Evidence for God: Humanness and the Interaction Problem

The “Quantum Mind”:

Here is a physicist explaining why there are no consciousness particles or forces that can interact with the brain at the quantum level, because by definition they would be so weak that they could not affect the activity of neurons.

patients always knew it wasn’t them doing it; they knew it was being done to them. Penfield decided this was best explained on the theory that the brain isn’t the sole seat of identity and behavior.

That is not even suggestive of such a conclusion.

Admittedly hat leaves the substance dualist still without an explanation for how immaterial mind interfaces with the material world. I’m okay with that.

You are contradicting decades of scientific experimentation and observation, replacing the rigorous explanations with a posited mystery. That is not an explanation.

the question is whether there’s evidence that it’s real.

There is not. The brain has been studied since the 30’s, and there is no evidence for an immaterial mind, the brain has explained every single thing observed so far and scientifically there is no need to tack on immaterial influences, regardless of whether they cohere with the findings of quantum physics.

Premise 1 has been rejected, so the rest doesn’t follow, but 4 is also essentially you saying that you believe dualism without eviedence to support your belief (well I guess you do cite the Bible in 2….).

Edited to fix citation about the Bible.

G. Rodrigues:

your comments, in this and the other thread, attack a ginormous straw-man caricature of substance dualism and show a glaring ignorance of what his most substantial defenders have actually, you know, *defended*

This is simple ad hominem, you have not shown anything except that you do not agree with me.

Tell me why I’m wrong, and we can talk about it, but telling me I’m creating straw-men and knocking them (without even saying how or where) doesn’t advance the conversation at all.

If you read this man’s book you should be able to use your knowledge of it to address my points, but telling me to simply “go read a book” is frankly insulting.

Tom Gilson –

Mind could influence the physical world at the quantum level without violating conservation of energy,

Of course, quantum effects are measurable in many ways. Do you think that statistical examination of neural phenomena could turn up evidence of such interaction?

I’m curious Tom, do you believe our memories are stored in two places (the brain and the soul)? If brain damage or disease results in the inability to form new memories or retain long-term memories, is the soul equally affected?

What would change your mind about this?

The ability to actually change my mind. Oh wait, that wouldn’t do it either.

@Oisin:

If you read this man’s book you should be able to use your knowledge of it to address my points, but telling me to simply “go read a book” is frankly insulting.

Since I do not want to sound insulting, allow me to rephrase my suggestion: do not read books. Do not learn what substance dualists have actually defended. Attack a straw-man in blissful ignorance of their real position. Does this sound better?

That is not even suggestive of such a conclusion.

To quote Penfield himself:

“For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier and logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements”

I don’t get it.

Wouldn’t the fact that I can *freely* change my mind prove that your view is incorrect? If so, that’s what I meant. If not, then nevermind.

Determinism doesn’t mean that your beliefs can never change, it means that there were physical reasons that caused you to have the beliefs you do now, and physical causes will change your beliefs in the future.

Yes, I know this, er, I mean yes, I’m determined to think this is true even though I don’t really know if it is.

Notice, what several of our interlocutors having been doing over the last couple of threads. They have been using the fact that modern neuroscience has discovered that there is a correlation between the brain and what we think of as the mind or conscious self to conclude (rather hastily) that the brain, therefore, equals the mind or conscious self. Case closed. Apparently, at least from there perspective, it’s settled science…

Not so fast. An interactionist form of mind-brain dualism, which sees the mind using the brain instrumentally, would also predict that there would be correlations between mental states and brain states. The physicalist then, to prevail in the argument, has to do more that appeal to a mind-brain correlation and declare victory.

SteveK:

Q: What would change my mind?
A: Whatever series of physical events results in this effect.

Kind of obvious, right?

Not what I meant. What information would be enough to convince you that dualism is not a good explanation for consciousness, or that materialism provides an explanation that is equally as good as or better than the dualist explanation?

JAD:

The physicalist then, to prevail in the argument, has to do more that appeal to a mind-brain correlation and declare victory.

Well also the dualist explanation is evidence-free, and in fact logically incoherent. The interaction between brain and soul is impossible under current scientific understanding of physics, there is no evidence of another type of causation like the one dualists posit.

