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Although neither problem has been solved, neuroscientists agree on many features of both of them, and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"–the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain… Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine not because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.
Joy and I sparred over this issue yesterday on another thread. Specifically, we were discussing the question of whether 'intent', or 'will', is a physical phenomenon.
Joy challenged:
Unless one can evidentially demonstrate that 'intent' is a physical construct - a quantitative 'thing' rather than a qualitative, immaterial attribute - then one has no good reason to assert that 'intent' is complex at all.
My response contains excerpts from a fascinating Scientific American article that shows that the will is physical and describes what happens when the underlying neural mechanism is damaged.
My response contains excerpts from a fascinating Scientific American article that shows that the will is physical and describes what happens when the underlying neural mechanism is damaged.
Appeal to improper authority, false cause - non causa pro causa. No matter how "fascinating" you think SA's articles (or Steven Pinker) are, no matter what you hope to prove about a predetermined (but unestablished) cause, your appeal does not settle issues that are not settled. Opinions are a dime a dozen, and one may pick and choose 'authorities' to make one's case for them. But because the argument is logically fallacious and comes without the force of will - since you claim to have none - the argument fails.
You want us to accept your belief that qualitative aspects of mind are physical, because Pinker believes they're physical (and you agree with his position). What does a "beauty" look like when you hold it in your hands? What is it made of? How do you tell it apart from an "ugly?" Never mind. It's a waste of time to argue with zombies.
"Identifying awareness with brain physiology, they say, is a kind of "meat chauvinism" that would dogmatically deny consciousness to Lieut. Commander Data just because he doesn't have the soft tissue of a human brain. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators–a leap that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness."
Appeal to Star Trek. Now, THERE's a scholarly approach to the 'hard problem'! [/barf]
Pinker is a member of the "More Neural Than Thou" crowd (of which the Churchlands are the main philosophical proselytizers). There is nothing wrong with choosing to believe that you're a zombified meat puppet - to those of us who are willing to respect others' freedom of will - so long as you refrain from eating other people's brains. My Zombie Survival Guide has a good rundown of self defense tactics to protect against infection and attack, so I'm not worried.
Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine not because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.
Which comes as a surprise to noone. It is a much more difficult proposition to show that a change in thinking always follows rather than sometimes preceeding (and causing) a biochemical change in the brain.
Asking for Stephen Pinker's opinion on the nature of consciousness is like asking Richard Dawkins on whether evolution might possibly involve teleology.
You already know exactly what answer you are going to get.
Time should be flogged for letting him write this article without a counterpoint from someone like David Chalmers.
And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence. Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks, and near death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain. In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.
While I'm skeptical of anecdotal claims, there have been out of body experiences of patients who were blind from birth, reporting an ability to see during the experience. If so the "convergence of vision and bodily sensations" would demand a level of detail I have not seen.
Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks
A laughably absurd propaganda statement.
For those interested in what those experiments actually found, read Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum's book. Yes, some mediums were found to be fraudulent publicity seekers. But others showed every evidence of being legitimate. And there are mediums today who have undergone rigorous triple-blind scientific testing and demonstrated statistically very significant results.
and near death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain.
More absurdity. Many NDE's occur before any oxygen deprivation could possible happen. For example, mountaineers who fall off a summit and have a near-death experience before they even hit the ground. Sometimes NDE experiencers never suffer any bodily harm, such as a climber who slips and falls, experiences an NDE, but is caught by his or her rope and is uninjured.
Pinker is simply a propagandist who has never actually examined the evidence, because his mind is already made up. It is shameful that people like him are given a megaphone by Time magazine to trumpet mistruths and distortions.
The way I view these things is fairly simple. If you are a metaphysical materialist, you have exactly zero reason to argue the point. Zombies have no original thoughts and no creative synthesizing abilities. Thus they have nothing pertinent to say.
It's a little like trying to discuss physics with a True Believer [TM] in multiverses. If nothing is objectively real, there's nothing to discuss.
Why would anyone seek the nature of consciousness in the non-conscious, or the nature of reality in bizarro-world?
There are several studies in the psychology literature showing that psychotherapy tends to ameliorate brain dysfunction which is associated with mental disorders.
The Association for Psychological Science's journal Psychological Science, for example, has an article currently scheduled for publication: "Changes in Anterior Cingulate and Amygdala After Cognitive Behavior Therapy of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder."
The article is by Kim Felmingham, Andrew Kemp, Leanne Williams, Pritha Das, Gerard Hughes, Anthony Peduto, and Richard Bryant.
Here's how the article begins:
[begin excerpt]
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop from impaired extinction of conditioned fear responses, and exposure-based treatment of PTSD is thought to facilitate extinction learning (Charney, 2004). Fear extinction is mediated by inhibitory control of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) over amygdala-based fear processes (Phelps, Delgado, Nearing, & LeDoux, 2004; Quirk, Russo, Barron, & LeBron, 2000). Most neuroimaging studies of PTSD reveal reduced vmPFC activity (particularly in rostral anterior cingulate cortex, or rACC; Lanius et al., 2001; Shin et al., 2005), and some find increased amygdala activity during threat processing (Shin et al., 2005); in addition, increased amygdala activity during fear conditioning and reduced vmPFC activity during extinction have been reported in PTSD (Bremner et al., 2005).
Although PTSD patients show increased orbitofrontal and medial
prefrontal activity following treatment with serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRTs; Fernandez et al., 2001; Seedat et al., 2004), no studies have investigated neural networks before and after exposure- based treatment of PTSD. We report the first such study. We hypothesized that symptom reduction would be associated with increased rACC activity and reduced amygdala activity during fear processing.
Psychological Science - February 2007 - In Press
[end excerpt]
Here's how the article ends: "This study provides the first evidence that successful exposure therapy for PTSD is associated with increased rACC and reduced amygdala activation during fear processing. This pattern is consistent with evidence of vmPFC involvement in fear extinction (Quirk et al., 2000). This study requires replication in research using larger samples, employing a wait-list control condition, and examining responses to trauma-related stimuli. The current data indicate that the neural correlates of fear processing after PTSD resolution accord with evidence that amygdala and rACC activity underlie the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear."
[end of article]
How information received by the brain can ensue in physiological changes in that brain is a fascinating question. We don't seem to be anywhere close to answering it.
Having sifted out the name-calling from your first post, the only content remaining was your claim that my argument somehow depends on an appeal to the authority of Steven Pinker and Scientific American.
Now, to almost everyone else reading this, it is obvious that merely quoting a writer or a magazine does not amount to an appeal to authority. If it did, then every scientific paper published this year would be based on a fundamental fallacy, since scientists always cite their predecessors. Either you don't understand this, in which case you should really give it some thought, or you are simply looking for an excuse to avoid answering my original argument about the physicality of the will.
Based on your second comment, I tend to suspect the latter, as you seem to be desperate to pretend that there's nothing to discuss:
If you are a metaphysical materialist, you have exactly zero reason to argue the point. Zombies have no original thoughts and no creative synthesizing abilities. Thus they have nothing pertinent to say.
It's a little like trying to discuss physics with a True Believer [TM] in multiverses. If nothing is objectively real, there's nothing to discuss.
The idea that materialism implies zombiehood is a misconception. But let's take it as a given for the moment. If we assume you are correct about the immaterial mind, then neither of us is a zombie. That, according to you, makes us capable of arguing the point. So if you are correct, there is something to discuss, and you should be able to provide an argument for your position!
So let's hear it. How does your concept of an immaterial will square with the story of Mr. M?
Keith, I'm afraid I'm missing the significance of Mr. M's story. Yes, messing with brain physiology can and usually does produce behavioral changes of one kind or another. Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex produces disturbances in what we usually call "intentional behavior." But so what?
What I'd like to see you try your hand at explaining, as a materialist (did I get that right?), is the reverse of this pattern: how does psychotherapy produce changes in brain physiology, as outlined in the excerpts of the article I just posted?
While I'm skeptical of anecdotal claims, there have been out of body experiences of patients who were blind from birth, reporting an ability to see during the experience.
Hi Bradford,
That is actually not so surprising. Damage to a single point in the visual system, for example the retina, can result in blindness, even when the rest of the system is intact and still capable of processing visual information.
V.S. Ramachandran tells of a research subject who was retinally colorblind but also a number/color synesthete. There were therefore certain colors that he could perceive via his synesthesia, but not through his eyes. He referred to them as "Martian colors", since they were not available through his normal "terrestrial" visual experience, but Ramachandran believes that they were just the colors he would have seen had he not been colorblind. This is borne out by the testimony of other, non-colorblind number/color synesthetes, who see numbers as colored, but with the same colors they perceive via their normal visual apparatus.
Having sifted out the name-calling from your first post, the only content remaining was your claim that my argument somehow depends on an appeal to the authority of Steven Pinker and Scientific American.
Name-calling? I have re-read my first post several times, because it was not my intent to engage in ad hominem. I don't see it. I said,
1) your appeal does not settle issues that are not settled,
2) the appeal is fallacious,
3) you appeal to Pinker's arguments in Time magazine, presumably because you agree with his position,
4) it's a waste of time to argue with zombies - complete with link to David Chalmers' terrific collection of zombies on the web.
I actually kinda hoped you'd enjoy that link. I always do.
Further on I said,
1) Pinker's Star Trek analogy is amazingly trite,
2) Pinker is aligned with the neurocentric faction that includes notable others,
3) it's okay to be a zombie, and
4) it's not okay to eat other people's brains.
That last is a humorous reference to the known staple food preference of zombies. You can confirm this for yourself at the link.
Last but not least, I put in a plug for Max Brooks' great survival guide, which is currently being made into an informative popular movie. That comes under the heading of "Hollywood zombies."
Nowhere do I see an ad hominem aimed at you. I can understand if you're frustrated with my reluctance to engage what I see to be a pointless issue, based on what I already know from the long-running Great Zombie Debates. There's an entire archive of 'em over at the Journal of Consciousness Studies, including a paper by Daniel Dennett [The unimagined preposterousness of zombies]. There's another archive on Chalmers' page [Zombies & Modal Arguments], a whole stable of scientists and philosophers commenting on the zombie threat over at Zombie Alert [Experts Speak Out on the Zombie Threat], and another one from Dennett in 1999, which he delivered as the Royal Institute of Philosophy Millennial Lecture [The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of an Intuition?].
Because I'm as much an expert on zombies as Sean (of the Dead), I see no value in an extended re-hash with you. The issues remain unsettled to this day. You and I won't be settling it here.
Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain"¦ Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine not because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.
Empty phrases, cheap assertions, pseudo-science at its best. The only ghost that scientists(!?) have ever exorcised is their own soul that they left behind in absolute darkness once they embraced materialism.
In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.
Utter nonsense! Could that guy see his own body or other objects while in the OOBE state? How could our dear scientists classify that experience as OOBE? or what they know about OOBE in general? This scientific research exposes the deep ignorance of the scientists when it comes to discovering the spirit and the ethereal realms. They are totally ignorant and even more arrogant. For spiritually awakened people who deal with The Supernatural in a regular basis, a very basic concept like OOBE is well defined, well documented, observed and empirically tested. The real evidence has been here for aeons. We don't need scientists to verify it for us. We don't need blinds to lead us.
Keith, I'm afraid I'm missing the significance of Mr. M's story. Yes, messing with brain physiology can and usually does produce behavioral changes of one kind or another. Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex produces disturbances in what we usually call "intentional behavior." But so what?
Hi Lutepisc,
What's significant about it is that changes to brain physiology affect not only "intentional behavior", but intention itself. Mr. M does not say "I tried to move, but I couldn't." He says "I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Most people (like Joy) imagine the will as something separate and immaterial which manipulates the brain and body. Cases like Mr. M's show that the will does not exist independently of the brain. Change a particular part of the brain, and you change the will itself.
What I'd like to see you try your hand at explaining, as a materialist (did I get that right?), is the reverse of this pattern: how does psychotherapy produce changes in brain physiology, as outlined in the excerpts of the article I just posted?
Actually, it's pretty easy to explain from a materialist perspective, but much harder to explain otherwise.
