Scientism and how this worldview affects open discussions in the Philosophy and religious forums threads.

[immortal]

 

Me:"Sweet is the property of sugar. What is sweetness? Define sweetness. "

 

OK

http://dictionary.re...om/browse/sweet

Though I'd be tempted to throw in something about the effect on certain receptor cells on the tongue of humans and (I think) most animals.

 

Obviously it's also used metaphorically (love is sweet).

And it's used to describe the pattern of electrical activity in the brain associated with the stimulation of sensors on the tongue.

 

The main tenet of cognitive science is that it is irrelevant to map the mental processes of the mind to the molecular functions of the brain saying that the representations and patterns are quite enough to model or understand the emerging mental processes such as language processing, reasoning, behaviour, concept formation and attainment etc.

 

The cognitive scientists use pattern recognition and fuzzy logic models used in neural networks or computational models to model or simulate the mental processes or patterns of the mind and it is hypothesized that the mind of a human is similar to the functioning of a neural network.

 

There are many theories defending the functionalist approach and there is also a lot of criticisms against the functionalist approach using thought experiments and observational data as to how the humans solve problems or in problem solving.

 

Therefore there is a lot of further research and evidence that should be shown to ensure that the reductionist approach of science is sufficient enough to answer all the questions in the cognitive sciences.

 

Me: "Long time back I saw in National Geographic Channel that some people have Synesthesia, one form of synesthesia is the Lexical --> Gustatory Synesthesia in which the subject can experience tastes when they hear specific sounds. For example:- The sound of your name might produce an experience of a specific taste in those individuals. This shows that things like sweetness and other properties are only mental qualias, they exist only in our minds seperate from the objects to which they are associated with."

 

Not really, the sensation of sweetness is a pattern of activity in the brain. That might be induced by sugar or it might be cross talk from an adjacent area of the brain.

 

If the best example of one of the mysterious "qualia" that you can come up with is a neural wiring problem then I don't think they are that important.

 

It is important and my #19 post in this thread addresses why it is important to investigate them. Its not fair to say that it is just fine.

 

Cognitive science

 

Another important mind-related subject that the cognitive sciences tend to avoid is the existence of qualia, with discussions over this issue being sometimes limited to only mentioning qualia as a philosophically-open matter. Some within the cognitive science community, however, consider these to be vital topics, and advocate the importance of investigating them

 

Me: "Similarly Existence is a property and it exists on its own without a body to associate itself with,"

 

once again, I think you need to see M Descartes' work.

 

Rene Descartes? He was the first great philosopher who looked into the problem of consciousness.

 

Cartesian Philosophy

Grolier encyclopedia

 

Descartes adopted the strategy of withholding his belief from anything that was not entirely certain and indubitable. To test which of his previous beliefs could meet these conditions, he subjected them to a series of skeptical hypotheses. For example, he asked himself whether he could be certain he was not dreaming. His most powerful skeptical hypothesis, that there is an evil genius trying to deceive him, challenges not only the belief that the physical world exists, but also belief in simple statements of arithmetic, such as 2 + 3 = 5, and thus would seem to call into question the validity of reason itself. But not even an evil genius could deceive someone into believing falsely that he existed. "I think, therefore I am" is thus beyond skeptical doubt. From this Archimedean point, "I think, therefore I am," Descartes attempted to regain the world called into doubt by his skeptical hypotheses. He thus invoked skepticism only as a means of reaching certainty.

 

It is true that no evil genuis could deceive you by making you to falsely believe that you existed but an evil genuis could easily make you falsely believe that you're the one who is thinking or that the thoughts on your mind are yours. Therefore it should have been "I exist, therefore I am", if we are not skeptical or if we are so certain that we are the one's who is thinking in our minds then we would have known whether free will exists or not. It is because of this skepticism that the problem of free will has existed right from the starting of philosophical thought.

 

This is where the difference lies between eastern and western philosophical thought and among those philosophers. Eastern philosphers think that the genuis who is making us to believe that we are the one's who are thinking on our own is none other than your personal God itself. Your mind cannot think on its own, it needs direction and it comes from a genuis who directs your thought processes.

 

However, his arguments to overcome skepticism are not without their problems. One of these is known as the Cartesian circle: no argument to show that God exists can be certain unless one is certain of one's own reasoning; but, according to Descartes, one cannot be certain of one's reasoning unless one is certain that God exists. Philosophers have been struggling with skepticismÑespecially skepticism about the existence of the physical worldÑever since.

 

This shows that God is beyond reason, he can be only known through experiential knowledge i.e by accessing the quale of God. Only if you know him then only you're certain of your reasoning and certain about the objective existence of the physical world independent of an observer.

 

Descartes is known as the father of the mind-body problem. He claimed that human beings are composites of two kinds of substances, mind and body. A mind is a conscious or thinking beingÑthat is, it understands, wills, senses, and imagines. A body is a being extended in length, width, and breadth. Minds are indivisible, whereas bodies are infinitely divisible. The "I" of the "I think, therefore I am" is the mind and can exist without being extended, so that it can in principle survive the death of the body. Despite having different natures, Descartes thought that mind and body causally interact. The human mind causes motions in the body by moving a small part of the brain. Motions in that same part of the brain produce sensations and emotions. This problem of whether mental entities are different in nature from physical entities continues to be a primary concern of philosophers and psychologists.

 

I think we need to reconsider the dualist approach towards the mind-body problem rather than holding on to the functionalist or the physicalist approach. However I don't fully appreciate the dualist view, if mind is found to be a non-physical entity then everything that is real is non-physical in nature and therefore the physical brain only appears as a perception in our minds but our senses might actually be made up of non-physical entities and that's how a non-physical entities interact with each other rather than a mind causing motions in the body by moving a small part of the brain which sounds really absurd with the advancement in brain research.