Bigbird:

We didn’t need neuroscience to discover this correlation – we’ve known it exists for a long time, probably even before we discovered alcohol

Check your modern education privilege. People used to think the heart was the house of the mind, or that the mind had no relation to the body whatsoever and that the brain was a radiator to regulate body temperature… Science has provided our current knowledge, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Oisin,

Well also the dualist explanation is evidence-free, and in fact logically incoherent. The interaction between brain and soul is impossible under current scientific understanding of physics, there is no evidence of another type of causation like the one dualists posit.

That is so wrong in so many ways. Since there are philosophical arguments based on evidence there is evidence.

Interaction of soul and brain is impossible under a current understanding of physics interpreted according to a reductionist philosophy. Do you understand the difference?

There are very good reasons to reject the anaemic version of causation adopted by materialists in favour of a more complete view that includes all four causes.

Tom:

Oisin @#21: You say, “Not what I meant.” I think SteveK’s answer was completely in accord with what you claim to believe, so if it wasn’t what you meant, can you explain how you could have meant something else?

Just read the sentence that followed it, man, come on.

Information is non-physical, whereas from your point of view everything in the mind is determined by physical processes. How does information drive physical events?

I’m neither a physicist nor a computer scientist, but if you are interested in information theory then fire away. The brain is an organic computer on materialism, so computer science is where to look for how information is represented and processed by physical systems. (Natural selection was the original coder, in case you were wondering).

This is a classic case of avoiding the question via pedantry: “What information would be enough to convince you that dualism is not a good explanation for consciousness, or that materialism provides an explanation that is equally as good as or better than the dualist explanation?”.

We know physical things exist. How do we know that non-physical things exist?

Further, if there existed non-physical types of causation, we would see evidence for them in their effects on physical reality.

Yes, we do. Our thoughts affecting our physical brains.

We would be able to see that an event was not caused by a previous physical event (for example through brain scans), so this would be evidence for your view. Such evidence did not exist.

You are telling me that brain scans can clearly demonstrate a casual link from a physical event to my thoughts to my actions? Sorry, I think you vastly overstate the case. In fact, I’m not sure how you can even demonstrate casuality rather than correlation. References?

Your entire thread of discussion seems to be permeated with a certainty that I don’t see displayed in the literature.

Tom:

Propositions are non-physical.

What is the basis of this claim? What is a proposition, and how do you know it is non-physical? (Not that I don’t know what a proposition is, I just need you to fully say what you are thinking)

Billy Squibs:

The brain is an organic computer on materialism

A debatable statement. Can you provide some supporting links?

Here’s the Wikipedia page, other sources include psychology and neuroscience textbooks, it’s more accurate to say that brains engage in computation, rather than to say they are computers, like birds and plans both engage in flight but are not the same thing.

Bigbird:

In fact, I’m not sure how you can even demonstrate casuality rather than correlation.

Via falsificationism, fella. Every function of the mind can be damaged by damaging a part of the brain, so those parts of the brain are those parts of the mind.

I refuse to answer a single other question, query or response until my question is answered (since it has been repeatedly ignored and avoided): what evidence would change your mind about dualism? Please be specific, rather than something like “a good philosophical argument” or “strong evidence against it”.

If you cannot think of something that would change your mind, then I am wasting my time on people accepting things on blind faith rather than rational reasoning. I don’t think that’s the case, but I will assume it until I get a response.

Besides all the obvious nonsense that Oisin is peddling, the question “what would change your mind (to my way of thinking)?” is impossible to answer without knowing the minute details about what physical conditions the brain is in.

If I came up to you with an object behind my back, telling you it was a ball of some kind, and asked you what kind of physical energy or force you’d apply to it, and in what way you’d apply it, in order for it to move forward 16 inches – could you give me an answer? Not really. You’d be guessing because you have no idea if the ball has a cover on it that is ripped, if it is light or heavy, if it is oddly shaped, etc.

I haven’t seen my brain and Oisin expects me to know how various cause/effect relationships will unfold. Just as silly is that Oisin thinks he knows.

SteveK:

I asked what logical reasoning would change your mind. You cannot think of any, therefore your position is not based on logical reasoning.

Logical reasoning = specific physical effect

What will cause the effect, given the condition of my brain? Read my prior comment.

