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Undeniable fact is : science has been materialist since the 19th century at least , while science should be neither materialist nor otherwise : science should be metaphysically neutral ,in principle at least = the latter is an utopia or a myth so far .
Science has been extremely suuccessful only and exclusively thanks to its own effective and unparalleled scientific method , materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that , once again .
I can't help you Don - there's too much here to read and too much repetition to make it rewarding, so I only skim through it every day to read other people's posts (not yours) so that I don't miss anything interesting that appears in them. I do think you've achieved something remarkable in tying up so much talent here. That's a win, I reckon.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 17:44:13Science has been extremely suuccessful only and exclusively thanks to its own effective and unparalleled scientific method , materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that , once again . Name one scientific experiment as an example of what you mean by that. Name one scientific experiment that demonstrates that "effective and unparalleled method" of which you speak and admire so much. And explain how its findings had nothing to do with measurements or observations that were materialistic.
Why is the mind irreducible to the material? That has never been fully (and Don is a big fan of "fully") explained. What is it - specifically - about the mind that is not explained? If it's memory, then lets talk about memory. If it's creativity, then let's talk about creativity. If it's "free will" then we can talk about free will. Or qualia. Or what ever you want.
So, Don, take your pick of the mental aspect of consciousness that can't be explained by materialism - cowboy up. Let's stop zig-zagging back and forth.
Quote from: dlorde on 28/12/2013 23:11:55Quote from: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:35:43... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .I think that sums up your level of argument.QuoteHow can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?That's an equivocation of 'mind', semantic games. The mind is brain activity. E gads! I've missed so much. "How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?" It just gets crazier every day.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:35:43... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .I think that sums up your level of argument.QuoteHow can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?That's an equivocation of 'mind', semantic games. The mind is brain activity.
... matter might turn out to be not made of matter , after all .
How can the mind that's allegedly a product of brain activity have causal effect on matter , brain and body , and hence on brain activity as well?How can the mind have causal effects on brain activity that has allegedly created it : is that some sort of weird absurd backward form of causation ? haha : the mind causing brain activity that has allegedly caused it ?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 28/12/2013 19:22:41Your materialist beliefs you take for granted as science are just acts of faith grounded in a 19th century false ideology,no science .Straw man - I already told you my view.
Your materialist beliefs you take for granted as science are just acts of faith grounded in a 19th century false ideology,no science .
QuoteYou refuse to address my repeated simple question ,regarding the non-existence of any extraordinary evidence for the materialist extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality Because it's another straw man. As I've told you repeatedly, it's not possible to find evidence that some unspecified unknown non-physical or 'immaterial' doesn't exist. My view (again) is that we simply follow the evidence. We have plenty of evidence of the material, none whatsoever of the immaterial. Until we have some evidence, we have little choice but to deal with the material.
You refuse to address my repeated simple question ,regarding the non-existence of any extraordinary evidence for the materialist extraordinary claims regarding the nature of reality
Yet again - if you can suggest a practical way to investigate your proposed immaterial non-stuff, we can try it. All attempts to date have failed, so I'm not holding my breath.
QuoteYou keep on believing that "the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity ", without any sort of conclusive empirical evidence ,since science cannot so far , if ever , link conscious subjective states or experiences to brain activityI'm just following the evidence, which will never be 'conclusive' if you propose the involvement of something unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable. However, in most cases, we can say that a theory can explain the observations beyond reasonable doubt and that there is no need to invoke the involvement of anything unspecified, unknown, undetectable, and unfalsifiable. As Laplace (apocryphally?) responded to Napoleon's query of the absence of god from his analysis, "I had no need of that hypothesis". In the case of consciousness, the growing accumulation of empirical evidence that is inconsistent with the immaterial hypothesis and entirely consistent with the material hypothesis, suggests to me that it is now beyond reasonable doubt. Your mileage may vary.
You keep on believing that "the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity ", without any sort of conclusive empirical evidence ,since science cannot so far , if ever , link conscious subjective states or experiences to brain activity
QuoteYou just assume that the tv set or radio device do create their own received respectively images and sounds , or broadcasts : you keep on believing that Obama does live inside of the tv , as Hitler was living inside of the radio .......... when the tv set or radio are damaged ,and you cannot find no Obama inside of the tv ,or Hitler inside of the radio , then they were created by the tv set or radio ...hahaIt has already been explained to you why that is a fatally flawed analogy. You seem to have the memory (or comprehension) of a goldfish.