 

Me: "when you say 'I' have this property of existence, upon close introspection you'll see that the word 'I' refers to your body."

 

On slightly closer introspection (or just copying M. Descartes) I will find that it's my mind I'm referring to, rather than my body.

 

I have clearly shown you that you cannot be certain that you're the one who is thinking on your own and hence it still needs further close introspection showing that the "I" is not refering to your mind or even your body, it is refering to something else which we don't know and hence it is so important to know thyself and once you know yourself you'll know that you can exist seperately from your mind and your body. You're existence itself. You're qualia itself.

 

 

[ydoaPs]

You would be unable prove that. If you could you would have solved the problem of consiousness and falsified solipsism at the same time, the latter being demonstrably unfalsifiable. It may be your opinion, but it doesn't stack up logically. Descartes chose cogito precisely because an evil demon could not be confusing his physical senses, since it would be true even if his senses were confused.

Confused sense data is still sense data. Care to try again?

[PeterJ]

Confused sense data is still sense data. Care to try again?

Exactly. My very point. Sense data can be whatever it likes, awareness is clearly something else. You'd know that if you looked.

[dimreepr]

 

I have clearly shown you that you cannot be certain that you're the one who is thinking on your own and hence it still needs further close introspection showing that the "I" is not refering to your mind or even your body, it is refering to something else which we don't know and hence it is so important to know thyself and once you know yourself you'll know that you can exist seperately from your mind and your body. You're existence itself. You're qualia itself.

 

 

 

 

This is a direct contradiction to descartes teaching, and to be honest, his argument is better.

[John Cuthber]

"Its not fair to say that it is just fine."

What I said was that if someone chooses to call a computer model which predicts what chemicals will taste sweet a "zombie" that's just fine by me.

It would seem far less "fair" not to let them.

The other thing I said was that it didn't answer my question.

 

"Rene Descartes? He was the first great philosopher who looked into the problem of consciousness."

That's the bloke.

The one who pointed out that in order for something to know it thinks, it has to exist.

 

Which is more or less the opposite of " Existence is a property and it exists on its own without a body to associate itself with"

It doesn't tell you anything about the body (or anything else) but the provability of existence is dependent on the existence of a thought.

That (possible abstract) thought is the only "body" we really know about.

However the problem with this, is that it gets you precisely nowhere.

 

"This shows that God is beyond reason"

Nope, that's begging the question. Since He doesn't exist He isn't beyond anything.

 

 

"I have clearly shown you that you cannot be certain that you're the one who is thinking on your own and hence it still needs further close introspection showing that the "I" is not refering to your mind or even your body, it is refering to something else which we don't know and hence it is so important to know thyself and once you know yourself you'll know that you can exist seperately from your mind and your body. You're existence itself. You're qualia itself. "

Nope, the I that does the thinking is me, by definition.

I may be someone else's dream, but I really am that person's dream, it's really me.

 

 

At the level of abstraction where I logically accept that I may be nothing more than figment of someone else's imagination, all the other issues here are moot.

 

However if we allow ourselves back into the real world of typing on web pages and paying the rent I still don't seem to have heard of anything that is not open to scientific study.

 

So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us and never will?

[immortal]

Me: "I am not saying that science should give up investigation, what I am saying is that science should look into the world of qualia rather than smashing atoms in huge particle accelerators, it should shift its scope of investigation. "

 

Why do you think it isn't doing that?

They are doing. That's one of the areas of research that fMRI and PET imaging are opening up for us.

 

"There are a lot of things which require a new way of thinking and I have already given you some fair points,"

 

Not as far as I can see.

 

 

I only want a short answer from the scientific community because a lot will depend on the direction and content of my future posts in this site. I mean if the scientific community will not overcome their reductionist positivist approach and investigate on other methods of investigating the nature then I find that all my efforts is just vain. So the scientific community is not going to waste its time by invesitgating on other methods of investigating the nature unless someone else shows that there is a different method through which some real knowledge is being accumulated by using such a method. This is just a matter of responsiblity. If we have to evolve from a type 1 civilization to a type 2 or type 3 civilization then don't you think that we shouldn't just rely on genetic engineering to make us super humans. I mean shouldn't we preserve the knowledge of the great historical civilizations that ruled the earth once upon a time. We are preserving it only in our libraries in the form of books but we're not preserving the practical knowledge of those civilizations by clinging on to the positivist approach of science. So whose responsiblity is this?

[dimreepr]

I only want a short answer from the scientific community because a lot will depend on the direction and content of my future posts in this site. I mean if the scientific community will not overcome their reductionist positivist approach and investigate on other methods of investigating the nature then I find that all my efforts is just vain. So the scientific community is not going to waste its time by invesitgating on other methods of investigating the nature unless someone else shows that there is a different method through which some real knowledge is being accumulated by using such a method. This is just a matter of responsiblity. If we have to evolve from a type 1 civilization to a type 2 or type 3 civilization then don't you think that we shouldn't just rely on genetic engineering to make us super humans. I mean shouldn't we preserve the knowledge of the great historical civilizations that ruled the earth once upon a time. We are preserving it only in our libraries in the form of books but we're not preserving the practical knowledge of those civilizations by clinging on to the positivist approach of science. So whose responsiblity is this?

 

 

Wisdom and knowledge are mutually exclusive. Wisdom of the ages, deal with the truths of life where as science deals only with facts.

 

 

[John Cuthber]

When you write "the scientific community will not overcome their reductionist positivist approach" you imply that there is some problem that needs to be overcome.

 

Once again.

What is that problem?

 

 

In the same way if we are to " investigate on other methods of investigating the nature " you need to tell us plainly what those methods are.

It's clearly not my field so I need the "for dummies" version.

What, exactly, would you expect us to do?

