Materialism is dead. There are simply too many questions left unanswered after years of studying the brain. Now, people are scrambling for a new way to understand the mind-body relationship. Cartesian dualism has become a whipping boy in philosophy, but it has advantages over the alternatives. Dr. Joshua Farris discusses Cartesianism and philosophy with Dr. Michael Egnor.

Podcast description: Materialism is dead. There are simply too many questions left unanswered after years of studying the brain. Now, people are scrambling for a new way to understand the mind-body relationship. Cartesian dualism has become a whipping boy in philosophy, but it has advantages over the alternatives. Dr. Joshua Farris discusses Cartesianism and philosophy with Dr. Michael Egnor.

  • space_comrade [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Not sure what you're saying here. Do you really think I'm a creationist or something? Did you even read the article I linked with your full attention?

    Nobody is saying the theory of evolution is wrong, just that there was something else other than matter that was a participant in natural selection.

    • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I'm saying these are creationist claims wrapped up in a veneer of philosophy and being promulgated by a creationist in the podcast that you linked.

      Did you even read the article I linked with your full attention?

      Dang, dawg, I don't even have evidence that you read past the first couple sentences in my reply above. Yes, I read the article. It's not very well written and makes a lot of baffling claims, some of which I tried to address. Let's look at what we might describe as Kastrup's thesis:

      However, our phenomenal consciousness is eminently qualitative, not quantitative. There is something it feels like to see the colour red, which is not captured by merely noting the frequency of red light. If we were to tell Helen Keller that red is an oscillation of approximately 4.3*1014 cycles per second, she would still not know what it feels like to see red. Analogously, what it feels like to listen to a Vivaldi sonata cannot be conveyed to a person born deaf, even if we show to the person the sonata’s complete power spectrum. Experiences are felt qualities—which philosophers and neuroscientists call ‘qualia’—not fully describable by abstract quantities.

      But, per Patricia Churchland:

      . . .the philosopher may go on to conclude that no science can ever really explain qualia because it cannot demonstrate what it is like to see blue if you have never seen blue; consciousness is forever beyond the reach of scientific understanding.
      What is the merit in this objection? It is lacking merit, for if you look closely, you will find that it rests on a misunderstanding. The argument presumes that if a conscious phenomenon, say smelling mint, were genuinely explained by a scientific theory, then a person who understood that theory should be caused to have that experience; e.g., should be caused to smell mint. Surely, however, the expectation is unwarranted. Why should anyone expect that understanding the theory must result in the production of the phenomenon the theory addresses? Consider an analogy. If a student really understands the nature of pregnancy by learning all there is to know about the causal nature of pregnancy, no one would expect the student to become pregnant thereby. If a student learns and really understands Newton’s laws, we should not expect the student, like Newton’s fabled apple, to thereby fall down. To smell mint, a certain range of neuronal activities have to obtain, particularly, let us assume, in olfactory cortex. Understanding that the olfactory cortex must be activated in manner will not itself activate the olfactory cortex in manner. We are asking too much of a neuroscientific theory if we ask it not only to explain and predict, but also to cause its target phenomenon, namely the smell of mint, simply by virtue of understanding the theory.

      something else other than matter that was a participant in natural selection.

      Ah, so the game is to redefine "physicalism" as to exclude everything that isn't matter? Again, I don't think anyone believes this. Information is not material - it can be encoded on and retrieved from physical substrates. Yet I don't think anyone is out there arguing that information in and of itself does not or cannot exist.

      • space_comrade [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I didn't reply to every bit of your comment because most of it is just missing the point in ever more convoluted ways, and that includes most of this one. The Churchland quote in particular bares no relevance at all for what I'm trying to convey here so I'm not gonna be replying to any of that.

        My argument (and the article's) is more specific than your vague gesturing:

        Physicalism denies qualia (whatever that may be) in of itself any causal efficacy in the material world, whether by (somehow) equating it on an ontological level with configurations of matter or claiming each fundamental particle is a tiny bit conscious (that's usually called panpsychism).

        If the specific qualities of qualia in of themselves (whatever they may be) cannot effect any change in the material world and if the theory of natural selection is true then it is quite wonderous that they correspond so well with what our body is currently doing.

        You specifically mentioned pain as being evolutionarily beneficial (which I agree, it clearly is), and by doing so you inadvertently gave it causal efficacy, so that statement cannot possibly make sense in a purely physicalist account of consciousness unless you assume this wonderous coincidence that it just happens to be so.

        When you think about it that sounds more like creationism than what I'm proposing.

        • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I didn’t reply to every bit of your comment because most of it is just missing the point in ever more convoluted ways, and that includes most of this one. The Churchland quote in particular bares no relevance at all for what I’m trying to convey here so I’m not gonna be replying to any of that.

          The Churchland quote was literally a direct response to the central nugget of the Karstrup piece. I'm not sure what else I was supposed to take away from that. Maybe you should do what you're demanding from me and read the piece with your full attention.