You just assume that the tv set or radio device do create their own received respectively images and sounds , or broadcasts : you keep on believing that Obama does live inside of the tv , as Hitler was living inside of the radio .......... when the tv set or radio are damaged ,and you cannot find no Obama inside of the tv ,or Hitler inside of the radio , then they were created by the tv set or radio ...haha
QuoteI told you many times , as Nagel did , that since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism must be false , and since materialism does require reductionism, then , materialism is also false...I also have been repeating the fact that since there are still no serious non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness out there today , that does not mean that materialism is not false ...What do you want more then ? Certainly no more repetition. Constant repetition doesn't make your logic less flawed. If you start with false premises, the whole house of cards falls. You have started with an unfounded assumption to reach the conclusion you desire. It is not known whether consciousness is reducible to the physical or not - although the evidence strongly suggests that it is, and you have yet to supply a good reason why it should not be.
I told you many times , as Nagel did , that since consciousness is irreducible to the physical or to the material , then reductionism must be false , and since materialism does require reductionism, then , materialism is also false...I also have been repeating the fact that since there are still no serious non-materialist falsifiable theories of consciousness out there today , that does not mean that materialism is not false ...What do you want more then ?
There are many things we haven't yet explained or understood that we have good reason to believe have a material basis. You have said yourself that materialism is unfalsifiable, so to claim that the unexplained somehow falsifies it is absurdly contradictory.
Quote... science should be in fact metaphysically neutral , in principle at least .As I've said several times, I quite agree. That my expressed opinion doesn't suit your agenda is your problem, not mine. Inventing world views and beliefs to project onto others is a transparent ploy you use habitually to cover the pointlessness of your claims. Everyone else here is well aware you're attacking a fantasy adversary, just like your namesake.
... science should be in fact metaphysically neutral , in principle at least .
Tilting at windmills.
Fact is , a fact we all do experience as such every single day of our lives , is that the mind or consciousness do have causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain : your own thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longins , will ,ambitions .....do have causal effects on your bodies and brains ...
P.S.: Why do you keep on ignoring what Stapp and others have been saying regarding the undeniable causal effects of the mind on matter , and the rest , while so stubbornly sticking to your own false materialism you do continue confusing with science , i wonder .
... Here's a article by Serale you might be interested in. He agrees with you on certain key points but draws a different conclusion. It's kind of interesting because he feels he has been misinterpreted by both sides - by strict materialists as well as idealists."There is clearly a difference between consciousness and the material or physical world. We know this from our own experience, but it is also obvious from science. The material world is publicly accessible and is pretty much as described by physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences; but the conscious, experiential, phenomenological world is not publicly accessible. It has a distinct private existence. We know it with certainty from our inner, private, subjective experiences.We all know that the private world of consciousness exists, we know that it is part of the real world, and our question is to find out how it fits into the public material world, specifically, we need to know how it fits into the brain. Because neither consciousness nor matter is reducible to the other, they are distinct and different phenomena in the world. Those who believe that consciousness is reducible to matter are called materialists; those who believe that matter is reducible to consciousness are called idealists. Both are mistaken for the same reason. Both try to eliminate something that really exists in its own right and cannot be reduced to something else. Now, because both materialism and idealism are false, the only reasonable alternative is dualism. But substance dualism seems out of the question for a number of reasons. For example it cannot explain how these spiritual substances came into existence in the first place and it cannot explain how they relate to the physical world. So property dualism seems the only reasonable view of the mind–body problem. Consciousness really exists, but it is not a separate substance on its own, rather it is a property of the brain.""Here is where the inadequacy of the traditional terminology comes out most obviously. The property dualist wants to say that consciousness is a mental and therefore not physical feature of the brain. I want to say consciousness is a mental and therefore biological and therefore physical feature of the brain. But because the traditional vocabulary was designed to contrast the mental and the physical, I cannot say what I want to say in the traditional vocabulary without sounding like I am saying something inconsistent. Similarly when the identity theorists said that consciousness is nothing but a neurobiological process, they meant that consciousness as qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy,touchy feely, etc.) does not even exist, that only third-person neurobiological processes exist. I want also to say that consciousness is nothing but a neurobio-logical process, and by that I mean that precisely because consciousness is qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy, touchy feely, etc.) it has to be a neurobiological process; because, so far, we have not found any system that can cause and realize conscious states except brain systems. Maybe someday we will be able to create conscious artifacts, in which case subjective states of consciousness will be ‘physical’ features of those artifacts."http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 18:04:49Fact is , a fact we all do experience as such every single day of our lives , is that the mind or consciousness do have causal effects on matter , and hence on body and brain : your own thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longins , will ,ambitions .....do have causal effects on