 

"I mean shouldn't we preserve the knowledge of the great historical civilizations that ruled the earth once upon a time. "

Like what?

For a start, no civilisation ever ruled the earth.

What knowledge do you think we have lost?

 

 

While I'm asking dumb questions can you expand on "If we have to evolve from a type 1 civilization to a type 2 or type 3 civilization".

We are going to get nowhere if you don't explain the term you use.

[immortal]

When you write "the scientific community will not overcome their reductionist positivist approach" you imply that there is some problem that needs to be overcome.

 

Once again.

What is that problem?

 

Yes science cannot know or will not know the ontological nature of space, time and matter because in order to know their nature of existence we need to access the quale of time, space and matter. I mean we need to experience their nature of existence just in the same way as we experience sweetness or redness. Now sweetness or redness is an universal, it is universal to everyone but as the thought experiment of Mary's room indicates that there can be other qualia outisde of mary's room which adds some knowledge to her previous existing knowledge of the world once she comes out of the room and has access to such a qualia. Similarly the hypothesis is that we are living in a universal room and we cannot know the nature of things as it "IS" as long as we're confined to this room and in order to know their exact nature we need to come out of our universal room and gain access to other qualia which exists outside our universal room just in the same way how mary come's out of her room.

 

The point is that eastern school of philosophical thought had practical knowledge to come out of our universal room and had methods to access other knowledge of qualia outside of our universal room.

 

In the same way if we are to " investigate on other methods of investigating the nature " you need to tell us plainly what those methods are.

It's clearly not my field so I need the "for dummies" version.

What, exactly, would you expect us to do?

 

Its not my field either. If it was, then I would indeed describe in detail what those methods are. I was educated based on the western school of philosophical thought. I learnt the Bohr atomic model and the hybridization of quantum orbitals of electrons which aids in the formation of molecules just as you did. If I was educated based on the eastern school of philosophical thought then I wouldn't have learnt these scientific models and there by couldn't have argued with you on similar grounds.

 

We need to study the eastern school of philosophical thought if we ever want to have knowledge about qualia, the positivist approach will not provide us, it will ignore its importance and there by humanity will lose its knowledge. Qualia do represent some real knowledge.

 

 

"I mean shouldn't we preserve the knowledge of the great historical civilizations that ruled the earth once upon a time. "

 

Like what?

For a start, no civilisation ever ruled the earth.

What knowledge do you think we have lost?

 

I didn't said that literally, I meant they occupied rich fertile lands and lived on some part of the earth.

 

The kind of knowledge with which you can exercise your will and experience sweetness even if the substance stimulates receptors which are sensitive to the taste of bitter. That's the kind of practical knowledge what I am talking of. We have lost them and we'll lose them forever if we don't study the eastern school of philosophical thought.

 

While I'm asking dumb questions can you expand on "If we have to evolve from a type 1 civilization to a type 2 or type 3 civilization".

We are going to get nowhere if you don't explain the term you use.

 

I meant if we had practical knowledge to manipulate and access new qualia i.e manipulate the actual physical world which I think is also made of only qualia then it will give rise to new possibilities and new ways of manipulating the physical nature for the use of our civilization and it will transform us in the process.

 

 

 

[John Cuthber]

OK, lets look at the Mary's room idea.

In her room she has lots of stuff, but no colour.

Because she never sees "red" she can't imagine it.

However she can, in principle, analyse the electrical signals in the brain of some people who are outside the room and can see a red thing.

She could do some horribly complicated correlations and find out that "if this bit of the brain is lit up then the person is perceiving red."

OK, the "bit of the brain" might be a problem because it has to be mapped with respect to the other bits of, for example, vision, but that's a side issue.

OK, so now she builds herself a robot and teaches it to do brain surgery and fits herself with some electrodes.

When she sends a current through those electrodes she experiences something new- the colour red.

She's still in the room. No red light has ever met her eyes.

 

Yet now, when she goes outside she can "remember" the sensation of red and she can tell you, for example, if you have a red scarf or not.

 

Now,where are these magic "qualia"?

 

I don't think they are really anything but patterns in the brain.

If thats' true then they can be studied and copied.

[PeterJ]

Wisdom and knowledge are mutually exclusive. Wisdom of the ages, deal with the truths of life where as science deals only with facts.

They are different things, yes, but not mutually exclusive things. Hell, if they were we'd have to choose between them. Wisdom comes from knowledge. It is no good stating things as facts when they are opinions. Show me a wise man who has no knowledge.

 

OK, lets look at the Mary's room idea.

In her room she has lots of stuff, but no colour.

Because she never sees "red" she can't imagine it.

However she can, in principle, analyse the electrical signals in the brain of some people who are outside the room and can see a red thing.

She could do some horribly complicated correlations and find out that "if this bit of the brain is lit up then the person is perceiving red."

OK, the "bit of the brain" might be a problem because it has to be mapped with respect to the other bits of, for example, vision, but that's a side issue.

OK, so now she builds herself a robot and teaches it to do brain surgery and fits herself with some electrodes.

When she sends a current through those electrodes she experiences something new- the colour red.

She's still in the room. No red light has ever met her eyes.

 

Yet now, when she goes outside she can "remember" the sensation of red and she can tell you, for example, if you have a red scarf or not.

 

Now,where are these magic "qualia"?

Where they always were, lost under your complex way of thinking about this. How would you know what pain is if you have not felt it? Pain is not accessible to third person observation.

 

Of course Mary would recognise red in your version of the situation. As you say, she has already experienced it, and is hardly likely to have forgotten the experience. But the whole point of the original thought experiment is that she has not experienced it. We cannot just change the experiment to avoid the difficult issues. Do you see that this is what you have done?

 

I don't think they are really anything but patterns in the brain.

If thats' true then they can be studied and copied.

If that's true, yes. If not, no.

