in first person then you are a solipsist and it doesn't make sense to consider the problem of people in a coma since even perfectly asleep people are problematic.

I don't think we experience qualities of experience at all; we experience activities involving things and those activities have qualities. So we experience the activity of drinking beer and the beer has a taste. We don't experience the quality of the taste of the beer; we experience the taste of the beer, and we assign different qualities to the different tastes of beer. — John

I think this can be confusing. When we drink beer we are not just experiencing "the activity" or "the taste OF BEER", we are instead experiencing the consequences of this activity to the human sensory apparatus, which is quite different from the consequences of the same activities to other kind of sensory apparati. The "feeling of drinking beer" of a human is different from the "feeling of drinking beer" of a horse. This is the point of the qualia: there is a mediation between the activity and the neural structure that encodes and present this activity to the "self".

You asked why would I "think" that a person in a coma is conscious, those ones are generally considered acceptable motivations to think so. If you want to assume the radical skeptic position that wouldn't acknowledge any consciousness until you are able to feel it in first person then you are a solipsist and it doesn't make sense to consider the problem of people in a coma since even perfectly asleep people are problematic. — Babbeus

First off, you're apparently using "solipsism" to refer to a belief that one can't know that anyone else has a mind. There's a problem with that. We can let the IEP explain:

Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that "I am the only mind which exists," or "My mental states are the only mental states." However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, "existence" means for me my existence and that of my mental states. Existence is everything that I experience -- physical objects, other people, events and processes -- anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the space and time in which I coexist with others and is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness. — Internet Encylclopedia of Philosophy

Solipsism is not a view that I hold, and as explained above, that would even be the case if I believed that I can not know that anyone else has a mind. (I don't believe the latter claim, but if I did . . . )

Secondly, for some strange reason you're apparently completely ignoring the factor of others persons' first-person reports of their mental experience. I don't ignore that. I consider that, in conjunction with confirmation that they have brains functioning in particular ways, if their mentality is at all in doubt (for example, if we have reason to wonder if the person isn't maybe really a robot instead), to be sufficient evidence for others' mental phenomena.

I think this is quite misleading, there is a confusion about what we are denoting with the word "blue".
There are two possibilities:

"blue" is denoting the radiation with wavelenght 450-495 nm: in this case saying "experience blue" doesn't make sense because the experience comes from the interaction between the radiation and the human sensory apparatus: one could experience the radiation in different ways if he is a different animal
"blue" is denoting the quale produced by the radiation, in this case the robot wouldn't "experience blue" but there is no point in considering the knowledge about the light radiation that produces that quale on the human sensory apparatus — Babbeus

If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that sensory apparatus of the scientist and of the robot can detect blue light, but neither is capable of transmitting that signal to their respective CPUs.

You claim that the quale of blue is "produced by the radiation", but it cannot be. It cannot even be produced by the electrical or nerve signal. You further claim that the robot cannot "experience blue", why not? It is certainly detect blue, is affected by blue, and can make decisions based on this.

Furthermore you claim that "there is no point in considering the knowledge about the light radiation". Really?

You claim that the quale of blue is "produced by the radiation", but it cannot be. It cannot even be produced by the electrical or nerve signal. — tom

The quale, qualia being a term conventionally limited to mental contexts, is produced by the phenomena of electromagnetic radation being reflected off of an object in conjunction with the light waves traveling through the air between you and the object in conjunction with your eye being stimulated by those light waves in conjunction with your optic nerve sending that signal to your brain etc. In other words, it's the product of a "system" that includes all of those things (plus we could go back to the light source and so on).

You further claim that the robot cannot "experience blue", why not? — tom

It doesn't have a brain. Mentality, which is what experience is a part of, seems to be something peculiar about the particular materials, in the particular structures, undergoing the particular processes, that comprise brains functioning in mental ways.

The quale, qualia being a term conventionally limited to mental contexts, is produced by the phenomena of electromagnetic radation being reflected off of an object in conjunction with the light waves traveling through the air between you and the object in conjunction with your eye being stimulated by those light waves in conjunction with your optic nerve sending that signal to your brain etc. In other words, it's the product of a "system" that includes all of those things (plus we could go back to the light source and so on). — Terrapin Station

So why doesn't the robot possess qualia then? It has all of those features. Why don't non-human animals possess them?

And by the way, it is possible to create qualia in the human mind by direct nerve stimulation, or by use of the imagination.

It doesn't have a brain. Mentality, which is what experience is a part of, seems to be something peculiar about the particular materials, in the particular structures, undergoing the particular processes, that comprise brains functioning in mental ways. — Terrapin Station

Are you pretending to have invented new physics that only occurs in brains? Seems very Deepak Chopra to me. Claiming that there is "something peculiar about the particular materials" doesn't strike me as as particularly scientific.