To a materialist, the brain is a physical system. Like any system, its future state depends on the current state and the changes in its environment. Shine a light in someone's eye, and the brain will see a change in the input being provided by the optic nerve. This will cause the brain itself to change to a new state, in which it registers the visual experience.
Some changes, like the one in the example above, are transient. Others are more permanent. If you win the lottery on Tuesday, you remember it on Wednesday. The physical state of your brain has changed to incorporate the new information, by strengthening some connections and weakening others. If we could magically restore your brain to the state it was in on Tuesday, the memory of your lottery win would be erased.
If an experience like winning the lottery can change the physical state of the brain in a permanent way, why is it difficult to believe that an experience like psychotherapy could do so also?
To me, it would seem to be much harder to explain brain changes given an immaterial mind, because then you have to explain how an immaterial mind is able to alter the configuration of the material brain, thus violating the laws of physics.
Zombies (in the jargon of consciousness studies) have no conscious experience. You and I do. My question is about us, not the zombies. Pretending that this is a rehash of the zombie issue is just a way for you to avoid answering the question.
Not only that, I'm granting your assumption. Let's assume that the will is immaterial. What I'm asking for is an explanation, within your worldview, of why an immaterial will suddenly ceases to function just because a particular part of the brain is damaged.
To me, it would seem to be much harder to explain brain changes given an immaterial mind, because then you have to explain how an immaterial mind is able to alter the configuration of the material brain, thus violating the laws of physics.
It is not that the mind is "immaterial", but that materiality is itself a pattern of activity within Consciousness.
And there is nothing about mental influence upon physical systems that violates the laws of physics.
The trace theory of memory you cite has been believed for decades, but strangely these memory traces can never be found. That is because memories are not stored in the brain. The brain "tunes into" memories the same way a radio might tune into one station or another and play a different song.
Mr. M does not say "I tried to move, but I couldn't." He says "I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Yes, what's unusual about this case is the sudden onset. However, over time, the deficit became more pervasive.
The normally active and energetic man became increasingly passive and apathetic. He spent entire days in bed yet felt neither boredom nor impatience.
This sounds like "abulia," which is a well-known syndrome related to frontal systems dysfunction. This does not force one to a reductionist conclusion.
And you wrote:
The physical state of your brain has changed to incorporate the new information, by strengthening some connections and weakening others.
Here you move from talking about sensory inputs impacting the brain–which is easy to conceptualize–to "information" affecting brain circuitry, which is a different ballgame. Yes, psychotherapy involves sensory input, but the sensory data in and of themselves are not what affect the targeted brain circuitry. Rather, the semantic qualities of the information are the active ingredient.
How, exactly?
Another mind/body problem is the placebo (or nocebo, for that matter). How, exactly, does a chemically inert substance impact brain chemistry?
These are questions I don't believe we've begun to answer.
While I'm skeptical of anecdotal claims, there have been out of body experiences of patients who were blind from birth, reporting an ability to see during the experience.
Hi Bradford,
That is actually not so surprising. Damage to a single point in the visual system, for example the retina, can result in blindness, even when the rest of the system is intact and still capable of processing visual information.
I look for ways by which unusual claims might be confirmed. This stuff is intrinsically difficult but a blind person since birth would have difficulties identifying things other than colors, shapes and things that might be familair through descriptions etc. That might include an event itself which would contain unique scenery i.e. a particular place with specified individuals wearing particular clothing and so on. While trying to be open to possibilites I find those blinded by ideology tend to close off options that, if confirmed, would yield troublesome results from their POV.
In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.
Farshad complains:
Utter nonsense! Could that guy see his own body or other objects while in the OOBE state?
Yes.
How could our dear scientists classify that experience as OOBE? or what they know about OOBE in general?
The researchers were familiar with the OBE literature, as you'll see if you read their paper.
Very interesting discussion. Pinker's conclusion is somewhat depreessing but i've always had problems with the notion of an immaterial soul and keith's point above regarding 'damage to the brain' highlights exactly why. There are so many reasons to think the mind is reducible to the brain (where does your 'mind' go when you're under the knife?) *but* there is a fundamental philosophical problem as far as I can see.
The problem with the Pinker / Dennett view is that it seems to destroy something fundamental to the whole scheme - knowledge. Knowledge requires some sort of independance in the knower — something that is free from the confines of deterministic neccessity. If the mind is not in anyway free from the laws of the universe and their effects then every thought and every conclusion is just the determined outworking of those laws. If we disagree, it's not because I reached an independant conclusion as a result of your arguments, but rather the atoms in my brain changed to a different state then yours.
I think the pinker / dennett viewpoint is ultimately self stultifying meaning if it's true they can't know it's true!
Keiths, I would not have doubted that the feelings experienced by patients, including visions of seeing themselves out of body, could be explained neurobiologically in ways that preclude non-material consciousness. Unfortunately these type of evaluations do nothing to conclusively confirm or debunk out of body claims. To do that a means of measuring the sensing of objective environmental factors, independent of feelings, is needed. That would include identifying event specific information that could only have been known through an out of body perceptual experience. A blindfolded patient able to identify unique, specific visual information about his surroundings within a specific time frame is the type of thing I have in mind.
I think the pinker / dennett viewpoint is ultimately self stultifying meaning if it's true they can't know it's true!
Pinker knows this. There is a dichotomy in the lives of thinkers like him. They have a materialistic, mechanistic approach to life at work that denies concepts like free will. This will not do at home however. Treating your wife and kids like they were pre-programmed biological robots is a relational non-starter.
Zombies (in the jargon of consciousness studies) have no conscious experience. You and I do.
Not quite correct. From Dennett's introduction to the Millennium Lecture -
"Until fairly recently, this idea of a rather magical extra ingredient was the only candidate for an explanation of consciousness that even seemed to make sense. For many people, this idea (dualism) is still the only vision of consciousness that makes any sense to them, but there is now widespread agreement among scientists and philosophers that dualism is"“must be"“simply false: we are each made of mindless robots and nothing else, no non-physical, non-robotic ingredients at all."
Thus it's the debate between materialists (zombies) and dualists (vitalists). Which is right where you and I find ourselves. A hundred million words have been penned in defense of reality on the one hand, and in defense of illusion on the other. The issue will not be settled here. Besides, Ras Skywalker [Jaron Lanier] sums it up pretty well in You Can't Argue With a Zombie.
What I'm asking for is an explanation, within your worldview, of why an immaterial will suddenly ceases to function just because a particular part of the brain is damaged.
I answered this in the Designer-Centrism thread. Your television will suddenly cease to function if its wires are cut. That's not difficult.
The human brain is complex enough that, even if it were completely physically determined, its behaviour would for all intents and purposes be equivalent to free will. Until we have a complete mechanistic model of how the brain operates (which we won't see in our lifetimes), its output will remain quite unpredictable even if all relevant inputs are known. From any practical point of view, that's the same as free will.
As keiths has already pointed out, the notion that a mechanistic brain equates to a zombie lacking free will and consciousness is a complete non sequitur.
As keiths has already pointed out, the notion that a mechanistic brain equates to a zombie lacking free will and consciousness is a complete non sequitur.
Like most materialists you want to keep your cake and eat it at the same time. Free will is another term for matter determined. Im with Joy on this one.
…….all our present thoughts are mere accidents"”the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts"”i.e. of materialism and astronomy"”are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.'
CS Lewis
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 21, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
keith's point above regarding 'damage to the brain' highlights exactly why. There are so many reasons to think the mind is reducible to the brain…
Of course our mental abilities are affected by our brain's function and structure. Who would dispute this? If the brain is injured, our intellectual functioning, memory, attention/concentration, and other cognitive functioning may be affected. That's, well, a no-brainer.
But that doesn't mean that "mind" reduces to "nothing but the brain." Although the brain can affect the mind, the mind can also affect the brain. How else do you explain placebo effects or the effects of psychotherapy which show up on PET scans?
You said
…it's not because I reached an independant conclusion as a result of your arguments, but rather the atoms in my brain changed to a different state then yours.
If enough of the atoms in your brain change to a different state for one reason or another, something will be affected. Maybe your cognition, maybe your emotions, maybe your behavior, etc., depending on where, which, and how many atoms have been affected in what way. The question, though, is whether there's a "you" (whether you have a "mind," if you will) which can actually influence the atoms in your brain in some way.
This sounds like "abulia," which is a well-known syndrome related to frontal systems dysfunction. This does not force one to a reductionist conclusion.
Lutepisc,
Yes, the two are very similar, but Mr. M's condition (known as "perte d'auto-activation psychique", or "PAP") involves damage to the basal ganglia, which connect to the frontal lobes. There is no damage to the frontal lobes themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by a "reductionist conclusion", but I do think that this shows that there is no immaterial will that operates independently of the brain, feeding decisions or instructions into it. The will and decision making processes give every indication of being functions of the brain itself.
Here you move from talking about sensory inputs impacting the brain"“which is easy to conceptualize"“to "information" affecting brain circuitry, which is a different ballgame. Yes, psychotherapy involves sensory input, but the sensory data in and of themselves are not what affect the targeted brain circuitry. Rather, the semantic qualities of the information are the active ingredient.
Yes, but the brain extracts semantic information from sensory data. For example, one study found a single cell in a patient's brain which responded to the concept of "Halle Berry", whether the stimulus was a photo of her, an exaggerated drawing of her, a photo of her in full Catwoman costume (with mask), or her name spelled out in letters:
For example, a single neuron in the left posterior hippocampus of one subject responded to 30 out of 87 images, firing in response to all pictures of actress Jennifer Aniston, but not, or only very weakly, to other famous and non-famous faces, landmarks, animals or objects. The neuron also did not respond to pictures of Jennifer Aniston together with actor Brad Pitt.
In another instance, pictures of actress Halle Berry activated a neuron in the right anterior hippocampus of a different patient, as did a caricature of the actress, images of her in the lead role of the film "Catwoman" and a letter sequence spelling her name.
In a third subject, a neural unit in the left anterior hippocampus responded to pictures of the landmark Sydney Opera House and Baha'i Temple, and also to the letter string "Sydney Opera," but not to other letter strings, such as "Eiffel Tower."
Another mind/body problem is the placebo (or nocebo, for that matter). How, exactly, does a chemically inert substance impact brain chemistry?
The same way that an emotionally loaded experience, like getting a sought-after promotion, does. The inert substance itself does little or nothing, of course, but the experience of taking a pill does, especially if you believe that the pill contains a powerful drug and you are hoping for a cure.
The experience of taking a placebo, thinking it is a real drug, puts the brain into a state of expectation that it would not be in otherwise. Because of the brain's power and influence on the body, this can mean the alleviation of actual physical symptoms of illness (in the placebo case), or the induction of unwanted "side-effects" (in the nocebo case).
(where does your 'mind' go when you're under the knife?)
Your question assumes that consciousness would need to exist in space and time when the body is unconscious. Consciousness itself does not actually exist within space and time, it is timeless, which is why it is always "right here and right now".
but I do think that this shows that there is no immaterial will that operates independently of the brain, feeding decisions or instructions into it.
No, Joy's analogy fits perfectly.
A damaged television set might have problems with audio, or video, or some stations might not come through at all.
What is most interesting about the brain is its plasticity. Often times damage to one area can be overcome by moving functionality to a completely different part of the brain. Of course there are cases where plasticity fails, but it is remarkable how in some cases there can be recovery from tremendous amounts of brain damage. This fits in with the idea that the brain is an interface for consciousness and mind instead of being identical to them.
Vivid quotes C.S. Lewis:
"¦"¦.all our present thoughts are mere accidents"”the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts"”i.e. of materialism and astronomy"”are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.'
Organisms that fail to generate an accurate picture of their environment tend to die fairly rapidly and unpleasantly. In other words, humans (and every other organism) have been strongly selected for the ability to accurately form an internal representation of the outside world, and to act appropriately given that representation. We have also been selected for the ability to make accurate logical connections between complex events and ideas ("if I spear Hurr in the gut, he will call out to Barg and Grum, who share his hearth and will thus come to his aid, and I will be unable to overcome them all"). I must admit that the ability of a tiny proportion of humans to deal with immensely sophisticated and complex ideas (such as string theory) surprises me, but our ability to do good observational science and draw logical conclusions does not.