 

If you could win your argument there would be no problem of consciousness. Unfortunately the problem is precisely that your argument is is unwinnable. Were it winnable then philosophy of mind would be a piece of cake.

Edited February 6, 2012 by PeterJ

[John Cuthber]

" As you say, she has already experienced it,"

No she has not. No red light ever met her eyes.

 

 

"We cannot just change the experiment to avoid the difficult issues. Do you see that this is what you have done? "

No. what I did was show that, in principle, it is possible for someone to understand the concept of "redness" without ever having seen anything red. Redness is a physical thing.

 

"Unfortunately the problem is precisely that your argument is is unwinnable. "

Feel free to prove the non existence of proof of my argument.

For an encore, feel free to prove the non existence of anything (outside of maths).

You have stated this as a fact, but offered no proof. That's not science.

 

"Were it winnable then philosophy of mind would be a piece of cake. "

If I'm right, then it is a piece of cake. Except for the technological problems. (which make it practically impossible, at least for the moment).

 

BTW, considering Imortal's posts with my emphasis leads me to think this is all bollocks.

"This shows that things like sweetness and other properties are only mental qualias, they exist only in our minds seperate from the objects to which they are associated with"

 

"I meant if we had practical knowledge to manipulate and access new qualia i.e manipulate the actual physical world which I think is also made of only qualia then it will give rise to new possibilities and new ways of manipulating the physical nature for the use of our civilization and it will transform us in the process."

 

These qualia seem to cover pretty much everything, but explain nothing.

 

 

One thing that might be classed as one of these mysterious qualia is "religious awe". Up till fairly recently nobody would say "I had this epiphany the other day- and I can explain it to you so you share my experience." It was pretty much the epitome of a "personal" experience. After all, if you could convey your epiphany to somone else you could convert them to your religion- but that seems at best, rather unreliable.

 

This

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

is based on some 20th c technology and 19th c electromagnetic theory.

 

I really think these "things in the brain" are real (rather complicated) physical things that can be dealt with by science.

Do you have any evidence that shows they are not?

[PeterJ]

" As you say, she has already experienced it,"

J. No she has not. No red light ever met her eyes.

Then why did you say she had experienced it? Here are your words. We can only read what you write.

 

"OK, so now she builds herself a robot and teaches it to do brain surgery and fits herself with some electrodes.

When she sends a current through those electrodes she experiences something new- the colour red."

 

P. "We cannot just change the experiment to avoid the difficult issues. Do you see that this is what you have just done? "

J - No. what I did was show that, in principle, it is possible for someone to understand the concept of "redness" without ever having seen anything red. Redness is a physical thing.

P - No. You'll see if you look that you said that if she had experienced red previously then she would be able to remember the experience or red later. This is obviously not very interesting.

 

------

 

P "Unfortunately the problem is precisely that your argument is is unwinnable. "

Feel free to prove the non existence of proof of my argument.

P. A quick review of the literature will establish that nobody has yet made this proof. I'm not saying that here isn't one, but you'd have to make it yourself, and you haven't begun yet. The problem of conscious is not trivial.

 

-------

 

P. "Were it winnable then philosophy of mind would be a piece of cake. "

J - If I'm right, then it is a piece of cake. Except for the technological problems. (which make it practically impossible, at least for the moment).

Exactly. You must choose to believe either that philosophy of mind is difficult or that you are right.

 

--------

J. BTW, considering Imortal's posts with my emphasis leads me to think this is all bollocks.

"This shows that things like sweetness and other properties are only mental qualias, they exist only in our minds seperate from the objects to which they are associated with"

P. This is simply a fact. It is also the orthodox view in physics. I don't know anyone who has ever argued otherwise.

 

-----

J. "I meant if we had practical knowledge to manipulate and access new qualia i.e manipulate the actual physical world which I think is also made of only qualia then it will give rise to new possibilities and new ways of manipulating the physical nature for the use of our civilization and it will transform us in the process.!

P - If ifs and ands were pots and pans, as my granmother used to say, then we'd all be tinkers.

 

-----

These qualia seem to cover pretty much everything, but explain nothing.

P - It's a name for a phenomenon, or class of phenomenon, not an explanation of anything. It;s qualia that need the explanation, and how we can be aware of them.

 

-------

J - One thing that might be classed as one of these mysterious qualia is "religious awe". Up till fairly recently nobody would say "I had this epiphany the other day- and I can explain it to you so you share my experience." It was pretty much the epitome of a "personal" experience. After all, if you could convey your epiphany to somone else you could convert them to your religion- but that seems at best, rather unreliable.

P - I would agree that religious awe is, like all experiences, a quale. (What a silly word). But what makes you think that it has suddenly become possible to convey the experience of an epiphany? All experiences are incommensurable, meaning they cannot be conveyed to others. You have to have your own experiences. Whoever says they can convey the experience of their epiphany clearly hasn't had one. Try conveying the experience of red to a blind man.

 

_____________

J. I really think these "things in the brain" are real (rather complicated) physical things that can be dealt with by science.

I know.

J. Do you have any evidence that shows they are not?

Yes. I'd cite the results of about three thousand years of philosophy, a few centuries of natural science and about seventy years of consciousness studies. The relationship between mind and matter is just about the most tricky problem in philosophy, and that between mental and corporeal phenomena is about the most difficult problem in the sciences. You will be famous forever if you can show that it can be solved by saying that mind reduces to matter. This not only cannot be shown, it also makes no sense in logic and contradicts our own experience.

 

I think you may need to reconsider your view. There really is a problem of consciousness.

 

Edited February 7, 2012 by PeterJ

[immortal]

OK, lets look at the Mary's room idea.

In her room she has lots of stuff, but no colour.

Because she never sees "red" she can't imagine it.

However she can, in principle, analyse the electrical signals in the brain of some people who are outside the room and can see a red thing.