But we know that because the human brain is computationally universal, it can be put in 1-to-1 correspondence with any other computationally universal device, so qualia cannot be a "peculiar" property of "particular materials". No new physics required!

So why doesn't the robot possess qualia then? — tom

I answered this in the post you're responding to. (I'll just assume that you answer posts as you read them rather than reading the whole thing first, then going back and responding.)

And by the way, it is possible to create qualia in the human mind by direct nerve stimulation, or by use of the imagination. — tom

Sure. I didn't describe the only system--quite obviously, as not every system is going to be a description of perceiving color qualia from external sources. Different descriptions will fit different examples. That shouldn't require explaining.

Are you pretending to have invented new physics that only occurs in brains? Seems very Deepak Chopra to me. Claiming that there is "something peculiar about the particular materials" doesn't strike me as as particularly scientific. — tom

It strikes you as unscientific that different materials, in different structures, undergoing different processes have different properties? Hahaha.

it can be put in 1-to-1 correspondence with any other computationally universal device — tom

You're the Deutsch acolyte, aren't you?

Computational universality is nonsense (well, outside of the purely formal/mathematical construction of it; that is, as it's nonsense construed as something with any broader ontological applicability), and Deutsch sucks. We could go step by step through that. Let's start with analyzing just what correspondence is re 1-to-1 correspondence.

Secondly, for some strange reason you're apparently completely ignoring the factor of others persons' first-person reports of their mental experience. I don't ignore that. I consider that, in conjunction with confirmation that they have brains functioning in particular ways, if their mentality is at all in doubt (for example, if we have reason to wonder if the person isn't maybe really a robot instead), to be sufficient evidence for others' mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

I was replying to your objection:

Studies like this [...] only tell us about observable phenomena, while consciousness isn't actually third-person observable.

My point is that this kind of objection also applies to consciousness of people that are awake with fully functioning brain.

My point is that this kind of objection also applies to consciousness of people that are awake with fully functioning brain. — Babbeus

The difference is that in the one case we're talking about people who are conscious and who can give us reports of their first-person experience. (While in the other case, if the person can talk to us at a later time, they often tell us that they had no first-person experience.)

You further claim that the robot cannot "experience blue", why not? It is certainly detect blue, is affected by blue, and can make decisions based on this. — tom

I wanted to mean: maybe the robot can experience his own "robotic" quale of blue but it cannot experience our human quale of blue (assuming there is a unique quale of blue for every human) - that is what we could mean by the word "blue".

Furthermore you claim that "there is no point in considering the knowledge about the light radiation". Really?

What I mean is that the experience of the quale is unrelated with the knowledge of the radiation.

What do you see as the relevance of the Feynman quote--that your brilliance is being too easily dismissed? — Terrapin Station

Philosophers don't define terms like "insanity" which even psychologists don't use. Its promoted by three year old children calling each other names on the playground and by legal courts attempting to draw lines in the sand. Feynman saw the humor in quantum mechanics was related to just such attempts to define what is real and unreal, sane and insane. Without any references to object physical reality it becomes merely another abstraction, just as apparently "qualia" has become for you, where the only way to make progress is to prove yourself wrong.

The difference is that in the one case we're talking about people who are conscious and who can give us reports of their first-person experience. (While in the other case, if the person can talk to us at a later time, they often tell us that they had no first-person experience.) — Terrapin Station

But this difference is not relevant for that specific objection: "Studies like this [...] only tell us about observable phenomena, while consciousness isn't actually third-person observable". Reports of first-person experience are just other kind of "observable phenomena" for any external observer. A machine can "report personal experience" if programmed appropriately without having any, while a human can be unable to report anything (for example if he didn't learn a language) yet he could be having first-person experience.

"Studies like this"--where we're talking about someone in a vegetative state. Usually we're not talking about someone in a vegetative state.

If you don't feel that reports of first-person experience matter, that's fine. That's how you feel.

Not everyone feels the same way.

Re machines, I already anticipated and addressed that objection above (because it's as cliched as bringing up Hitler when we're talking about ethics).

If you don't feel that reports of first-person experience matter, that's fine. That's how you feel.
Not everyone feels the same way. — Terrapin Station

We are not discussing about our personal opinion, we are discussing about arguments.

We are not discussing about our personal opinion, we are discussing about arguments. — Babbeus

What you take to be sufficient to believe or not believe a claim can't be anything other than a personal opinion.

But Dennett is an eliminative materialist, which Wittgenstein never was.