And of course, theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards for the conduct of science. If there is a god that controls the universe, how can you ever know that what you are seeing is real and not just that god controlling your mind? You can argue that the revealed words of the god suggest that the picture it shows you is accurate, but why should you trust those words? Because the god tells you that you should? Seems like a fairly weak basis for trusting the universe to me.
n (where does your 'mind' go when you're under the knife?
Nowhere. It's still there, but awareness is disabled. Awareness (perceptual and analytical real-time consciousness) is prevented from operating through its physical channels by interference with a functional coupling dynamic of its expression. The action has to do with the configurational dynamics of proteins in the brain. According to this model anesthetic gas molecules act via interference with van der Waals (London) forces in hydrophobic pockets of the proteins. During normal consciousness these quantum mechanical forces establish instantaneous couplings of pairs of electron-induced dipoles to maintain superpositional states between adjacent amino acid groups in the proteins (affecting conformational state). The anesthetic molecule binds to receptors in the hyrophobic pocket (lipid interior region) of the protein. This prevents normal awareness and depresses conscious physical processes, but does not interfere with re-establishment of normal operation when the anesthetic is withdrawn.
Most people remember who they are after coming out of anesthesia.
There is no reason to suspect that consciousness ceases to exist - or "goes" anywhere - when people are anesthetized, or "unconscious." They are simply unaware and non-volitional. Unless there is permanent damage to specific structures (not normally a result of sleep or anesthesia), the unitary nature of consciousness with all its extended (in time) contents is still there when awareness returns.
There's a good exposition of this hypothesis here.
I think you both are asking the same question, which boils down to this: How can we know that our thoughts are true if they are based on a mere physical process? Where does the truth come from if our brains are just a mechanism consisting of a collection of atoms, interacting with each other and the environment according to the laws of physics?
First, let me remind you that we already have physical mechanisms that are capable of producing truth. Punch "3 + 7" into a working calculator, hit "=", and you'll see "10" in the display. A purely physical process has converted an incomplete equation into a mathematical truth, right before your eyes. The atoms and electrons in the calculator did nothing but blindly follow the laws of physics the entire time, but out popped a true answer at the end. Computers, of course, are also tools for producing truths via purely physical processes.
The reason this works is that true thought exhibits regularities. Physical processes also exhibit regularities. By mapping the regularities of thought onto the regularities of physics via careful engineering, we can guarantee that the answers produced by a physical mechanism are true.
This process works for logical as well as mathematical truths, which is why computers can process all sorts of data and not just numbers.
Now, you might object that calculators work because they are designed to produce truth, while human brains just evolved. So while we're justified in trusting a designed calculator, we cannot trust an undesigned brain.
The answer, of course, is that while brains are not literally designed, they are "designed" by natural selection. Brains must produce at least a good approximation of the truth or they will be a liability to their possessors, who will then be less successful in reproducing, so that there are fewer copies of the corresponding genes in future generations. The brains that are preserved by selection are going to be the ones that allow us to plan ahead, anticipate the weather, figure out what our predators and prey are going to do, make friends with the right people, attract a mate, etc. All of these tasks are done better by brains which work better (i.e. tend to produce true thoughts).
Evolution got our brains to a certain point, but they're still not perfect. How can we improve even more on our ability to determine the truth?
1. We've learned to double-check ourselves. You can figure something out twice and make sure you get the same answer. Truths figured out via one method are checked against those already known to be true, or those generated by another method.
2. We recruit others to double-check us. One person may make the same mistake twice in a row, but a different person is less likely to. Generations of people can gather information, refine knowledge, add to it, and pass it on to their children.
3. We use the experience gained through double-checking ourselves to identify sources of error. For example, we all know that humans are subject to visual illusions (here is one of my favorites). Knowing this, we can invent instruments such as photometers to give us correct answers despite the misleading answers given to us by our brains.
4. We standardize our methods. Science is a standardized way of avoiding common human pitfalls in the search for truth.
5. We get machines to do the work for us. Few would dispute that a modern computer with robust software is going to make far fewer mistakes in computing the payroll then a human would.
Via all these methods, a certain innate ability to discern limited truths can be bootstrapped into something much more powerful.
One final point. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that our minds are in fact immaterial. How does this help us?
Answer: it doesn't. Even if they are immaterial, we still don't know that we can trust our minds. Being immaterial doesn't give them a direct line to the truth. Being immaterial doesn't make them perfect (and we all know from cruel experience that they are not perfect).
But what if they're designed by God? Surely then we can trust them, right? Well, no. As religious ID proponents correctly point out, you have to know what God's goals were in designing them. If perfect reasoning wasn't the goal, then human minds are not going to reason perfectly. And again, we know from experience that they do not.
So we really have exactly the same question of reliability whether we hypothesize that minds are material or immaterial. We have to just try them out and see if they work, and then improve on them using the methods I outlined above.
Zombies (in the jargon of consciousness studies) have no conscious experience. You and I do.
Joy wrote:
Not quite correct. From Dennett's introduction to the Millennium Lecture -
[quote from Dennett snipped out]
Joy,
You have Dennett's position completely backward. This is getting to be a habit with you — could you please, please work on your reading comprehension?
If you look at section 3 of the lecture, you'll see the following (emphasis mine):
Dennett:
The threadbare stereotype of philosophers passionately arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is not much improved when the topic is updated to whether zombies"“admitted by all to be imaginary beings"“are (1) metaphysically impossible, (2) logically impossible, (3) physically impossible, or just (4) extremely unlikely to exist.
And a bit later:
Thomas Nagel is one reactionary who has recoiled somewhat from zombies. In his recent address to this body, Nagel is particularly circumspect in his embrace. On the one hand, he declares that naturalism has so far failed us:
"We do not at present possess the conceptual equipment to understand how subjective and physical features could both be essential aspects of a single entity or process."
Why not? Because "we still have to deal with the apparent conceivability of . . . a zombie." Notice that Nagel speaks of the apparent conceivability of a zombie. I have long claimed that this conceivability is only apparent; some misguided philosophers think they can conceive of a zombie, but they are badly mistaken. Nagel, for one, agrees:
"…the powerful intuition that it is conceivable that an intact and normally functioning physical human organism could be a completely unconscious zombie is an illusion."
Here's why I think you are confused. You saw the following statement of Dennett's…
…we are each made of mindless robots and nothing else, no non-physical, non-robotic ingredients at all.
…and you assumed that if Dennett is claiming that we are made of "mindless robots and nothing else", that he must think we are zombies. He does not, as the quotes above show. Dennett believes that consciousness — true consciousness — emerges from the way the "mindless robots" are put together.
And of course, theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards for the conduct of science. If there is a god that controls the universe, how can you ever know that what you are seeing is real and not just that god controlling your mind? You can argue that the revealed words of the god suggest that the picture it shows you is accurate, but why should you trust those words? Because the god tells you that you should? Seems like a fairly weak basis for trusting the universe to me.
I guess this is suppose to be an answer to my comment where I said "Like most materialists you want to keep your cake and eat it at the same time. Free will is another term for matter determined. Im with Joy on this one."
How it is applicable escapes me even if we assume your view
In other words, humans (and every other organism) have been strongly selected for the ability to accurately form an internal representation of the outside world, and to act appropriately given that representation. We have also been selected for the ability to make accurate logical connections between complex events and ideas
Do rocks choose to roll down hill freely? Do rocks act appropriately when they do roll down a hillside? I would say no to the former and yes to the latter. So what? As individual matter masses, matter masses do what it does no free will at all. I could just as well say that evolution has given individual matter masses the illusion that individual matter masses actually do make choices, do have an "I" do have a "we" so that individual matter masses act appropriately.
Logic? where is logic in matter? matter does what it does. Do rocks have logic?
And of course, theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards for the conduct of science. If there is a god that controls the universe, how can you ever know that what you are seeing is real and not just that god controlling your mind? You can argue that the revealed words of the god suggest that the picture it shows you is accurate, but why should you trust those words? Because the god tells you that you should? Seems like a fairly weak basis for trusting the universe to me.
O f course theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards although a strong case can be made that the concept of discerning the laws of the unverse, that they could be investugated and understood flowed from the concept of a lawgiver. Science IMO owes a great debt to theism and theists in spite of the harm religion has inflicted on scientists.
If there is a god that controls the universe, how can you ever know that what you are seeing is real and not just that god controlling your mind?
I can tell you this if there is not something like a God I know that logically I can not live consistently within my own world view. Now it certainly could be that God is playing games, God may be diabolical and cruel, nothing I see is reall. I may in fact be a figment of Gods imagination and not real at all. These are all possibilities. However there is also the possibility that God is good, that God is not playing games. So I presuupose the latter just as you presupose your world view. However at least I can consitently intellectually exist within my world view based upon my preuppostions.
I can consistently us the terms "I', "we","right" "wrong" "self determiined choice" "free choice" etc. You can use those terms as well but you have no basis to do so. These terms have no intellectual foundational underpinnig if all that exists is matter. Yet all materialst say "I" "we", uphold self determination in spit of the fact that these terms are inconsistent with their world view.
There is no "I' there are just individual matter masses doing what matter does. There is no "we' becasue there is no "I' ,there are however collections of matter masses. There is no self determined choice because thier is no self all there is are individual matter masses. Whatever matter does determines that what mater will do period. There can be no self determination only matter determination.
Of course no materialiss acts in this way or really belives thisway even thought their world view demands it to bo so. In short no materialist can consistently live according to their professed world view.
The test I take as to the various preuppositions that make up my world view is that they must be concistent with the way I actually live. I actually act like I have free choice, I believe my choices are self determined. I say "I" about my self because, I believe I have a self. There are "we" and 'theys" I am not a materialist , I think that there are somethings that are immaterial and thus as a non materialists there can be "self" "will" etc. which certainly seem to be a close approximation of reality.
Materialism can only describe organisms as individual matter masses whether they be rocks, stones, copper, gold, humans, all matter driven doing that which matter does. Where nothing but a certain conglomeration of various anifestations of matter, mixed and shaken, sort of like a miklshake. If rocks dont choose to go down hill then other forms of dont either.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 12:46 am
So we really have exactly the same question of reliability whether we hypothesize that minds are material or immaterial. We have to just try them out and see if they work, and then improve on them using the methods I outlined above.
See my response to Mesk
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 12:53 am
…but I do think that this shows that there is no immaterial will that operates independently of the brain, feeding decisions or instructions into it.
MatthewCromer wrote:
No, Joy's analogy fits perfectly. A damaged television set might have problems with audio, or video, or some stations might not come through at all.
Matthew,
The "brain as TV receiver" analogy doesn't work.
In that model, the immaterial will/soul is "broadcasting" to the TV receiver/brain. As long as the receiver continues to operate properly, it receives the signal and everything is fine. If the receiver/brain is damaged, then things stop working, even though the broadcast signal is still good.
Now let's apply this model to Mr. M, sitting on the bottom of his pool, drowning. If the brain-as-TV-receiver model is correct, then the immaterial will is screaming at Mr. M's brain, "Kick your way to the surface! If you stay down here you'll die!" The problem is that Mr. M's brain/receiver is broken, it doesn't receive the signal correctly, and so he stays quietly at the bottom of the pool until his daughter rescues him.
Perfectly plausible, right? Wrong.
Once his daughter shocks him out of his lethargy, he is able to get out of the pool. He tries to explain to his family what happened.
Now, if you were Mr. M's will, and you had just been frantically sending a signal to Mr. M's brain, telling him to get to the surface of the water before he died, what would you say to your family? (Remember, Mr. M's will controls what he says and does in this model. The part of the brain/receiver that gets speech instructions from the will is not broken.)
You'd say, "That was terrifying! I could feel myself drowning, and I desperately wanted to live, but even though I tried and tried to get my body to go to the surface, it wouldn't respond. It was like I was paralyzed."
Recall what he actually said:
I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore.
Clearly, the problem is with the will itself, and not with the brain/receiver. But the doctors found tumors near the basal ganglia. How can tumors in the physical brain cause the immaterial will to break? It doesn't make sense.