She could do some horribly complicated correlations and find out that "if this bit of the brain is lit up then the person is perceiving red."

OK, the "bit of the brain" might be a problem because it has to be mapped with respect to the other bits of, for example, vision, but that's a side issue.

OK, so now she builds herself a robot and teaches it to do brain surgery and fits herself with some electrodes.

When she sends a current through those electrodes she experiences something new- the colour red.

She's still in the room. No red light has ever met her eyes.

 

Yet now, when she goes outside she can "remember" the sensation of red and she can tell you, for example, if you have a red scarf or not.

 

Now,where are these magic "qualia"?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_room

 

They explain further: "Which of these three possible outcomes will actually occur? We believe we've learned the answer from a colorblind synesthete subject. Much like the theoretical Mary, our colorblind synesthete volunteer can not see certain hues, because of deficient color receptors. However, when he looks at numbers, his synesthesia enables him to experience colors in his mind that he has never seen in the real world. He calls these "Martian colors." The fact that color cells (and corresponding colors) can activate in his brain helps us answer the philosophical question: we suggest that the same thing will happen to Mary."

 

Effect: Ramachandran and Hubbard's contribution is in terms of exploring "the neural basis of qualia" by "using pre-existing, stable differences in the conscious experiences of people who experience synaesthesia compared with those who do not" but, they note that "this still doesn’t explain why these particular events are qualia laden and others are not (Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’) but at least it narrows the scope of the problem" .

 

If Mary was a synesthetic then she would have had knowledge about redness, blueness and other colors other than black and white by looking at those black and white numbers on her television screen. Therefore in this case she very well know what it is like to experience redness and sweetness while she is still inside the room and she will not be surprised to see redness when she is sent out of the room to experience the real world. She doesn't even have to undergo that surgery.

 

By putting her in a closed room you haven't put her outside the universal room. She is in an uinversal room on both circumstances i.e while she is inside the room as well as once she is outisde the room and she will always be in an universal room as long as her non-physical mind is coupled to the sense organs. Therefore her access to the qualia of redness is not denied just by putting her in a closed room. The knowledge argument by Jackson was not strict in its intended sense.

 

Therefore it all boils down to whether these things are physical or non-physical. If they are physical then physicalism is right but if they are non-physical then that means the mind is non-physical which means that there are mechanisms through which it can decouple itself from the sense organs there by coming out of the universal room and there by accessing new qualia.

 

I don't think they are really anything but patterns in the brain.

 

Yes the big question is can qualia be studied, copied, manipulated, experienced in a machine, if they are just patterns then it shouldn't be a problem to upload them into machines. The question is not that the techonology is available or not. Other sources indicate that it is unachievable.

 

If thats' true then they can be studied and copied.

 

The huge body of literature along with practical knowledge from the eastern school of philosophical thought implies that its not true i.e they are not patterns in the brain and some have enough self-evidence to bet that they cannot be studied and copied. If that's the case then the scientific community will never succeed in solving the hard-problem of consciousness and if it doesn't investigate on other ways of looking at nature then the knowledge given by science will always be incomplete.

 

 

 

So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us and never will?

 

 

So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us and never will?

 

http://www.hubertpyockey.com/hpyblog/about/

 

Science cannot solve the problem of origin of life. Genome and genetic code is an abstract thing, which cannot be found physically, natural selection can account for the generation of new information once it exists but it cannot account for the origin of prescriptive or meaningful information itself, are there any natural mechanisms which can produce natural algorithms along with a set of codes and machinerys to process those codes?

 

Science can only measure information and who decides whether the things described by mathematics are abstract concepts or they actually describe something existing in the physical world which evades from being seen as we are confined to our universal phenomenal room?

 

Therefore the knowledge given by science about evolution by natural selection and the origin of life will always be incomplete with out knowing the exact nature of the things.

 

 

[John Cuthber]

"But what makes you think that it has suddenly become possible to convey the experience of an epiphany? "

The experiment where they did ( with the helmet ).

 

 

You quote this from wiki

"They explain further: "Which of these three possible outcomes will actually occur? We believe we've learned the answer from a colorblind synesthete subject. Much like the theoretical Mary, our colorblind synesthete volunteer can not see certain hues, because of deficient color receptors. However, when he looks at numbers, his synesthesia enables him to experience colors in his mind that he has never seen in the real world. He calls these "Martian colors." T: we suggest that the same thing will happen to Mary."

 

And it seems to support my point.

In particular "he fact that color cells (and corresponding colors) can activate in his brain helps us answer the philosophical question"

Those colour cells are real.

There's nothing magic about "redness": it just means activating those cells (by whatever means).

 

Redness is, therefore, perfectly amenable to scientific analysis and experimentation.

 

 

Re.

"Science cannot solve the problem of origin of life. Genome and genetic code is an abstract thing, which cannot be found physically".

That's just not true.

Proving that life originated in the way we think it id is a practical impossibility, but in principle, the experiment is easy- just watch a large number of Earth-like planets and see what happens.

The genome isn't abstract at all.

If you ask these people nicely they might even give you a copy- but don't get upset if they don't. You have a copy in every cell of your body.

It's silly to pretend that it's "abstract".

 

"Science can only measure information and who decides whether the things described by mathematics are abstract concepts or they actually describe something existing in the physical world which evades from being seen as we are confined to our universal phenomenal room?"

The decision is made by the consensus among scientists and technologists who use the models.

"are there any natural mechanisms which can produce natural algorithms along with a set of codes and machinerys to process those codes?"

Yes, evolution is very good at that sort of thing.

 

So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us about?