Dennett's view is that what we take to be qualia, what appears to us as first-person experience, really is the snap, crackle and pop of synapses. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that you are describing materialism there. But why do you say it is eliminative?

To say that a solid chair is really a distribution of atoms and mostly empty space does not make us eliminative about solid chairs. They are different concepts and there may also be explanatory gaps in our understanding of how the physics relates to our ordinary concept of chairs.

Similarly, a natural explanation of first-person experience does not imply a denial of our experience, including our beliefs, feelings, desires, etc.

That is why Dennett is dismissive of arguments for the reality of the first-person perspective. His whole life's work is to try and demonstrate that the first-person perspective can be reduced to third-person descriptions of natural processes, with nothing left out. Which is the gist of the argument between Chalmers and Dennett. — Wayfarer

What Dennett is dismissing is the infallible authority of the first-person perspective, not the reality of first-person experience. That is, our reports of our experiences are always open to investigation and analysis and can, at least in principle, be mistaken.

This, I think, just follows from Wittgenstein's private language argument. We are reporting on our experience in the world (the apple is red, etc.), not on a private, inner world.

It seems to me that you are describing materialism there. But why do you say it is eliminative? — AndrewM

The term 'eliminative materialism' refers to a school of thought, of which Daniel Dennett is a prominent advocate (others including the husband and wife team of Pamela and Paul Churchlands.)

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Actually even that is not really correct - 'eliminativism' insists that the first-person experience, the subject of Descartes' 'cogito', is unreal.)

Eliminativism is a radical school of thought, in that it really does question the reality of first-person experience - not simply 'reports' about it, but the reality of it. And it is exactly in that context that the term 'qualia' is debated. It's got little to do with Wittgenstein's 'private language' argument, as I have noted, Wittgenstein was not a materialist, but Dennett is.

What Dennett is dismissing is the infallible authority of the first-person perspective, not the reality of first-person experience. — AndrewM

Here are excerpts from last section of the Wikipedia article on Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, which explicitly argues that first-person experience is unreal:

Critics of Dennett's approach, such as David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel, argue that Dennett's argument misses the point of the inquiry by merely redefining consciousness as an external property and ignoring the subjective aspect completely. This has led detractors to nickname the book Consciousness Ignored and Consciousness Explained Away. Dennett ...responds that the aforementioned "subjective aspect" of conscious minds is nonexistent, an unscientific remnant of commonsense "folk psychology," and that his alleged redefinition is the only coherent description of consciousness.
...

Searle said further: "To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?"

Emphasis added. You might think this is a self-refuting argument, as Searle does, and as I do, but it's better to be clear that this is what Dennett is really on about.

//edit// That's why I am claiming that Dennett and others of that school, are the direct descendants of behavioural psychologists like J B Watson and B F Skinner. They too deny the reality of mind and they too treat humans as being essentially automata or robots.

They too deny the reality of mind and they too treat humans as being essentially automata or robots. — Wayfarer

Very strange.

That's why I am claiming that Dennett and others of that school, are the direct descendants of behavioural psychologists like J B Watson and B F Skinner. They too deny the reality of mind and they too treat humans as being essentially automata or robots.

I find that this issue is confusing to people due to the conflation of thought and mind. Thought is a computation carried out by the brain, whereas mind is some intangible quality of being and consciousness. It appears that these eliminativists are making this conflation and by explaining thought as computation(including the subconscious thinking) which can be mimicked by computers and robots, they ignore the intangible nature of mind on the assumption that it is simply a product of a certain complexity of that same computation.

I agree with you but the reason I provided all of those details, is because it is the likes of Dennett, et al, who have the arguments about 'qualia' and whether they're real or not. What I'm trying to illustrate is the background to the argument about qualia, and why it is a subject of debate.

So, whilst I agree that 'mind is intangible', if you were challenged to show why you believe there is an intangible thing called 'mind', I think you would find it quite difficult to demonstrate. Dennett would have no trouble showing you that what you take 'mind' to be, can be accounted for in his terms. You might intuitively feel that he's not correct, but actually showing why he's wrong is not so easy. He would say 'the reason we ignore the so-called "intangible quality" you're referring to, is because it isn't real'. And I think that you would find it quite difficult to persuade him that it was!

By way of background, have a look at this long read.

I spent years arguing this on the skeptics (Randi) forum(it was a lot of fun by the way). I would always fall back on the presence of consciousness(mind) in primitive animals, or the impossibility of demonstrating or proving consciousness in computers, robots, or mechanical mimicry etc.

Well that provides a perfect intro for one of my very favourite quotes on this exact topic.