          Physicalism denies qualia (whatever that may be) in of itself any causal efficacy in the material world, whether by (somehow) equating it on an ontological level with configurations of matter or claiming each fundamental particle is a tiny bit conscious (that’s usually called panpsychism).

          This is a strawman. Physicalism leads to the conclusion that qualia are an emergent property of interactions of matter. It doesn't require self-similarity at every level of organization. Heck, Karstrup is the one making the panpsychist argument in his conclusion: "[consciousness] can only have been there from the beginning as an intrinsic, irreducible fact of nature."

          If the specific qualities of qualia in of themselves (whatever they may be) cannot effect any change in the material world and if the theory of natural selection is true then it is quite wonderous that they correspond so well with what our body is currently doing.

          I don't know how many times I'm going to have to copy-paste this but: Qualia can be associated with neuronal activity and can lead to observable changes in behavior. Literally what the Churchland piece says, and she's arguing against your position. From further down:

          A second and related complaint raised by certain philosophers is that even if neuroscience were to discover with what brain states being aware of a burning pain on one’s left ear is identical, we would still not understand why just those brain states are identical with precisely that sensation, as opposed, say, to feeling a desire to void. Neuroscience, it will be averred, will never be able to explain why conscious states Y = brain states X, rather than say, brain state Z. For those who are keen on qualia as metaphysical simples forever beyond the scope of science, the next step may be to infer that we cannot ever hope to understand that identity in neurobiological terms (Chalmers, 1996). Awareness, the claim goes, will always be ineffable and metaphysically basic. This means neuroscience cannot ever really explain consciousness. This complaint too rests on a misunderstanding. What is an example where a science — any subfield of science — explains why X = Y? Not how we know or why we believe that X = Y, but why X is identical to Y, rather than to Z. Using the examples already at hand, the corresponding questions would be these: why is temperature mean molecular kinetic energy, rather than, say, caloric fluid or something else entirely? Why is visible light actually electromagnetic radiation rather than, say, something else entirely, say, ‘‘intrinsic photonicness’’? By and large science does not offer explanations for fundamental identities. Rather, the discovery is that two descriptions refer to one and the same thing — or that two different measuring instruments are in fact measuring one and the same thing. Why is that thing, the thing it is? It just is. Science discovers fundamental identities, but the identities it discovers just are the way things are. There is no fundamental set of laws from which to derive that temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy or light is electromagnetic radiation.

          Qualia are associated with physical states of the brain. Whether they're an emergent property of something more fundamental is of no consequence to evolution.

          You specifically mentioned pain as being evolutionarily beneficial, and by doing so you inadvertently gave it causal efficacy, so that statement cannot possibly make sense in a purely physicalist account of consciousness unless you assume this wonderous coincidence that it just happens to be so.

          Keep flailing, I think there's some straw that you missed there.

          • space_comrade [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago
             Keep flailing, I think there’s some straw that you missed there.

            It's not a strawman, you've yet to explain how your entire framework doesn't rely on this miraculous coincidence that qualia corresponds so well to what our bodies are actually doing.

            Churchland is right, physicalism doesn't explain why X = Y instead X = Z but it kinda should otherwise you end up with this absurd coincidence that just so happened against all odds.

            • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              By and large science does not offer explanations for fundamental identities. Rather, the discovery is that two descriptions refer to one and the same thing — or that two different measuring instruments are in fact measuring one and the same thing. Why is that thing, the thing it is? It just is.

              • space_comrade [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                You're avoiding the argument again.

                Yes, what you just quoted is true about physicalism, it doesn't answer the why but in this particular case it should be doing that, because again, otherwise you end up with an absurdity of assuming something extremely unlikely. That's why I'm saying physicalism is an inadequate framework for explaining consciousness.

                • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  it doesn’t answer the why but in this particular case it should be doing that, because again, otherwise you end up with an absurdity of assuming something extremely unlikely.

                  Okay, maybe I'm just lost on what you're asserting here. Why what does what? Why the brain is capable of producing an internal state that's connected to what's happening in the body? Because that's like, what it's for, man.

                  • space_comrade [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Alright let's do a though experiment.

                    Let's take your eyesight. Imagine that instead of your normal eyesight you have almost the same thing but a single "qualia pixel" in the upper right corner of your eyesight is colored bright pink for whatever unknown reason. Why is that image not your real eyesight instead of your actual one?

                    Now imagine a few more pixels changing randomly, then imagine all the possible permutations of all colors for each pixel. Why aren't any of those your real eyesight? It seems there is no reason why they wouldn't be any of those other configurations because your body would be acting in the exact same way as it did before since it's entirely controlled by what unconscious matter is doing.

                    Do you see the absurdity now? It seems highly unlikely that our qualia should be just as they are. So shouldn't we be trying to find out why X = Y instead of Z in this case?