[immortal]

 

You quote this from wiki

"They explain further: "Which of these three possible outcomes will actually occur? We believe we've learned the answer from a colorblind synesthete subject. Much like the theoretical Mary, our colorblind synesthete volunteer can not see certain hues, because of deficient color receptors. However, when he looks at numbers, his synesthesia enables him to experience colors in his mind that he has never seen in the real world. He calls these "Martian colors." T: we suggest that the same thing will happen to Mary."

 

And it seems to support my point.

In particular "he fact that color cells (and corresponding colors) can activate in his brain helps us answer the philosophical question"

Those colour cells are real.

There's nothing magic about "redness": it just means activating those cells (by whatever means).

 

Redness is, therefore, perfectly amenable to scientific analysis and experimentation.

 

No, not so soon.

 

You missed the latter part of the quote, this is what they said.

 

"but, they note that "this still doesn’t explain why these particular events are qualia laden and others are not (Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’) but at least it narrows the scope of the problem" .

 

Perhaps I thought you would first look at this post #22 in this thread http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/63165-where-did-god-come-from/page__pid__657198__st__20#entry657198 where I have addressed your question. I just didn't want to post the samething here too.

 

Physicalism is not proved untill it can be shown that qualia can be copied and studied. Those color cells doesn't explain anything about qualia, they just indicate that one experiences qualia when those cells are stimulated, the basic mechanisms of how qualia works is the real hard problem.

 

Dualism still stands out as a possibility.

 

Re.

"Science cannot solve the problem of origin of life. Genome and genetic code is an abstract thing, which cannot be found physically".

 

That's just not true.

Proving that life originated in the way we think it id is a practical impossibility, but in principle, the experiment is easy- just watch a large number of Earth-like planets and see what happens.

The genome isn't abstract at all.

If you ask these people nicely they might even give you a copy- but don't get upset if they don't. You have a copy in every cell of your body.

It's silly to pretend that it's "abstract".

 

What they might give me is matter whose thermodynamic entropy is highly reduced and shanon's entropy gives us a way to measure the information in the form of bits and bytes. Shanon's entropy is not connected to thermodynamic entropy both are different things therefore information itself is different from the matter which represents it. They don't give me genome, what they give me is a representation of it, not exactly what I wanted.

 

The practical impossibility is not something due to the constraints of time, space and recreating the pre-historic conditions of the earth, the practical impossibility is due to the positivist approach of science which fails to give knowledge about the nature of things so that we could know what information "IS".

 

"Science can only measure information and who decides whether the things described by mathematics are abstract concepts or they actually describe something existing in the physical world which evades from being seen as we are confined to our universal phenomenal room?"

 

The decision is made by the consensus among scientists and technologists who use the models.

 

Not all scientists and philosophers are satisfied with such a consensus, many think we need new science, as a layman I can see the concerns and arguments of these unsatisfied scientists who think that our knowledge about the world is incomplete, ofcourse there will always be few loopholes or gaps in the theory but the main problem lies in the positivist approach which is not concerned with the nature of the physical system which is being measured by physicists. To me that seems a absolute limitation in the method of investigating the nature rather than knowledge gaps in the scientific theories which will be filled out with further investigation. If this is true then science will never come up with a single fundamental model to describe the universe. Therefore we should look for new schools of philosophical thought which can achieve the perfection that natural sciences has achieved over the years.

 

"are there any natural mechanisms which can produce natural algorithms along with a set of codes and machinerys to process those codes?"

 

Yes, evolution is very good at that sort of thing.

 

Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in. The problem is there was no natural selection to act to implement the Grover's algorithm which is being used to form triplet codes which represent amino acids. So how can nature implement natural algorithms in the absence of natural selection? We're missing a key physical component in nature which is the source of abstract information, I don't think information is an abstract thing.

 

So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us about?

 

These things are enough for me to give some space for irrationality in my mind so that I can investigate on new ways of looking at nature since I clearly know that there is something wrong with the positivist approach used in mainstream physical sciences.

 

 

[Ophiolite]

Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in.

This is a common misunderstanding. I suspect it arises because some scientists, or educated laypersons seek to counter creationist babble, by distinguishing between abiogenesis and evolution. This is a convenient, but unrealisitc disitnction.

 

Pre-biotic chemistry merges into biochemistry imperceptibly. Natural selection of organic materials that led to what we would comfortably call life was in place from the outset.

[PeterJ]

I'm very surprised to hear you say this, immortal, but I couldn't agree more. Except maybe for the word 'perfection'.

 

"Therefore we should look for new schools of philosophical thought which can achieve the perfection that natural sciences has achieved over the years."

[immortal]

This is a common misunderstanding. I suspect it arises because some scientists, or educated laypersons seek to counter creationist babble, by distinguishing between abiogenesis and evolution. This is a convenient, but unrealisitc disitnction.

 

I was aware of these works five years ago and I don't know whether any progress have been made in the field of abiogenesis since then.

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105001

http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.3895

http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0403036

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0002037

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0102034

 

Pre-biotic chemistry merges into biochemistry imperceptibly. Natural selection of organic materials that led to what we would comfortably call life was in place from the outset.

 

I don't know in what context you used the word "imperceptible". As you can see from those links if quantum information processing was used in the primordial soup made up of random chemicals to synthesize living matter(bio-chemicals) from non-living matter(pre-biotic chemicals) then that seems to be a problem.

 

1. Computer scientists who are working to design quantum computers have to apply precise magentic fields in a delicate manner to do operations in qubits which are in superposition (i.e all possible values are superimposed).

 

2. They have to use specific methods to make a measurement on the qubits in such a way that they can extract the desired answer without destroying the delicate computed information existing in the superposition of qubits.

 

3. More importantly Quantum decoherence prevents the chemicals in the primordial soup to achieve quantum coherence and deny them to exist in such a superposition for long enough time and decoherence makes a random measurement on the superposition, it doesn't do any processing or searching for a desired chemical having specific properties, it is inherently random.