Now look at it from the materialist angle. If the will is a function of the brain, and Mr. M's brain was damaged in the area that produces the will, then it makes perfect sense that he didn't want to swim to the surface, and his later explanation to his family also makes perfect sense. It wasn't a question of a garbled signal; he really did not want to swim.
I apologize for my typo's. How does one go about editing something they have alreay posted?
Vividbleau,
You can click on "Edit This" in the comment header (see the example below). You have the option of editing your comment for about a half-hour after it's posted, if I remember correctly.
keiths Says:
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 am | Edit This
You can click on "Edit This" in the comment header (see the example below). You have the option of editing your comment for about a half-hour after it's posted, if I remember correctly.
keiths Says:
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 am | Edit This
I must be a real kluts but I dont find any "Edit This" in any comment header
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 1:35 am
I'm surprised given the 'how can impersonal mechanism deduce truth' discussion that nobody has pointed out that Steven Pinker actually draws on the limited nature of our truth-knowing capacity in his article:
And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius–a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness–comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.
It's a bit like arguing theodicy with a Calvinist, substituting for "It's divine mystery," "It's beyond our limited brains to understand", and a sign that a philosophy has come up against a truly intractable problem.
I'm surprised given the 'how can impersonal mechanism deduce truth' discussion that nobody has pointed out that Steven Pinker actually draws on the limited nature of our truth-knowing capacity in his article.
Hi Ben,
I think Pinker is saying that some truths, including the Hard Problem, may be too arcane for our purely physical, evolved brains to grasp.
Plump-DJ, Vividbleau, Mesk and I were talking about whether a purely physical brain can reliably deduce any truths at all, which is a separate issue.
The Hard Problem of explaining experience via physical processes may be intractable, but the problem of producing truth via physical processes is not, and in fact has already been solved.
The Hard Problem of explaining experience via physical processes may be intractable, but the problem of producing truth via physical processes is not, and in fact has already been solved
Yeh we posses the same amount of truth that a rock posseses.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 2:30 am
Instead of harping on an issue that's already been addressed at great length, why not come up with a solution to the amputee conundrum?
But it hasnt been addressed. You have yet to make a convincing case that matter masses have free choice, you have not demonstrated how matter masses are not matter determined.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 2:54 am
Keiths wrote: The "brain as TV receiver" analogy doesn't work.
In that model, the immaterial will/soul is "broadcasting" to the TV receiver/brain. As long as the receiver continues to operate properly, it receives the signal and everything is fine. If the receiver/brain is damaged, then things stop working, even though the broadcast signal is still good…
You'd say, "That was terrifying! I could feel myself drowning, and I desperately wanted to live, but even though I tried and tried to get my body to go to the surface, it wouldn't respond. It was like I was paralyzed."
Recall what he actually said:
"I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Clearly, the problem is with the will itself, and not with the brain/receiver. But the doctors found tumors near the basal ganglia. How can tumors in the physical brain cause the immaterial will to break? It doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure that I like the 'brain=receiver' model but I don't think this example blows the model out of the water the way you think it does. Of course the 'transmitter/receiver' model must conceive of the brain and mind as two-way transmitter/recievers, the brain sending information to the mind as well as the mind sending commands to the brain.
Now, it seems clear that being able to form linguistic constructs in your mind is not the same as knowing or believing something; I can easily say the words 'I was raised by a cup of coffee' in my head but of course I don't actually believe them. It seems also (if my understanding of brain-science is correct, I'm pretty hazy on this stuff) that our brains involve networks of associations; if I see a picture of Keira Knightly a number of different places in my brain light up including parts in the language center relating to the words "Kiera Knightly", parts of the brain involved in determining gender etc. etc.
It can be imagined that the association between the words 'I am drowning' and the full reality of what drowning actually entailed could be severed; it is conceivable that the links between all visual observations and the full meaning of those observations could be severed. In this case the brain would still be transmitting the words 'I am drowning' to the mind, but not the full meaning of those words; it would not be the case that a person's will had changed, but rather their capacity to interpret the world.
As I say, I'm not enamored with the brain=transmitter/receiver model but I think you're underestimating the size of the role brain plays in such a model. In this account of mind and brain the brain is what allows a mind to interact with and interpret the universe, an enormous task - it is not surprising therefore that brain trauma can have an enormous effect on a persons' responses to it.
I think Pinker is saying that some truths, including the Hard Problem, may be too arcane for our purely physical, evolved brains to grasp.
Which is wonderfully convenient, and I may use it in the future as suits me. 'Garden Gnomes are the only true path to God!' I will frantically cry, and when people point out the unlikelyhood of my thesis I will smile benignly and reply 'Ah, well, our brains are the product of an imperfect evolution, and we cannot truly understand these things.' A nice way to escape when my personal philosophy conflicts with the universe.
If anyone wanted an indication of how much of a problem consciousness is for materialism, it's right here.
I don't have much time, so this will have to be brief.
I did not say that humans have true free will, in the deepest metaphysical sense. I said that the sheer complexity, interconnectedness and non-linearity of the human brain means that even if it is completely mechanistic, we could not predict its behaviour given a set of inputs (i.e. environmental conditions). So it's not true free will, but for all practical purposes it is precisely equivalent.
I can consistently us the terms "I', "we","right" "wrong" "self determiined choice" "free choice" etc. You can use those terms as well but you have no basis to do so.
I have just as much basis as you do - but for me, the terms have slightly different definitions.
Certainly a true mechanistic viewpoint requires thinking about human beings in a way that defies intuition, but that does not make it incorrect or logically invalid.
I have just as much basis as you do - but for me, the terms have slightly different definitions
Yes "I' = matter mass, "we" several matter masses, "right" doing what matter does , "wrong" matter not doing what matter does, "self dertermined choice" is code for matter determined choice.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 3:45 am
Logic? where is logic in matter? matter does what it does.
You have yet to make a convincing case that matter masses have free choice, you have not demonstrated how matter masses are not matter determined.
Vivid,
Don't confuse the two issues above. They're separate.
I've already addressed the first one.
Regarding the issue of free will vs. determinism, there is an entire school in analytic philosophy, called compatibilism, that finds no contradiction between free will and determinism. Daniel Dennett is one prominent compatibilist. I commend his book Freedom Evolves to you as an excellent introduction to the topic.
Regarding the issue of free will vs. determinism, there is an entire school in analytic philosophy, called compatibilism, that finds no contradiction between free will and determinism. Daniel Dennett is one prominent compatibilist. I commend his book Freedom Evolves to you as an excellent introduction to the topic.
Do rock have wills?
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 5:00 am
It can be imagined that the association between the words 'I am drowning' and the full reality of what drowning actually entailed could be severed; it is conceivable that the links between all visual observations and the full meaning of those observations could be severed. In this case the brain would still be transmitting the words 'I am drowning' to the mind, but not the full meaning of those words; it would not be the case that a person's will had changed, but rather their capacity to interpret the world.
Ben,
Your scenario still doesn't fit the facts. A man sitting on the bottom of a pool, drowning, is getting information via more than one sensory modality. He can see that he's underwater. His auditory experience is distinctively different. He feels the coolness of the water on his skin. His sense of time tells him how long he's been under. His body's reflexive need to breathe makes itself known. All of those "channels" would have to be garbled simultaneously for the mind to miss the message that he was drowning. And if all those channels were garbled, even if only during the incident itself, the experience would be so strange and disconcerting that he would never describe it with the banal words "I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Add to that the fact that he'd have to have damage all over his brain to experience the kind of multi-sensory, interpretive garbling you're proposing.
And don't forget what happened to him after the incident:
Within only a few weeks after the pool incident, Mr. M's personality underwent a drastic change. The normally active and energetic man became increasingly passive and apathetic. He spent entire days in bed yet felt neither boredom nor impatience. His family had to remind him constantly to carry out the most basic activities: "˜Come to dinner! Get dressed! Take a shower!'"¦
It's one thing to propose a momentary garbling of the senses and his brain's interpretation of them. It's quite another to propose that the garbling lasted for days at a time, with nobody noticing the sensory deficit, including Mr. M himself.
I stand by my assertion: the brain-as-TV-receiver model simply does not work.
Which is wonderfully convenient, and I may use it in the future as suits me. 'Garden Gnomes are the only true path to God!' I will frantically cry, and when people point out the unlikelyhood of my thesis I will smile benignly and reply 'Ah, well, our brains are the product of an imperfect evolution, and we cannot truly understand these things.' A nice way to escape when my personal philosophy conflicts with the universe.
The difference being, of course, that your gnome thesis has no evidence behind it in the first place, while materialism has plenty. Your gnome thesis is not the best of a number of competing hypotheses, but materialism is. Standard dualism is fraught with problems, as this thread indicates. Materialism only runs up against the Hard Problem.
And even if you think a David-Chalmers-style dualism might be needed to solve the Hard Problem, this should be no comfort to advocates of an immaterial will, since the non-physical component is causally impotent in any feasible dualism.
All of those "channels" would have to be garbled simultaneously for the mind to miss the message that he was drowning.
You're assuming that the blockage would have to be at the 'output' end of those channels. We can imagine that the blockage would be at the input end of the 'you are drowning' node. It's also possible to imagine (from the perspective of the brain as transmitter/reciever model) that there's part of the brain responsible for transmitting 'ACTION REQUIRED!' to the soul, and that if that part of the brain was damaged then a person would descend into complete lethargy.
But this is all pure conjecture from someone with almost no knowledge of actual brain physiology. A better objection is that it's hard to see how one could easily believe that an injury to one part of the brain could radically change the way the brain produced will and consciousness, but find it impossible to believe that an injury to one part of the brain could radically change the way the brain transmitted information to the will and the consciousness. Either way you have a small change in the brain's workings corresponding to a large change in its effects.
The difference being, of course, that your gnome thesis has no evidence behind it in the first place, while materialism has plenty.
My Gnome thesis has an overwhelming amount of evidence in its favor. It's just that our imperfect brains aren't able to recognize it; people have an evolved resistance to the Gnome thesis.
And even if you think a David-Chalmers-style dualism might be needed to solve the Hard Problem, this should be no comfort to advocates of an immaterial will, since the non-physical component is causally impotent in any feasible dualism.
I am yet to see an argument to this effect that doesn't beg the question. When I studied cognitive philosophy as part of my BA, the primary objection given to any sort of 'two-way' dualism was that such dualisms violated the causal closedness of the physical universe. But of course, by definition, anyone who is a dualist does not hold to the causal closedness of the universe. It's essentially a matter of the objectors assuming their conclusion.
Farshad:
Utter nonsense! Could that guy see his own body or other objects while in the OOBE state?
Keiths:
Yes.
Farshad:
How could our dear scientists classify that experience as OOBE? or what they know about OOBE in general?
Keiths:
The researchers were familiar with the OBE literature, as you'll see if you read their paper.
I'm familiar with their paper and read it a few months ago. The whole experiment is bogus for few reasons:
1) Scientists* admit that in the experience the involved person can view an external image of him/herself. But the scientists* directly jump to the conclusion that it is an illusion/delusion. No effort is done to understand the real aspect of the image being observed by the person under test. No effort is done to see if the OOB visions are totally illusionary or have some connections to the real world objects surrounding the person.
2) Scientists neither describe nor understand the mechanism behind the process which produces OOBE effect. They simply stimulate some parts of brain and they again jump to the conclusion that it is quite natural and based on chemical activity of the brain. No one is denying that there are chemical activities in the brain. The physical body and the ethereal body are interconnected. Stimulating one portion of the brain can affect the behavior of the ethereal body. The experiment does not address the possibility of existence of an ethereal body. Scientists simply presume that the brain itself is responsible for all of the OOB visions perceived by the participants, however they don't show any empirical proof supporting their view. They simply assert that it is the chemical activities in the brain and nothing else may have been involved. It is not science. It is materialist reductionism as always. This research does not disprove the existence of a supernatural agent when it comes to OOB experience. It is our materialist scientists who twist the outcome so it fits nicely their worldview (materialism/naturalism/atheism).