your bodies and brains ...How does the immaterial or even quantum mechanics create or transmit or select or store (I'll let you chose the correct term, since you introduced the theory) those things - thoughts , emotions, feelings , desires . love , longings , will ,ambitions. How does it work? QuoteP.S.: Why do you keep on ignoring what Stapp and others have been saying regarding the undeniable causal effects of the mind on matter , and the rest , while so stubbornly sticking to your own false materialism you do continue confusing with science , i wonder .I haven't ignored it at all, infact I agree. Many neuroscientists do think there is top- down control, and that mental activity does affect not only brain states but even structure, such as increasing plasticity, and forming new neural pathways. That is the basis of learning. I posted this quote a few pages back. “Complex information that is represented at higher stages of processing influences simpler processes occurring at antecedent stages. The role of top-down influences is then to set the cortex in a specific working mode according to behavioral requirements that are updated dynamically. In effect, these ideas reverse the central dogma of sensory processing, with a flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas playing a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. The construction of a subjective percept involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences. Conversely, the top-down expectations and hypotheses are set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. Under this view, there is no starting point for information flow.”(Italics mine)http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307003765I would be very much interested in a more detailed explanation of how quantum mechanics might work in the brain, or any actual experimental evidence. ps. Here's a article by Serale you might be interested in. He agrees with you on certain key points but draws a different conclusion. It's kind of interesting because he feels he has been misinterpreted by both sides - by strict materialists as well as idealists.Here are the two passages I found most interesting:"There is clearly a difference between consciousness and the material or physical world. We know this from our own experience, but it is also obvious from science. The material world is publicly accessible and is pretty much as described by physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences; but the conscious, experiential, phenomenological world is not publicly accessible. It has a distinct private existence. We know it with certainty from our inner, private, subjective experiences.We all know that the private world of consciousness exists, we know that it is part of the real world, and our question is to find out how it fits into the public material world, specifically, we need to know how it fits into the brain. Because neither consciousness nor matter is reducible to the other, they are distinct and different phenomena in the world. Those who believe that consciousness is reducible to matter are called materialists; those who believe that matter is reducibleto consciousness are called idealists. Both are mistaken for the same reason. Both try to eliminate something that really exists in its own right and cannot be reduced to something else. Now, because both materialism and idealism are false, the only reasonable alternative is dualism. But substance dualism seems out of the question fora number of reasons. For example it cannot explain how these spiritual substances came into existence in the first place and it cannot explain how they relate to the physical world. So property dualism seems the only reasonable view of the mind–body problem. Consciousness really exists, but it is not a separate substance on its own, rather it is a property of the brain.""Here is where the inadequacy of the traditional terminology comes out most obviously. The property dualist wants to say that consciousness is a mental and therefore not physical feature of the brain. I want to say consciousness is a mental and therefore biological and therefore physical feature of the brain. But because the traditional vocabulary was designed to contrast the mental and the physical, I cannot say what I want to say in the traditional vocabulary without sounding like I am saying something inconsistent. Similarly when the identity theorists said that consciousness is nothing but a neurobiological process, they meant that consciousness as qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy,touchy feely, etc.) does not even exist, that only third-person neurobiological processes exist. I want also to say that consciousness is nothing but a neurobio-logical process, and by that I mean that precisely because consciousness is qualitative, subjective, irreducibly phenomenological (airy fairy, touchy feely, etc.) it has to be a neurobiological process; because, so far, we have not found any system that can cause and realize conscious states except brain systems. Maybe someday we will be able to create conscious artifacts, in which case subjective states of consciousness will be ‘physical’ features of those artifacts."http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf
It's ok not to read my posts , i am not offended by that , although i have to admit i have been repeating almost the same things over and over again : i have been having no choice but to do just that , and that's not been all i have been doing here either .
All the best , and happy non-materialist and non-mechanical haha creative new year by the way to you and to all your beloved ones as well .
P.S.: It would be interesting and fascinating to try to tell us about your creative work ,from time to time , so, we can have at least some sort of a glimpse of that .Despite its undeniable falsehood ,the mechanistic view of the world has been delivering some interesting insights , ideas , breakthroughs , inspirations ....anyway .
Yeah, right : just start insulting when you cannot do any better .
Untill then , just continue having fun and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2013 20:49:43Untill then , just continue having fun and be satisfied with what you have been seeing from reality through the materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming that that's all what there is to reality : it's up to you indeed .Since you have been liberated from materialism and can see beyond the key hole, it seems odd to me that you can't describe very much about the wonderful new vistas it has opened up for you, and that other liberated scientists can't seem to either, other than to whine on and on about how materialism is false. When does the immaterial party actually get started?