 

And yet we see living matter self-organizing and produce some amazing design solutions. Natural selection can come into play and can produce novel design solutions only after there is a self-replicator, Natural selection requires a hereditary factor to act on.

 

Once again the nature of the physical quantum system come into the picture which science can never attempt to answer. All we can know that something does some operations and changes the possible values of a quantum system and life emerges out as a classical phenomena just like how other classical concepts emerge out from the approximations of the quantum world as described by the correspondance principle by Neils Bohr.

 

Self-organization is a problem and evolution by Natural selection is an incomplete explanation as to how biodiversity arosed on planet earth.

[mississippichem]

This is a common misunderstanding. I suspect it arises because some scientists, or educated laypersons seek to counter creationist babble, by distinguishing between abiogenesis and evolution. This is a convenient, but unrealisitc disitnction.

 

Pre-biotic chemistry merges into biochemistry imperceptibly. Natural selection of organic materials that led to what we would comfortably call life was in place from the outset.

 

Agreed completely. Before the "race to produce offspring" of living things there must have been a race to chemical stability and or race to autocatalysis. Unstable compounds degraded while the stable ones that were able to undergo some type of copying or amplification process are still around today. A great example is DNA's chemical stability advantage over RNA.

[immortal]

I'm very surprised to hear you say this, immortal, but I couldn't agree more. Except maybe for the word 'perfection'.

 

"Therefore we should look for new schools of philosophical thought which can achieve the perfection that natural sciences has achieved over the years."

 

One has to develop such an attitude so that one doesn't fall into pseudoscience. If qualia are non-physical and exists independent of the mind then that opens up new physics. New physics means it affects reality and one can observe such effects. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff tried desperately to account for these qualia with in the reductionist approach saying that Objective reduction of space and time events or quantum gravity which access platonic values generating an experience of a quale. Science is no way near to explain such things and it all points to the direction that they are non-physical. This is the reason many intellectuals are turning towards eastern schools of philosophical thought but they have to be investigated thoroughly, a model has to be produced, everyone cannot come up with their own interpretations, it shouldn't work on beliefs, it should work on some kind of new science which can bring out some real knowledge.

Edited February 11, 2012 by immortal

[John Cuthber]

Just fora start re "Shanon's entropy is not connected to thermodynamic entropy "

Oh yes it is.

 

" They don't give me genome, what they give me is a representation of it, not exactly what I wanted."

Well, since , as I pointed out, you have a real copy of the real genome in (almost) every cell in your body, it would be pointless to give you the real thing. What they give you is a human readable version of it.

What did you actually want?

 

"Dualism still stands out as a possibility."

At a pinch, so does triadism.

But just because something is possible, doesn't make it real.

Some bloke named Occam dealt with that idea a long while back.

 

"Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in."

No, their forerunners had to be in place. Those were replaced through a process of evolution.

 

"These things are enough for me to give some space for irrationality in my mind so that I can investigate on new ways of looking at nature since I clearly know that there is something wrong with the positivist approach used in mainstream physical sciences. "

If you "clearly know that there is something wrong" why can't you tell me what it is in nice clear words.

[immortal]

Just fora start re "Shanon's entropy is not connected to thermodynamic entropy "

 

Oh yes it is.

 

All atempts to formally connect those two concepts have failed. Hubert Yockey, especially, makes a distinction between themodynamic entropy and shanon entropy in his book Information theory and Molecular biology.

 

" They don't give me genome, what they give me is a representation of it, not exactly what I wanted."

 

Well, since , as I pointed out, you have a real copy of the real genome in (almost) every cell in your body, it would be pointless to give you the real thing. What they give you is a human readable version of it.

What did you actually want?

 

The argument of Hubert Yockey goes like this -

 

 

Information theory treats information and meaning as entirely separate (cite Shannon). Information, as defined in information theory, is measurable, and therefore is a suitable subject for science and mathematics (cite Socrates).

 

However, meaning is not measurableand thus falls in the realms of faith, belief, religion and philosophy.

 

Information can be measured in all sequences that are digital, segregated and linear. "Digital" means expressed in digits (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) or letters (in the English language—a,b, c, etc.; in the genome, the codons, UUG, UUC, etc.). "Segregated" means that the units in the sequence are separate from one another. "Linear" means that the sequence is expressed one unit after another, in a line.

 

Meaning cannot be measured scientifically or mathematically, in a sentence or the genome, because meaning is not digital, segregated or linear.

 

However, because both language sentences and the genome are digital, segregated and linear, we can measure their information content. Information content is measured in bits or bytes and is the result of an algorithm (i.e., a computational procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps).

 

The job of the codons is to specify which of 20 possible amino acids goes where in a protein. A protein is a sequence of amino acids that has folded up into a threedimensional shape around a metal ion pocket. If an amino acid goes in the wrong place in the protein sequence, the protein will not have "specificity," which means it will not be able to do any biological job.

 

People who understand the sequence hypothesis, proteins and "the genetic text"—i.e., the genome—know that the only thing that is mathematically identical between proteins, the genome and written language is that they are sequences. As noted above, the mathematical measure of information in sequences has nothing to do with meaning in language, or specificity (i.e., biological capability) in proteins.

 

Then he goes on to show that why meaning or specificity in biomolecules could not have originated with in the time frame between the formation of our solar system and the origin of life on earth through random walk by doing probabilistic calculations and therefore he asserts that the origin of life is an unsolvable problem scientifically. Neither Thermodynamic entropy or shanon entropy can account for the natural origin of meaningful functional information.

 

To me "meaning" is non-physical, the origin of life is a philosophical problem and this is again an indirect evidence that those qualia exist independent of the mind and hence it has to be taken seriously and it has to be investigated, it plays an insignificant role in how the universe works but none the less they are necessary to account for the various phenomena in the universe.