3) Even if the whole outcome of the OOB in this experiment was illusionary visions, it only shows that our scientists failed in reproducing a real OOB experience. It does not show that OOBE is fake. There are people who had OOBE under surgery and could describe all of the details in the operation. This fact is always ignored by the scientists*. If the guy could see the real world objects then it proves that OOBE is a real experience. If those objects were not existing it only shows that they failed to achieve a real OOBE by stimulating certain regions in the brain.
4) In conclusion, this research only shows failure of the Scientists* in reproducing a real OOBE. My own personal experiences with OOBE and remote viewing was real enough to show me that they are not illusions. As I told before the underlying principles of the supernatural phenomenons such as OOBE is well understood, tested, observed and documented among people who deal with the esoterics. Those so called scientific researches only show how ignorant scientists are regarding things they don't really understand.
*I hate to use the word Scientist when referring to these guys. These guys are Randi James type skeptics who are skeptical of everything which doesn't fit their one-dimensional worldview. As P.E. Johnson stated, the only thing these guys are not allowed to be skeptical is doctrines of the rationalist faith such as atheism, materialism, and Darwinian evolution.
Rocks are not sufficiently complex to have anything resembling free will. A rock is inert; if you can measure the forces acting on a rock at a given point in time, you can predict its future behaviour with considerable precision.
In contrast, human brains are exceedingly complex, dynamic structures. Their behaviour is so non-linear that we cannot hope to predict it in advance with any real degree of precision, regardless of how well we can measure its environmental inputs. Thus although a brain is (probably) made of purely deterministic matter, it behaves in a fashion that is for all practical purposes quite non-deterministic.
Thus although a brain is (probably) made of purely deterministic matter, it behaves in a fashion that is for all practical purposes quite non-deterministic.
How can a brain made entirely of deterministic stuff be non-deterministic? All your saying is "Yes it's an illusion"! That means it might look like we've got independence but we really don't. That means knowledge doesn't exist. That means we can't know anything at all including whether or not our free will is an illusion. That makes such materialistic views of the human being self-stultifying. In otherwords if we know anything at all, then this position is false.
Now, if you were Mr. M's will, and you had just been frantically sending a signal to Mr. M's brain, telling him to get to the surface of the water before he died, what would you say to your family?
I am not arguing that there is an immaterial "will". I am arguing that consciousness is not reducible to brain activity. My own suspicion is that the "will" is not ultimately real, it is part of the story that consciousness tells itself and believes in for a while.
Good grief! How do y'all have time for this blog!? This will be my last posting on this subject. I'm sure I won't have the last word, though!
keiths, you wrote:
… I do think that this shows that there is no immaterial will that operates independently of the brain, feeding decisions or instructions into it.
Yes, brain dysfunction can and usually does result in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral dysfunction of some sort. Let's take this to an absurd extreme to show the flaw in your inference, though. If you completely remove the brain, no "person" would be left at all. But that doesn't demonstrate that the person was "nothing but a brain in the first place." Similarly, if removing or disabling some part of the brain also disables a cognitive function you call "will," that doesn't demonstrate that "will is nothing but the functioning of this brain system." It simply means that "will" is subserved by that brain system. That's what I mean by "it doesn't force a reductionist conclusion."
Yes, but the brain extracts semantic information from sensory data.
Good examples. But they have to do with the hippocampus, which suggests recognition memory of some sort. In other words, the semantic sorting of information according to meaningful categories has already taken place, and the brain has marvelously recorded and stored that information. The categories partially exist "out there" in the subject's culture. I would propose that these are actually examples of how the mind influences the brain. But again, we don't know exactly how that happens…just that it does, indeed, happen.
Regarding placebo/nocebo effects, you wrote
The inert substance itself does little or nothing, of course, but the experience of taking a pill does, especially if you believe that the pill contains a powerful drug and you are hoping for a cure.
The experience of taking a placebo, thinking it is a real drug, puts the brain into a state of expectation that it would not be in otherwise. Because of the brain's power and influence on the body, this can mean the alleviation of actual physical symptoms of illness (in the placebo case), or the induction of unwanted "side-effects" (in the nocebo case).
Yes, let me underline that: especially if you believe that the pill contains a powerful drug. But where would this belief come from? The brain doesn't coax its owner into this belief; rather cultural dynamics outside and beyond the owner's brain give rise to this belief. Once the belief is in place, the brain is "put in
January 21st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Here's the money quote:
Joy and I sparred over this issue yesterday on another thread. Specifically, we were discussing the question of whether 'intent', or 'will', is a physical phenomenon.
Joy challenged:
My response contains excerpts from a fascinating Scientific American article that shows that the will is physical and describes what happens when the underlying neural mechanism is damaged.
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 12:09 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
keiths:
Appeal to improper authority, false cause - non causa pro causa. No matter how "fascinating" you think SA's articles (or Steven Pinker) are, no matter what you hope to prove about a predetermined (but unestablished) cause, your appeal does not settle issues that are not settled. Opinions are a dime a dozen, and one may pick and choose 'authorities' to make one's case for them. But because the argument is logically fallacious and comes without the force of will - since you claim to have none - the argument fails.
You want us to accept your belief that qualitative aspects of mind are physical, because Pinker believes they're physical (and you agree with his position). What does a "beauty" look like when you hold it in your hands? What is it made of? How do you tell it apart from an "ugly?" Never mind. It's a waste of time to argue with zombies.
Pinker states in the article -
Appeal to Star Trek. Now, THERE's a scholarly approach to the 'hard problem'! [/barf]
Pinker is a member of the "More Neural Than Thou" crowd (of which the Churchlands are the main philosophical proselytizers). There is nothing wrong with choosing to believe that you're a zombified meat puppet - to those of us who are willing to respect others' freedom of will - so long as you refrain from eating other people's brains. My Zombie Survival Guide has a good rundown of self defense tactics to protect against infection and attack, so I'm not worried.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine not because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.
Which comes as a surprise to noone. It is a much more difficult proposition to show that a change in thinking always follows rather than sometimes preceeding (and causing) a biochemical change in the brain.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Asking for Stephen Pinker's opinion on the nature of consciousness is like asking Richard Dawkins on whether evolution might possibly involve teleology.
You already know exactly what answer you are going to get.
Time should be flogged for letting him write this article without a counterpoint from someone like David Chalmers.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 2:05 pm
There is this:
And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence. Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks, and near death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain. In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.
While I'm skeptical of anecdotal claims, there have been out of body experiences of patients who were blind from birth, reporting an ability to see during the experience. If so the "convergence of vision and bodily sensations" would demand a level of detail I have not seen.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Bradford,
People like Pinker simply ignore any evidence that doesn't fit into their worldview.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
A laughably absurd propaganda statement.
For those interested in what those experiments actually found, read Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum's book. Yes, some mediums were found to be fraudulent publicity seekers. But others showed every evidence of being legitimate. And there are mediums today who have undergone rigorous triple-blind scientific testing and demonstrated statistically very significant results.
More absurdity. Many NDE's occur before any oxygen deprivation could possible happen. For example, mountaineers who fall off a summit and have a near-death experience before they even hit the ground. Sometimes NDE experiencers never suffer any bodily harm, such as a climber who slips and falls, experiences an NDE, but is caught by his or her rope and is uninjured.
Pinker is simply a propagandist who has never actually examined the evidence, because his mind is already made up. It is shameful that people like him are given a megaphone by Time magazine to trumpet mistruths and distortions.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
The way I view these things is fairly simple. If you are a metaphysical materialist, you have exactly zero reason to argue the point. Zombies have no original thoughts and no creative synthesizing abilities. Thus they have nothing pertinent to say.
It's a little like trying to discuss physics with a True Believer [TM] in multiverses. If nothing is objectively real, there's nothing to discuss.
Why would anyone seek the nature of consciousness in the non-conscious, or the nature of reality in bizarro-world?
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
There are several studies in the psychology literature showing that psychotherapy tends to ameliorate brain dysfunction which is associated with mental disorders.
The Association for Psychological Science's journal Psychological Science, for example, has an article currently scheduled for publication: "Changes in Anterior Cingulate and Amygdala After Cognitive Behavior Therapy of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder."
The article is by Kim Felmingham, Andrew Kemp, Leanne Williams, Pritha Das, Gerard Hughes, Anthony Peduto, and Richard Bryant.
Here's how the article begins:
[begin excerpt]
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop from impaired extinction of conditioned fear responses, and exposure-based treatment of PTSD is thought to facilitate extinction learning (Charney, 2004). Fear extinction is mediated by inhibitory control of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) over amygdala-based fear processes (Phelps, Delgado, Nearing, & LeDoux, 2004; Quirk, Russo, Barron, & LeBron, 2000). Most neuroimaging studies of PTSD reveal reduced vmPFC activity (particularly in rostral anterior cingulate cortex, or rACC; Lanius et al., 2001; Shin et al., 2005), and some find increased amygdala activity during threat processing (Shin et al., 2005); in addition, increased amygdala activity during fear conditioning and reduced vmPFC activity during extinction have been reported in PTSD (Bremner et al., 2005).
Although PTSD patients show increased orbitofrontal and medial
prefrontal activity following treatment with serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRTs; Fernandez et al., 2001; Seedat et al., 2004), no studies have investigated neural networks before and after exposure- based treatment of PTSD. We report the first such study. We hypothesized that symptom reduction would be associated with increased rACC activity and reduced amygdala activity during fear processing.
Psychological Science - February 2007 - In Press
[end excerpt]
Here's how the article ends: "This study provides the first evidence that successful exposure therapy for PTSD is associated with increased rACC and reduced amygdala activation during fear processing. This pattern is consistent with evidence of vmPFC involvement in fear extinction (Quirk et al., 2000). This study requires replication in research using larger samples, employing a wait-list control condition, and examining responses to trauma-related stimuli. The current data indicate that the neural correlates of fear processing after PTSD resolution accord with evidence that amygdala and rACC activity underlie the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear."
[end of article]
How information received by the brain can ensue in physiological changes in that brain is a fascinating question. We don't seem to be anywhere close to answering it.
Comment by Lutepisc — January 21, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Joy,
Having sifted out the name-calling from your first post, the only content remaining was your claim that my argument somehow depends on an appeal to the authority of Steven Pinker and Scientific American.
Now, to almost everyone else reading this, it is obvious that merely quoting a writer or a magazine does not amount to an appeal to authority. If it did, then every scientific paper published this year would be based on a fundamental fallacy, since scientists always cite their predecessors. Either you don't understand this, in which case you should really give it some thought, or you are simply looking for an excuse to avoid answering my original argument about the physicality of the will.
Based on your second comment, I tend to suspect the latter, as you seem to be desperate to pretend that there's nothing to discuss:
The idea that materialism implies zombiehood is a misconception. But let's take it as a given for the moment. If we assume you are correct about the immaterial mind, then neither of us is a zombie. That, according to you, makes us capable of arguing the point. So if you are correct, there is something to discuss, and you should be able to provide an argument for your position!
So let's hear it. How does your concept of an immaterial will square with the story of Mr. M?
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Keith, I'm afraid I'm missing the significance of Mr. M's story. Yes, messing with brain physiology can and usually does produce behavioral changes of one kind or another. Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex produces disturbances in what we usually call "intentional behavior." But so what?
What I'd like to see you try your hand at explaining, as a materialist (did I get that right?), is the reverse of this pattern: how does psychotherapy produce changes in brain physiology, as outlined in the excerpts of the article I just posted?
Comment by Lutepisc — January 21, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Bradford wrote:
Hi Bradford,
That is actually not so surprising. Damage to a single point in the visual system, for example the retina, can result in blindness, even when the rest of the system is intact and still capable of processing visual information.
V.S. Ramachandran tells of a research subject who was retinally colorblind but also a number/color synesthete. There were therefore certain colors that he could perceive via his synesthesia, but not through his eyes. He referred to them as "Martian colors", since they were not available through his normal "terrestrial" visual experience, but Ramachandran believes that they were just the colors he would have seen had he not been colorblind. This is borne out by the testimony of other, non-colorblind number/color synesthetes, who see numbers as colored, but with the same colors they perceive via their normal visual apparatus.