If there were such machines with the organs and shape of a monkey or of some other non-rational animal, we would have no way of discovering that they are not the same as these animals. But if there were machines that resembled our bodies and if they imitated our actions as much as is morally possible, we would always have two very certain means for recognizing that, none the less, they are not genuinely human. The first is that they would never be able to use speech, or other signs composed by themselves, as we do to express our thoughts to others. For one could easily conceive of a machine that is made in such a way that it utters words, and even that it would utter some words in response to physical actions that cause a change in its organs—for example, if someone touched it in a particular place, it would ask what one wishes to say to it, or if it were touched somewhere else, it would cry out that it was being hurt, and so on. But it could not arrange words in different ways to reply to the meaning of everything that is said in its presence, as even the most unintelligent human beings can do. The second means is that, even if they did many things as well as or, possibly, better than anyone of us, they would infallibly fail in others. Thus one would discover that they did not act on the basis of knowledge, but merely as a result of the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.

— René Descartes
Discourse on Method in Discourse on Method and Related Writings (1637), trans. Desmond M. Clarke, Penguin

1637!

Dennett's view is that what we take to be qualia, what appears to us as first-person experience, really is the snap, crackle and pop of synapses — Wayfarer

Andrew was saying that what you describe there is just materialism. It's not eliminativist.

For example, I'm a physicalist/"materialist," but not an eliminaltivist. My view is that qualia and first-person experiences are really "the snap, crackle and pop of synapses." That denotes materialism, but it's not sufficient to denote eliminativism.

Whenever you say that something 'is really' something else, you're denoting a relationship of equivalence - that 'this' means 'that', or that 'this' (neuronal pattern) equals 'that' (experience), or that from this observation, we can inferthat meaning.

Now I say, there is no way to show that this "equals" is a material process. There's nothing in physics itself that comes even close to providing that. And whatever conclusions you want to draw about, or from, neuoroscience, relies on your ability to argue that this means that (and so on). And that process is, I say, purely the relationship of ideas, there is nothing physical about it.

That was awkwardly worded on my part. Have a listen to 2 minutes of this talk by Loyd Gerson, for a very brief Aristotelean argument as to why, if materialism is true, you could not think:

Whenever you say that something 'is really' something else, you're denoting a relationship of equivalence - that 'this' means 'that', or that 'this' (neuronal pattern) equals 'that' (experience), or that from this observation, we can inferthat meaning.

Now I say, there is no way to show that this "equals" is a material process. There's nothing in physics itself that comes even close to providing that. And whatever conclusions you want to draw about, or from, neuoroscience, relies on your ability to argue that this means that (and so on). And that process is, I say, purely the relationship of ideas, there is nothing physical about it. — Wayfarer

What does any of that have to do with whether "what we take to be qualia, what appears to us as first-person experience, really is the snap, crackle and pop of synapses" is sufficient to count as eliminative materialism rather than just materialism in a broader sense (of which eliminative materialism is a subspecies)?

Re changing the topic and the video you posted:

(a) I don't buy that there is anything that isn't a particular. I'm a nominalist.
(a1) Obviously, nominalists disagree that thinking can't obtain under nominalism.
(b) I don't buy that there are real abstract objects.
(c) I don't buy that there are universal truths.
(d) The idea that one has to embrace anti-materialism to explain thinking is false on my view; and in fact, the very notion of nonphysical existents is incoherent on my view.
(e) I don't know who he was referring to re associating thinking with simple "rule-following," but that's not my view or the view of anyone I'm familiar with (that I recall at least).
(f) Re the argument based on knowledge being an "infallible state," the idea that knowledge is an "infallible state" is nonsense in the first place.
(g) Re "to conflate knowledge and belief"--what is he talking about? Standardly, knowledge is justified true belief (sans Gettier objections). That's not a conflation, that's the received view of what knowledge is, and it goes all the way back to Plato. I suppose he's saying that it isn't just belief (he should make that explicit, though). But justified true belief is still belief, and it's fallible.

Re your comments by the way, no one is saying that equality is a process (of any sort, physical or nonphysical). It's a relation; namely, the relation of identity. I'd not be able to make any sense out of saying that the identity relation of the morning star to the evening star isn't physical. (Although, of course, a fortiori I can't make sense out of saying that anything is nonphysical, since the notion of nonphysical <<whatevers>> seems completely incoherent to me.)

no one is saying that equality is a process (of any sort, physical or nonphysical). It's a relation; namely, the relation of identity. — Terrapin Station

That's I meant by 'awkwardly worded on my part'. What I'm saying is that relations of identity i.e. that 'neural events' are the same as 'the act of thinking', relies on or is an abstraction. Logic itself relies on abstraction. It immaterial whether you buy it, you need to refute it.

This is fundamental to the whole argument about mind and matter.