Tom:

You’re asking him what logical conclusions would lead him to accept that minds operate by some principle other than logic!

Neurons operate via voltage gates, Yes/No responses, that is enough to operate logically.

SteveK:

I cannot know how a physical object will react to a cause unless I’ve studied and know the particular details of that physical object.

Determinism has a view of consciousness, so you can be conscious of the activity of your brain in many cases. If you employed what we call logical reasoning, this would involve directing your attention to your memory banks, and testing the various memories in their relation to one another.

If you consciously thought through your position, you will have created memories of doing so. If you know how you came to your conclusions, it is trivially easy to use counterfactual thinking to create a model of what memories could have been used in your reasoning process to produce the opposite conclusion.

Again this is a dodge. Unless me giving an account of how one reasons materialistically counts as a way of changing your mind? I doubt it, since you haven’t said this, because then you would be forced to actually follow through. The truth is that you did not use this process to achieve the conclusions you did, and so did not employ logic to come to your current position.

JAD:

there is no point in trying to change anyone’s beliefs because you, I and every other human who has ever existed, thinks and believes the way we do because we have been predetermined to think and believe that way

This interaction here is a physical fact that feeds into the processes of the brain. The outcome is pre-determined, but we do not know what the end result will be because we are not omniscient. Processes in the brain work to try to make their behaviour patterns cohere with reality, and data from one’s environment is continually compared with the mental models of reality that have been created thus far. By my acting as a part of your environment that is contradicting your mental models, your brain is forced to try to find out where the contradiction lies. I am hoping that the processes will find the contradiction within the model, and then change it.

Oisin:

I am hoping that the processes will find the contradiction within the model, and then change it.

I has. It has found a contradiction in your model. So it’s not worth considering.

P.S. There is no such thing as hope under determinism.

JAD:

You are making lots of illogical claims here.

It has found a contradiction in your model. So it’s not worth considering.

P.S. There is no such thing as hope under determinism.

You have not identified a contradiction. Brains are physical, they are information processing, information from one’s environment fuels this processing, these process form models of reality, information being input into the system can add to, alter, confirm or disconfirm a certain model. This is all fine under materialism.

Emotions like hope also do not contradict materialism/determinism. Physical creatures experience emotions, you don’t need a soul to hope.

BillT:

Really? You know of another species that “hopes”. And you know this how?

Dogs salivate when they associate your behaviour with feeding time.

How do you know that babies experience emotions? You infer from their behaviour, until they can talk. Similarly we infer from animals what emotions they are experiencing, based on their behaviour.

Your rampant skepticism is unwarranted.

BillT:

This particular one I am making it up as I go along.

Oisin,

You are simply assuming that science is in principle not open to the possibility that there are other types of causation. The only philosophy behind the scientific method is this: you should always check to see if you are wrong.

No I am not. Please try to read what is written. My point was not about what science allows but rather the way that science and your philosophy are inextricably linked in your mind such that when you write “science says” you really mean science + my philosophy says this about reality.

Modern physics has worked out all of the possible particles/fields in existence under Earth conditions, and also all of the forces that operate at the level of the brain (there may be some too weak to detect, but they cannot affect brains). There is no other avenue for causation to operate at the level of neurons.

Physics has worked out how particles act as particles but there is no evidence to support a reductionist philosophy which is what you need to support this claim. My point, just so you don’t miss it – it is reductionism that is wrong not particle physics.

Further, if there existed non-physical types of causation, we would see evidence for them in their effects on physical reality. We would be able to see that an event was not caused by a previous physical event (for example through brain scans), so this would be evidence for your view. Such evidence did not exist.

Oisin you continue to fail to respond to what I am writing. A brain scan cannot tell us if there is anything going on in the brain other than a physical response to physical stimulus.

This is a pseudo-claim, not even a true claim, if you want to defend dualism then you need to present the evidence that you speak of, at least by making a claim that can be checked.

First, by your own standard every one of your claims is a pseudo claim, I suggest you apply the same criteria to yourself and your own views. Second, it would not be possible to educate you in the combox format, that would require reading a book in your part and we all know your aversion to that. Fourth, since you have not yet responded with any relevant objection to the argument that has already been placed in front of you, it’s clear that I would be wasting my time to introduce any more at this stage.