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 6:55 pm
keiths:
Name-calling? I have re-read my first post several times, because it was not my intent to engage in ad hominem. I don't see it. I said,
1) your appeal does not settle issues that are not settled,
2) the appeal is fallacious,
3) you appeal to Pinker's arguments in Time magazine, presumably because you agree with his position,
4) it's a waste of time to argue with zombies - complete with link to David Chalmers' terrific collection of zombies on the web.
I actually kinda hoped you'd enjoy that link. I always do.
Further on I said,
1) Pinker's Star Trek analogy is amazingly trite,
2) Pinker is aligned with the neurocentric faction that includes notable others,
3) it's okay to be a zombie, and
4) it's not okay to eat other people's brains.
That last is a humorous reference to the known staple food preference of zombies. You can confirm this for yourself at the link.
Last but not least, I put in a plug for Max Brooks' great survival guide, which is currently being made into an informative popular movie. That comes under the heading of "Hollywood zombies."
Nowhere do I see an ad hominem aimed at you. I can understand if you're frustrated with my reluctance to engage what I see to be a pointless issue, based on what I already know from the long-running Great Zombie Debates. There's an entire archive of 'em over at the Journal of Consciousness Studies, including a paper by Daniel Dennett [The unimagined preposterousness of zombies]. There's another archive on Chalmers' page [Zombies & Modal Arguments], a whole stable of scientists and philosophers commenting on the zombie threat over at Zombie Alert [Experts Speak Out on the Zombie Threat], and another one from Dennett in 1999, which he delivered as the Royal Institute of Philosophy Millennial Lecture [The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of an Intuition?].
Because I'm as much an expert on zombies as Sean (of the Dead), I see no value in an extended re-hash with you. The issues remain unsettled to this day. You and I won't be settling it here.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Empty phrases, cheap assertions, pseudo-science at its best. The only ghost that scientists(!?) have ever exorcised is their own soul that they left behind in absolute darkness once they embraced materialism.
Utter nonsense! Could that guy see his own body or other objects while in the OOBE state? How could our dear scientists classify that experience as OOBE? or what they know about OOBE in general? This
scientificresearch exposes the deep ignorance of the scientists when it comes to discovering the spirit and the ethereal realms. They are totally ignorant and even more arrogant. For spiritually awakened people who deal with The Supernatural in a regular basis, a very basic concept like OOBE is well defined, well documented, observed and empirically tested. The real evidence has been here for aeons. We don't need scientists to verify it for us. We don't need blinds to lead us.Comment by Farshad — January 21, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Lutepisc wrote:
Hi Lutepisc,
What's significant about it is that changes to brain physiology affect not only "intentional behavior", but intention itself. Mr. M does not say "I tried to move, but I couldn't." He says "I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Most people (like Joy) imagine the will as something separate and immaterial which manipulates the brain and body. Cases like Mr. M's show that the will does not exist independently of the brain. Change a particular part of the brain, and you change the will itself.
Actually, it's pretty easy to explain from a materialist perspective, but much harder to explain otherwise.
To a materialist, the brain is a physical system. Like any system, its future state depends on the current state and the changes in its environment. Shine a light in someone's eye, and the brain will see a change in the input being provided by the optic nerve. This will cause the brain itself to change to a new state, in which it registers the visual experience.
Some changes, like the one in the example above, are transient. Others are more permanent. If you win the lottery on Tuesday, you remember it on Wednesday. The physical state of your brain has changed to incorporate the new information, by strengthening some connections and weakening others. If we could magically restore your brain to the state it was in on Tuesday, the memory of your lottery win would be erased.
If an experience like winning the lottery can change the physical state of the brain in a permanent way, why is it difficult to believe that an experience like psychotherapy could do so also?
To me, it would seem to be much harder to explain brain changes given an immaterial mind, because then you have to explain how an immaterial mind is able to alter the configuration of the material brain, thus violating the laws of physics.
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Joy,
Zombies (in the jargon of consciousness studies) have no conscious experience. You and I do. My question is about us, not the zombies. Pretending that this is a rehash of the zombie issue is just a way for you to avoid answering the question.
Not only that, I'm granting your assumption. Let's assume that the will is immaterial. What I'm asking for is an explanation, within your worldview, of why an immaterial will suddenly ceases to function just because a particular part of the brain is damaged.
The facts are there. Do you have an explanation?
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 7:38 pm
To me, it would seem to be much harder to explain brain changes given an immaterial mind, because then you have to explain how an immaterial mind is able to alter the configuration of the material brain, thus violating the laws of physics.
It is not that the mind is "immaterial", but that materiality is itself a pattern of activity within Consciousness.
And there is nothing about mental influence upon physical systems that violates the laws of physics.
The trace theory of memory you cite has been believed for decades, but strangely these memory traces can never be found. That is because memories are not stored in the brain. The brain "tunes into" memories the same way a radio might tune into one station or another and play a different song.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 7:45 pm
keiths, you said
Yes, what's unusual about this case is the sudden onset. However, over time, the deficit became more pervasive.
This sounds like "abulia," which is a well-known syndrome related to frontal systems dysfunction. This does not force one to a reductionist conclusion.
And you wrote:
Here you move from talking about sensory inputs impacting the brain–which is easy to conceptualize–to "information" affecting brain circuitry, which is a different ballgame. Yes, psychotherapy involves sensory input, but the sensory data in and of themselves are not what affect the targeted brain circuitry. Rather, the semantic qualities of the information are the active ingredient.
How, exactly?
Another mind/body problem is the placebo (or nocebo, for that matter). How, exactly, does a chemically inert substance impact brain chemistry?
These are questions I don't believe we've begun to answer.
Comment by Lutepisc — January 21, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
While I'm skeptical of anecdotal claims, there have been out of body experiences of patients who were blind from birth, reporting an ability to see during the experience.
Hi Bradford,
That is actually not so surprising. Damage to a single point in the visual system, for example the retina, can result in blindness, even when the rest of the system is intact and still capable of processing visual information.
I look for ways by which unusual claims might be confirmed. This stuff is intrinsically difficult but a blind person since birth would have difficulties identifying things other than colors, shapes and things that might be familair through descriptions etc. That might include an event itself which would contain unique scenery i.e. a particular place with specified individuals wearing particular clothing and so on. While trying to be open to possibilites I find those blinded by ideology tend to close off options that, if confirmed, would yield troublesome results from their POV.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Pinker wrote:
Farshad complains:
Yes.
The researchers were familiar with the OBE literature, as you'll see if you read their paper.
NY Times story:
http://tinyurl.com/3b8bmp
The Swiss research paper:
http://intl-brain.oxfordjourna...
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Hi Guys,
Very interesting discussion. Pinker's conclusion is somewhat depreessing but i've always had problems with the notion of an immaterial soul and keith's point above regarding 'damage to the brain' highlights exactly why. There are so many reasons to think the mind is reducible to the brain (where does your 'mind' go when you're under the knife?) *but* there is a fundamental philosophical problem as far as I can see.
The problem with the Pinker / Dennett view is that it seems to destroy something fundamental to the whole scheme - knowledge. Knowledge requires some sort of independance in the knower — something that is free from the confines of deterministic neccessity. If the mind is not in anyway free from the laws of the universe and their effects then every thought and every conclusion is just the determined outworking of those laws. If we disagree, it's not because I reached an independant conclusion as a result of your arguments, but rather the atoms in my brain changed to a different state then yours.
I think the pinker / dennett viewpoint is ultimately self stultifying meaning if it's true they can't know it's true!
Comment by Plump-DJ — January 21, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 8:47 pm
The researchers were familiar with the OBE literature, as you'll see if you read their paper.
NY Times story:
http://tinyurl.com/3b8bmp
The Swiss research paper:
http://intl-brain.oxfordjourna...
Keiths, I would not have doubted that the feelings experienced by patients, including visions of seeing themselves out of body, could be explained neurobiologically in ways that preclude non-material consciousness. Unfortunately these type of evaluations do nothing to conclusively confirm or debunk out of body claims. To do that a means of measuring the sensing of objective environmental factors, independent of feelings, is needed. That would include identifying event specific information that could only have been known through an out of body perceptual experience. A blindfolded patient able to identify unique, specific visual information about his surroundings within a specific time frame is the type of thing I have in mind.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I think the pinker / dennett viewpoint is ultimately self stultifying meaning if it's true they can't know it's true!
Pinker knows this. There is a dichotomy in the lives of thinkers like him. They have a materialistic, mechanistic approach to life at work that denies concepts like free will. This will not do at home however. Treating your wife and kids like they were pre-programmed biological robots is a relational non-starter.
Comment by Bradford — January 21, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:22 pm
keiths:
Not quite correct. From Dennett's introduction to the Millennium Lecture -
Thus it's the debate between materialists (zombies) and dualists (vitalists). Which is right where you and I find ourselves. A hundred million words have been penned in defense of reality on the one hand, and in defense of illusion on the other. The issue will not be settled here. Besides, Ras Skywalker [Jaron Lanier] sums it up pretty well in You Can't Argue With a Zombie.
I answered this in the Designer-Centrism thread. Your television will suddenly cease to function if its wires are cut. That's not difficult.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:31 pm
The human brain is complex enough that, even if it were completely physically determined, its behaviour would for all intents and purposes be equivalent to free will. Until we have a complete mechanistic model of how the brain operates (which we won't see in our lifetimes), its output will remain quite unpredictable even if all relevant inputs are known. From any practical point of view, that's the same as free will.
As keiths has already pointed out, the notion that a mechanistic brain equates to a zombie lacking free will and consciousness is a complete non sequitur.
Comment by Mesk — January 21, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Like most materialists you want to keep your cake and eat it at the same time. Free will is another term for matter determined. Im with Joy on this one.
CS Lewis
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 21, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Hi, Plump-DJ. You wrote
Of course our mental abilities are affected by our brain's function and structure. Who would dispute this? If the brain is injured, our intellectual functioning, memory, attention/concentration, and other cognitive functioning may be affected. That's, well, a no-brainer.
But that doesn't mean that "mind" reduces to "nothing but the brain." Although the brain can affect the mind, the mind can also affect the brain. How else do you explain placebo effects or the effects of psychotherapy which show up on PET scans?
You said
If enough of the atoms in your brain change to a different state for one reason or another, something will be affected. Maybe your cognition, maybe your emotions, maybe your behavior, etc., depending on where, which, and how many atoms have been affected in what way. The question, though, is whether there's a "you" (whether you have a "mind," if you will) which can actually influence the atoms in your brain in some way.
Comment by Lutepisc — January 21, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Lutepisc wrote:
Lutepisc,
Yes, the two are very similar, but Mr. M's condition (known as "perte d'auto-activation psychique", or "PAP") involves damage to the basal ganglia, which connect to the frontal lobes. There is no damage to the frontal lobes themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by a "reductionist conclusion", but I do think that this shows that there is no immaterial will that operates independently of the brain, feeding decisions or instructions into it. The will and decision making processes give every indication of being functions of the brain itself.
Yes, but the brain extracts semantic information from sensory data. For example, one study found a single cell in a patient's brain which responded to the concept of "Halle Berry", whether the stimulus was a photo of her, an exaggerated drawing of her, a photo of her in full Catwoman costume (with mask), or her name spelled out in letters:
http://www.physorg.com/news470...
The same way that an emotionally loaded experience, like getting a sought-after promotion, does. The inert substance itself does little or nothing, of course, but the experience of taking a pill does, especially if you believe that the pill contains a powerful drug and you are hoping for a cure.
The experience of taking a placebo, thinking it is a real drug, puts the brain into a state of expectation that it would not be in otherwise. Because of the brain's power and influence on the body, this can mean the alleviation of actual physical symptoms of illness (in the placebo case), or the induction of unwanted "side-effects" (in the nocebo case).
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
(where does your 'mind' go when you're under the knife?)
Your question assumes that consciousness would need to exist in space and time when the body is unconscious. Consciousness itself does not actually exist within space and time, it is timeless, which is why it is always "right here and right now".
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
No, Joy's analogy fits perfectly.
A damaged television set might have problems with audio, or video, or some stations might not come through at all.