 

Whether they give DNA or a human readable version, they both are material, Genome is different from DNA in the sense that not only that it can be measured in the form of bits and bytes, it has one more property called as "meaning" or "specificity" which cannot be measured and makes the genome unique from non-living matter.

 

Its similar to asking I don't want a photon, I want redness, I don't want sugar, I want sweetness. Can you give me redness and sweetness? No you can't, if they are really non-physical, you cannot give me that.

 

If one synthesizes various chemicals or building blocks in a primordial soup, there is no spontaneous natural process other than a random walk which can produce specificity or complexity of biomolecules having a specific biomolecular function but the origin of life requires a natural process other than a random walk to produce specificity required at the level of "life".

 

If we assume that "meaning" is non-physical and it is responsible for the high specificity seen in biomolecules then the question arises how can a non-physical entity interact with a physical entity. This is where the nature of the physical system is so important to know, if all that science describes are just abstract things then there is no substantial evidence that those things are actually there outside in the physical world, all that we know is our perceptions and experiences of qualia.

 

 

"Dualism still stands out as a possibility."

 

At a pinch, so does triadism.

But just because something is possible, doesn't make it real.

Some bloke named Occam dealt with that idea a long while back.

 

Even physical-monism is possible or non-physical monism is possible, anything can be possible.

I'll address about the competing hypotheses below.

 

"Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in."

No, their forerunners had to be in place. Those were replaced through a process of evolution.

 

The origin of the forerunners is the main problem.

 

"These things are enough for me to give some space for irrationality in my mind so that I can investigate on new ways of looking at nature since I clearly know that there is something wrong with the positivist approach used in mainstream physical sciences. "

 

If you "clearly know that there is something wrong" why can't you tell me what it is in nice clear words.

 

I am a layman and I am not using any complex terminologies, its just that these concepts are counter intuitive to our common notions of our world. You're still finding it hard to distinguish redness from a photon, there is no such thing as a red photon, redness exist in the mind.

 

The problem is, there are competing hypotheses or God hypothesis in other schools of philosophical thought which makes positive assertions about the ontological nature of the physical world. Therefore these hypotheses are not only competing to explain the same problem as the sceintific theories, in fact if those hypotheses are found to be true then it even falsifies naturalism(the view that only the things described by physics exists).

 

This is where the main conflict between religion and science rely on. There is only one truth, scientific truth or theological truth. Obviously science or naturalism will not see the necessity for God since the principle of Occam's Razor will eliminate any such necessity but if the God hypothesis is true then it indirectly makes a positive assertion saying that science will never ever be able to give an objective account of reality without bringing God into the picture.

 

The God hypothesis doesn't work in a scientific way, it works through faith and revelation, if such a hypothesis is true then science cannot and will not be able to give an objective account of reality without coming out of its positive reductionist approach, science has to overcome from its scientific method.

 

The failure of science to give an objective account of reality, in some way, eventually opens up other possible school of philosophical thought which works on a different method of investigating the nature.

 

After going through all this, the simple question is, will scientists accept that the hard problem of Consciousness, the ontological problem of space and time and the problem of origin of life are unsolvable by scientific method and goes and investigates other methods of investigating nature or will it leave it to the theologicians to find a theological truth whose result if it is positive will go on to falsify naturalism. Is there a place for a theological scientist who tests hypothesis of God in the scientific community or if science doesn't investigate them then will it allow the theologicians to have a metaphysical speculation and demand evidence from the theologicians and hold a non overlapping magesteria without interfering with religious beliefs.

 

Either science itself should change or it should openly allow other possible roads to reality. What should be the role of science in this situation. Does it have to take the role of New Atheism or the role of Non-overlapping magisteria ?

[CharonY]

This is a common misunderstanding. I suspect it arises because some scientists, or educated laypersons seek to counter creationist babble, by distinguishing between abiogenesis and evolution. This is a convenient, but unrealisitc disitnction.

 

A very good point and biology is full of convenient, but artificial distinctions. However, one could argue that the underlying mechanisms are likely to be somewhat different and possibly more varied. Though the basic idea (i.e. frequency changes over time in dependence of structure/functionality) is similar.

[John Cuthber]

Immortal,

I can count the letters etc. in your post. I can do some maths along the lines of k ln(w).

I can calculate the entropy.

In short, I can make measurements on it.

I could also add entropy to it by randomly scrambling parts of it.

At some point it would become meaningless.

I can ascribe a measure of how much meaning it conveys by how much entropy I need to add etc.

 

A cheap joke here would be to say it was meaningless before I started, but I will resist that.

 

More importantly, I think you need to do more than simply state "meaning is not measurable", you need to show that it is actually true.

 

(otherwise the cheap joke is true)

 

 

"The origin of the forerunners is the main problem."

Not really. because they could have been truly bloody awful at their job so they could have been pretty much anything. That's the beauty of evolution- it just gets better.

 

 

". You're still finding it hard to distinguish redness from a photon, there is no such thing as a red photon, redness exist in the mind."

Utter bollocks. I don't have any difficulty with that distinction. It seem you just won't accept it.

I agree that, strictly speaking it is true- albeit not in the usual use of language- no photon is red. Not least, because, by the time the brain perceives it, the poton no longer exists.

"Redness" is a set of patterns in the neurons of the brain.

That pattern is a real physical thing in just the same way that a 700nm wavelength photon is a real thing.

 

As I pointed out, Mary could experience redness in a way which would let her recognise something as "red", even if no red photon had ever met her eye.

That's because "redness" is a thing that can be copied (in principle, but not in practice- yet!).

 

 

 

I'm quite happy with the idea of non overlapping magesteria. The problem is that, as far as I can tell, one of those realms is the empty set. (And religion is welcome to it, as long as it keeps out of the real world.)

Edited February 13, 2012 by John Cuthber