What is most interesting about the brain is its plasticity. Often times damage to one area can be overcome by moving functionality to a completely different part of the brain. Of course there are cases where plasticity fails, but it is remarkable how in some cases there can be recovery from tremendous amounts of brain damage. This fits in with the idea that the brain is an interface for consciousness and mind instead of being identical to them.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 21, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Organisms that fail to generate an accurate picture of their environment tend to die fairly rapidly and unpleasantly. In other words, humans (and every other organism) have been strongly selected for the ability to accurately form an internal representation of the outside world, and to act appropriately given that representation. We have also been selected for the ability to make accurate logical connections between complex events and ideas ("if I spear Hurr in the gut, he will call out to Barg and Grum, who share his hearth and will thus come to his aid, and I will be unable to overcome them all"). I must admit that the ability of a tiny proportion of humans to deal with immensely sophisticated and complex ideas (such as string theory) surprises me, but our ability to do good observational science and draw logical conclusions does not.
And of course, theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards for the conduct of science. If there is a god that controls the universe, how can you ever know that what you are seeing is real and not just that god controlling your mind? You can argue that the revealed words of the god suggest that the picture it shows you is accurate, but why should you trust those words? Because the god tells you that you should? Seems like a fairly weak basis for trusting the universe to me.
Comment by Mesk — January 21, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Plump-DJ:
Nowhere. It's still there, but awareness is disabled. Awareness (perceptual and analytical real-time consciousness) is prevented from operating through its physical channels by interference with a functional coupling dynamic of its expression. The action has to do with the configurational dynamics of proteins in the brain. According to this model anesthetic gas molecules act via interference with van der Waals (London) forces in hydrophobic pockets of the proteins. During normal consciousness these quantum mechanical forces establish instantaneous couplings of pairs of electron-induced dipoles to maintain superpositional states between adjacent amino acid groups in the proteins (affecting conformational state). The anesthetic molecule binds to receptors in the hyrophobic pocket (lipid interior region) of the protein. This prevents normal awareness and depresses conscious physical processes, but does not interfere with re-establishment of normal operation when the anesthetic is withdrawn.
Most people remember who they are after coming out of anesthesia.
There is no reason to suspect that consciousness ceases to exist - or "goes" anywhere - when people are anesthetized, or "unconscious." They are simply unaware and non-volitional. Unless there is permanent damage to specific structures (not normally a result of sleep or anesthesia), the unitary nature of consciousness with all its extended (in time) contents is still there when awareness returns.
There's a good exposition of this hypothesis here.
Comment by Joy — January 21, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
January 21st, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Plump-DJ and Vividbleau,
I think you both are asking the same question, which boils down to this: How can we know that our thoughts are true if they are based on a mere physical process? Where does the truth come from if our brains are just a mechanism consisting of a collection of atoms, interacting with each other and the environment according to the laws of physics?
First, let me remind you that we already have physical mechanisms that are capable of producing truth. Punch "3 + 7" into a working calculator, hit "=", and you'll see "10" in the display. A purely physical process has converted an incomplete equation into a mathematical truth, right before your eyes. The atoms and electrons in the calculator did nothing but blindly follow the laws of physics the entire time, but out popped a true answer at the end. Computers, of course, are also tools for producing truths via purely physical processes.
The reason this works is that true thought exhibits regularities. Physical processes also exhibit regularities. By mapping the regularities of thought onto the regularities of physics via careful engineering, we can guarantee that the answers produced by a physical mechanism are true.
This process works for logical as well as mathematical truths, which is why computers can process all sorts of data and not just numbers.
Now, you might object that calculators work because they are designed to produce truth, while human brains just evolved. So while we're justified in trusting a designed calculator, we cannot trust an undesigned brain.
The answer, of course, is that while brains are not literally designed, they are "designed" by natural selection. Brains must produce at least a good approximation of the truth or they will be a liability to their possessors, who will then be less successful in reproducing, so that there are fewer copies of the corresponding genes in future generations. The brains that are preserved by selection are going to be the ones that allow us to plan ahead, anticipate the weather, figure out what our predators and prey are going to do, make friends with the right people, attract a mate, etc. All of these tasks are done better by brains which work better (i.e. tend to produce true thoughts).
Evolution got our brains to a certain point, but they're still not perfect. How can we improve even more on our ability to determine the truth?
1. We've learned to double-check ourselves. You can figure something out twice and make sure you get the same answer. Truths figured out via one method are checked against those already known to be true, or those generated by another method.
2. We recruit others to double-check us. One person may make the same mistake twice in a row, but a different person is less likely to. Generations of people can gather information, refine knowledge, add to it, and pass it on to their children.
3. We use the experience gained through double-checking ourselves to identify sources of error. For example, we all know that humans are subject to visual illusions (here is one of my favorites). Knowing this, we can invent instruments such as photometers to give us correct answers despite the misleading answers given to us by our brains.
4. We standardize our methods. Science is a standardized way of avoiding common human pitfalls in the search for truth.
5. We get machines to do the work for us. Few would dispute that a modern computer with robust software is going to make far fewer mistakes in computing the payroll then a human would.
Via all these methods, a certain innate ability to discern limited truths can be bootstrapped into something much more powerful.
One final point. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that our minds are in fact immaterial. How does this help us?
Answer: it doesn't. Even if they are immaterial, we still don't know that we can trust our minds. Being immaterial doesn't give them a direct line to the truth. Being immaterial doesn't make them perfect (and we all know from cruel experience that they are not perfect).
But what if they're designed by God? Surely then we can trust them, right? Well, no. As religious ID proponents correctly point out, you have to know what God's goals were in designing them. If perfect reasoning wasn't the goal, then human minds are not going to reason perfectly. And again, we know from experience that they do not.
So we really have exactly the same question of reliability whether we hypothesize that minds are material or immaterial. We have to just try them out and see if they work, and then improve on them using the methods I outlined above.
Comment by keiths — January 21, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 am
I wrote:
Joy wrote:
Joy,
You have Dennett's position completely backward. This is getting to be a habit with you — could you please, please work on your reading comprehension?
If you look at section 3 of the lecture, you'll see the following (emphasis mine):
Dennett:
And a bit later:
Here's why I think you are confused. You saw the following statement of Dennett's…
…and you assumed that if Dennett is claiming that we are made of "mindless robots and nothing else", that he must think we are zombies. He does not, as the quotes above show. Dennett believes that consciousness — true consciousness — emerges from the way the "mindless robots" are put together.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 12:16 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:46 am
I guess this is suppose to be an answer to my comment where I said "Like most materialists you want to keep your cake and eat it at the same time. Free will is another term for matter determined. Im with Joy on this one."
How it is applicable escapes me even if we assume your view
Do rocks choose to roll down hill freely? Do rocks act appropriately when they do roll down a hillside? I would say no to the former and yes to the latter. So what? As individual matter masses, matter masses do what it does no free will at all. I could just as well say that evolution has given individual matter masses the illusion that individual matter masses actually do make choices, do have an "I" do have a "we" so that individual matter masses act appropriately.
Logic? where is logic in matter? matter does what it does. Do rocks have logic?
O f course theism carries with it its own set of potential hazards although a strong case can be made that the concept of discerning the laws of the unverse, that they could be investugated and understood flowed from the concept of a lawgiver. Science IMO owes a great debt to theism and theists in spite of the harm religion has inflicted on scientists.
I can tell you this if there is not something like a God I know that logically I can not live consistently within my own world view. Now it certainly could be that God is playing games, God may be diabolical and cruel, nothing I see is reall. I may in fact be a figment of Gods imagination and not real at all. These are all possibilities. However there is also the possibility that God is good, that God is not playing games. So I presuupose the latter just as you presupose your world view. However at least I can consitently intellectually exist within my world view based upon my preuppostions.
I can consistently us the terms "I', "we","right" "wrong" "self determiined choice" "free choice" etc. You can use those terms as well but you have no basis to do so. These terms have no intellectual foundational underpinnig if all that exists is matter. Yet all materialst say "I" "we", uphold self determination in spit of the fact that these terms are inconsistent with their world view.
There is no "I' there are just individual matter masses doing what matter does. There is no "we' becasue there is no "I' ,there are however collections of matter masses. There is no self determined choice because thier is no self all there is are individual matter masses. Whatever matter does determines that what mater will do period. There can be no self determination only matter determination.
Of course no materialiss acts in this way or really belives thisway even thought their world view demands it to bo so. In short no materialist can consistently live according to their professed world view.
The test I take as to the various preuppositions that make up my world view is that they must be concistent with the way I actually live. I actually act like I have free choice, I believe my choices are self determined. I say "I" about my self because, I believe I have a self. There are "we" and 'theys" I am not a materialist , I think that there are somethings that are immaterial and thus as a non materialists there can be "self" "will" etc. which certainly seem to be a close approximation of reality.
Materialism can only describe organisms as individual matter masses whether they be rocks, stones, copper, gold, humans, all matter driven doing that which matter does. Where nothing but a certain conglomeration of various anifestations of matter, mixed and shaken, sort of like a miklshake. If rocks dont choose to go down hill then other forms of dont either.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 12:46 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:53 am
See my response to Mesk
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 12:53 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:58 am
Mesk,
I apologize for my typo's. How does one go about editing something they have alreay posted?
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 12:58 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 am
I wrote:
MatthewCromer wrote:
Matthew,
The "brain as TV receiver" analogy doesn't work.
In that model, the immaterial will/soul is "broadcasting" to the TV receiver/brain. As long as the receiver continues to operate properly, it receives the signal and everything is fine. If the receiver/brain is damaged, then things stop working, even though the broadcast signal is still good.
Now let's apply this model to Mr. M, sitting on the bottom of his pool, drowning. If the brain-as-TV-receiver model is correct, then the immaterial will is screaming at Mr. M's brain, "Kick your way to the surface! If you stay down here you'll die!" The problem is that Mr. M's brain/receiver is broken, it doesn't receive the signal correctly, and so he stays quietly at the bottom of the pool until his daughter rescues him.
Perfectly plausible, right? Wrong.
Once his daughter shocks him out of his lethargy, he is able to get out of the pool. He tries to explain to his family what happened.
Now, if you were Mr. M's will, and you had just been frantically sending a signal to Mr. M's brain, telling him to get to the surface of the water before he died, what would you say to your family? (Remember, Mr. M's will controls what he says and does in this model. The part of the brain/receiver that gets speech instructions from the will is not broken.)
You'd say, "That was terrifying! I could feel myself drowning, and I desperately wanted to live, but even though I tried and tried to get my body to go to the surface, it wouldn't respond. It was like I was paralyzed."
Recall what he actually said:
Clearly, the problem is with the will itself, and not with the brain/receiver. But the doctors found tumors near the basal ganglia. How can tumors in the physical brain cause the immaterial will to break? It doesn't make sense.
Now look at it from the materialist angle. If the will is a function of the brain, and Mr. M's brain was damaged in the area that produces the will, then it makes perfect sense that he didn't want to swim to the surface, and his later explanation to his family also makes perfect sense. It wasn't a question of a garbled signal; he really did not want to swim.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 1:22 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:28 am
Vividbleau asks:
Vividbleau,
You can click on "Edit This" in the comment header (see the example below). You have the option of editing your comment for about a half-hour after it's posted, if I remember correctly.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 1:28 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:35 am
I must be a real kluts but I dont find any "Edit This" in any comment header
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 1:35 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:37 am
Vividbleau asks:
Did you even read my comment above? I answer that exact question.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 1:37 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:40 am
Vividbleu wrote:
Vivid,
It's too late. Like I said, you can only edit your comment within a half-hour of posting it. The "Edit This" link goes away after that.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 1:40 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:41 am
Plump-DJ, Vividbleau, and Keiths,
I'm surprised given the 'how can impersonal mechanism deduce truth' discussion that nobody has pointed out that Steven Pinker actually draws on the limited nature of our truth-knowing capacity in his article:
It's a bit like arguing theodicy with a Calvinist, substituting for "It's divine mystery," "It's beyond our limited brains to understand", and a sign that a philosophy has come up against a truly intractable problem.
Comment by BenK — January 22, 2007 @ 1:41 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:45 am
I did not see an asnwer. Do rocks have thoughts? Emplloy logic?
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 1:45 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:16 am
BenK wrote:
Hi Ben,
I think Pinker is saying that some truths, including the Hard Problem, may be too arcane for our purely physical, evolved brains to grasp.
Plump-DJ, Vividbleau, Mesk and I were talking about whether a purely physical brain can reliably deduce any truths at all, which is a separate issue.
The Hard Problem of explaining experience via physical processes may be intractable, but the problem of producing truth via physical processes is not, and in fact has already been solved.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 2:16 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:30 am
Yeh we posses the same amount of truth that a rock posseses.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 2:30 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:45 am
Vivid,
Instead of harping on an issue that's already been addressed at great length, why not come up with a solution to the amputee conundrum?
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 2:45 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 am
But it hasnt been addressed. You have yet to make a convincing case that matter masses have free choice, you have not demonstrated how matter masses are not matter determined.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 2:54 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:01 am
I'm not sure that I like the 'brain=receiver' model but I don't think this example blows the model out of the water the way you think it does. Of course the 'transmitter/receiver' model must conceive of the brain and mind as two-way transmitter/recievers, the brain sending information to the mind as well as the mind sending commands to the brain.
Now, it seems clear that being able to form linguistic constructs in your mind is not the same as knowing or believing something; I can easily say the words 'I was raised by a cup of coffee' in my head but of course I don't actually believe them. It seems also (if my understanding of brain-science is correct, I'm pretty hazy on this stuff) that our brains involve networks of associations; if I see a picture of Keira Knightly a number of different places in my brain light up including parts in the language center relating to the words "Kiera Knightly", parts of the brain involved in determining gender etc. etc.
It can be imagined that the association between the words 'I am drowning' and the full reality of what drowning actually entailed could be severed; it is conceivable that the links between all visual observations and the full meaning of those observations could be severed. In this case the brain would still be transmitting the words 'I am drowning' to the mind, but not the full meaning of those words; it would not be the case that a person's will had changed, but rather their capacity to interpret the world.
As I say, I'm not enamored with the brain=transmitter/receiver model but I think you're underestimating the size of the role brain plays in such a model. In this account of mind and brain the brain is what allows a mind to interact with and interpret the universe, an enormous task - it is not surprising therefore that brain trauma can have an enormous effect on a persons' responses to it.
Comment by BenK — January 22, 2007 @ 3:01 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:12 am
Which is wonderfully convenient, and I may use it in the future as suits me. 'Garden Gnomes are the only true path to God!' I will frantically cry, and when people point out the unlikelyhood of my thesis I will smile benignly and reply 'Ah, well, our brains are the product of an imperfect evolution, and we cannot truly understand these things.' A nice way to escape when my personal philosophy conflicts with the universe.
If anyone wanted an indication of how much of a problem consciousness is for materialism, it's right here.
Comment by BenK — January 22, 2007 @ 3:12 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:36 am
Vivid,
I don't have much time, so this will have to be brief.
I did not say that humans have true free will, in the deepest metaphysical sense. I said that the sheer complexity, interconnectedness and non-linearity of the human brain means that even if it is completely mechanistic, we could not predict its behaviour given a set of inputs (i.e. environmental conditions). So it's not true free will, but for all practical purposes it is precisely equivalent.
I have just as much basis as you do - but for me, the terms have slightly different definitions.
Certainly a true mechanistic viewpoint requires thinking about human beings in a way that defies intuition, but that does not make it incorrect or logically invalid.
Comment by Mesk — January 22, 2007 @ 3:36 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:45 am
Yes "I' = matter mass, "we" several matter masses, "right" doing what matter does , "wrong" matter not doing what matter does, "self dertermined choice" is code for matter determined choice.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 3:45 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 am
Vividbleau wrote:
Vivid,
Don't confuse the two issues above. They're separate.
I've already addressed the first one.
Regarding the issue of free will vs. determinism, there is an entire school in analytic philosophy, called compatibilism, that finds no contradiction between free will and determinism. Daniel Dennett is one prominent compatibilist. I commend his book Freedom Evolves to you as an excellent introduction to the topic.
Wikipedia has an article on compatibilism, as does the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 4:15 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:00 am
Do rock have wills?
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — January 22, 2007 @ 5:00 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 am
BenK wrote:
Ben,
Your scenario still doesn't fit the facts. A man sitting on the bottom of a pool, drowning, is getting information via more than one sensory modality. He can see that he's underwater. His auditory experience is distinctively different. He feels the coolness of the water on his skin. His sense of time tells him how long he's been under. His body's reflexive need to breathe makes itself known. All of those "channels" would have to be garbled simultaneously for the mind to miss the message that he was drowning. And if all those channels were garbled, even if only during the incident itself, the experience would be so strange and disconcerting that he would never describe it with the banal words "I don't know what was wrong with me. I just didn't want to swim anymore."
Add to that the fact that he'd have to have damage all over his brain to experience the kind of multi-sensory, interpretive garbling you're proposing.
And don't forget what happened to him after the incident:
It's one thing to propose a momentary garbling of the senses and his brain's interpretation of them. It's quite another to propose that the garbling lasted for days at a time, with nobody noticing the sensory deficit, including Mr. M himself.
I stand by my assertion: the brain-as-TV-receiver model simply does not work.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 5:04 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:27 am
BenK wrote:
The difference being, of course, that your gnome thesis has no evidence behind it in the first place, while materialism has plenty. Your gnome thesis is not the best of a number of competing hypotheses, but materialism is. Standard dualism is fraught with problems, as this thread indicates. Materialism only runs up against the Hard Problem.
And even if you think a David-Chalmers-style dualism might be needed to solve the Hard Problem, this should be no comfort to advocates of an immaterial will, since the non-physical component is causally impotent in any feasible dualism.
Comment by keiths — January 22, 2007 @ 5:27 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 am
You're assuming that the blockage would have to be at the 'output' end of those channels. We can imagine that the blockage would be at the input end of the 'you are drowning' node. It's also possible to imagine (from the perspective of the brain as transmitter/reciever model) that there's part of the brain responsible for transmitting 'ACTION REQUIRED!' to the soul, and that if that part of the brain was damaged then a person would descend into complete lethargy.
But this is all pure conjecture from someone with almost no knowledge of actual brain physiology. A better objection is that it's hard to see how one could easily believe that an injury to one part of the brain could radically change the way the brain produced will and consciousness, but find it impossible to believe that an injury to one part of the brain could radically change the way the brain transmitted information to the will and the consciousness. Either way you have a small change in the brain's workings corresponding to a large change in its effects.
Comment by BenK — January 22, 2007 @ 5:34 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:43 am
My Gnome thesis has an overwhelming amount of evidence in its favor. It's just that our imperfect brains aren't able to recognize it; people have an evolved resistance to the Gnome thesis.
I am yet to see an argument to this effect that doesn't beg the question. When I studied cognitive philosophy as part of my BA, the primary objection given to any sort of 'two-way' dualism was that such dualisms violated the causal closedness of the physical universe. But of course, by definition, anyone who is a dualist does not hold to the causal closedness of the universe. It's essentially a matter of the objectors assuming their conclusion.
Comment by BenK — January 22, 2007 @ 5:43 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 am
I'm familiar with their paper and read it a few months ago. The whole experiment is bogus for few reasons:
1) Scientists* admit that in the experience the involved person can view an external image of him/herself. But the scientists* directly jump to the conclusion that it is an illusion/delusion. No effort is done to understand the real aspect of the image being observed by the person under test. No effort is done to see if the OOB visions are totally illusionary or have some connections to the real world objects surrounding the person.
2) Scientists neither describe nor understand the mechanism behind the process which produces OOBE effect. They simply stimulate some parts of brain and they again jump to the conclusion that it is quite natural and based on chemical activity of the brain. No one is denying that there are chemical activities in the brain. The physical body and the ethereal body are interconnected. Stimulating one portion of the brain can affect the behavior of the ethereal body. The experiment does not address the possibility of existence of an ethereal body. Scientists simply presume that the brain itself is responsible for all of the OOB visions perceived by the participants, however they don't show any empirical proof supporting their view. They simply assert that it is the chemical activities in the brain and nothing else may have been involved. It is not science. It is materialist reductionism as always. This research does not disprove the existence of a supernatural agent when it comes to OOB experience. It is our materialist scientists who twist the outcome so it fits nicely their worldview (materialism/naturalism/atheism).
3) Even if the whole outcome of the OOB in this experiment was illusionary visions, it only shows that our scientists failed in reproducing a real OOB experience. It does not show that OOBE is fake. There are people who had OOBE under surgery and could describe all of the details in the operation. This fact is always ignored by the scientists*. If the guy could see the real world objects then it proves that OOBE is a real experience. If those objects were not existing it only shows that they failed to achieve a real OOBE by stimulating certain regions in the brain.
4) In conclusion, this research only shows failure of the Scientists* in reproducing a real OOBE. My own personal experiences with OOBE and remote viewing was real enough to show me that they are not illusions. As I told before the underlying principles of the supernatural phenomenons such as OOBE is well understood, tested, observed and documented among people who deal with the esoterics. Those so called scientific researches only show how ignorant scientists are regarding things they don't really understand.
*I hate to use the word Scientist when referring to these guys. These guys are Randi James type skeptics who are skeptical of everything which doesn't fit their one-dimensional worldview. As P.E. Johnson stated, the only thing these guys are not allowed to be skeptical is doctrines of the rationalist faith such as atheism, materialism, and Darwinian evolution.
Comment by Farshad — January 22, 2007 @ 6:47 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:03 am
Rocks are not sufficiently complex to have anything resembling free will. A rock is inert; if you can measure the forces acting on a rock at a given point in time, you can predict its future behaviour with considerable precision.
In contrast, human brains are exceedingly complex, dynamic structures. Their behaviour is so non-linear that we cannot hope to predict it in advance with any real degree of precision, regardless of how well we can measure its environmental inputs. Thus although a brain is (probably) made of purely deterministic matter, it behaves in a fashion that is for all practical purposes quite non-deterministic.
Comment by Mesk — January 22, 2007 @ 8:03 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 am
Oops! should be James Randi!
Comment by Farshad — January 22, 2007 @ 8:56 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
Hi Mesk
How can a brain made entirely of deterministic stuff be non-deterministic? All your saying is "Yes it's an illusion"! That means it might look like we've got independence but we really don't. That means knowledge doesn't exist. That means we can't know anything at all including whether or not our free will is an illusion. That makes such materialistic views of the human being self-stultifying. In otherwords if we know anything at all, then this position is false.
Comment by Plump-DJ — January 22, 2007 @ 10:19 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
I am not arguing that there is an immaterial "will". I am arguing that consciousness is not reducible to brain activity. My own suspicion is that the "will" is not ultimately real, it is part of the story that consciousness tells itself and believes in for a while.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 22, 2007 @ 10:25 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:33 am
Good grief! How do y'all have time for this blog!? This will be my last posting on this subject. I'm sure I won't have the last word, though!
keiths, you wrote:
Yes, brain dysfunction can and usually does result in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral dysfunction of some sort. Let's take this to an absurd extreme to show the flaw in your inference, though. If you completely remove the brain, no "person" would be left at all. But that doesn't demonstrate that the person was "nothing but a brain in the first place." Similarly, if removing or disabling some part of the brain also disables a cognitive function you call "will," that doesn't demonstrate that "will is nothing but the functioning of this brain system." It simply means that "will" is subserved by that brain system. That's what I mean by "it doesn't force a reductionist conclusion."
Good examples. But they have to do with the hippocampus, which suggests recognition memory of some sort. In other words, the semantic sorting of information according to meaningful categories has already taken place, and the brain has marvelously recorded and stored that information. The categories partially exist "out there" in the subject's culture. I would propose that these are actually examples of how the mind influences the brain. But again, we don't know exactly how that happens…just that it does, indeed, happen.
Regarding placebo/nocebo effects, you wrote
Yes, let me underline that: especially if you believe that the pill contains a powerful drug. But where would this belief come from? The brain doesn't coax its owner into this belief; rather cultural dynamics outside and beyond the owner's brain give rise to this belief. Once the belief is in place, the brain is "put in