Oisin,

This explains nothing, you give no detail about how anything but physical causation could work.

It explains that your view is not supported by physics but by a reductionist philosophy, which is all I was aiming for their, because it means that your argument is question begging. Would you like to provide a non-question begging argument?

It could tell us if there was no prior physical cause for the physical response.

Will you just take a bit more than one second to think about your claims. Oh no, you can’t. Your eyes see the screen and the neurons in your brain fire and your hands move. Seriously think about it. How would brain scans do this?

You introduced no evidence here, you just contradicted me and didn’t explain why, you are wasting my time by just saying the opposite of what I said (with the gravity of someone delivering the killing blow to an argument on its knees), without actually presenting information to help or hinder

I can’t help you. I suspect, going by your responses, that you don’t want to understand.

Tom:

Among all these representations there is one thing that is the same: the proposition itself.

This is an assumption.

You do not know that, and the only reason you think that is because the language we use standardizes our brain structures so that we can all communicate. It’s not perfect, sometimes two people express the same proposition and mean different things (which is my basis for rejecting the claim), but this system works. It does not necessitate an ultimate super-proposition that transcends the material realm.

In fact, I’m not sure how you can even demonstrate casuality rather than correlation.

Via falsificationism, fella. Every function of the mind can be damaged by damaging a part of the brain, so those parts of the brain are those parts of the mind.

For the sake of argument I’ll grant you 1) “Every function of the mind can be damaged by damaging a part of the brain”, although I don’t think you have a strong case as it presupposes your position.

Still, 2) “those parts of the brain are those parts of the mind” is not something you can deduce from 1).

At best, you can deduce it means those parts of the brain have some kind of relationship with those parts of the mind – something most dualists don’t dispute. As I said, you’ve at best shown correlation.

I refuse to answer a single other question, query or response until my question is answered (since it has been repeatedly ignored and avoided): what evidence would change your mind about dualism?

How about you tell us what would change your mind about your position?

Tom,

I’m having a very difficult time following the arguments against your article, which I find to be very clear and convincing. It seems to me that the non-theists here are merely asserting some sort of “there is no such thing as a …” as an “argument.” IMO, what is needed here is a little grounding in the simple realities of human existence, without which there would be no discussion whatsoever of God’s “existence.”

Every organ in the human body is a tool for interacting with and processing some aspect of our reality to enable us to sustain and enhance life (beyond the level of animals): the digestive system is a tool for processing food to produce energy, the nervous system is for processing visual, auditory and sensory stimuli, etc. What then, is so troubling about viewing the brain as a tool for processing both the physical and spiritual (metaphysical) dimensions of our reality? Why would we have a tool for processing spiritual reality if there were no such thing?

The body is equipped to feel hunger because we need food, thirst because we need water, sexual desire because we need to reproduce, etc. Why then do we have a need to seek and know God through the mind and spirit if there were no God to know and experience? It’s not that esoteric or other-worldly, which IMO, is exactly what the Bible demonstrates. The ancient Hebrews encountered, experienced and related to God. The OT really has very little in terms of metaphysical arguments about God’s “existence” They just tell us about their relationship with the reality that is God.

Atheists are really simply “pre-literate” about God, not having graduated from spiritual kindergarten yet. They are trying to take us “back” to a place humankind has never been: being concerned about whether or not God “exists” in order to be encountered. We Christians have the living, breathing incarnate God to whom we relate and who we encounter.

Keep up your excellent writing about evidence for our faith. That’s what I’m focused on. JB

Tom:

Now, if it’s not somewhat the same proposition in my mind as it is in yours, then how could you possibly suppose that I don’t know it?

“Somewhat the same”

If I said, “Earth’s sun is hotter than its moon,” however, you would be very, very hard pressed to suppose that we were not talking about the same things. In entertaining that proposition in our minds, we would be in fact thinking about the same things in almost precisely the same way.

“almost precisely the same”

it is no mere assumption when I say that certain propositions remain the same across multiple representations.

“certain propositions remain the same”. And there is the leap.

You begin with true statements, stating that information is represented in the brain of humans, and these representations are so similar from human to human that it allows us to communicate, especially in people who speak the same language. All fine, functionally (but not actually), these representations are the same from person to person.

You jump here though. The next thing you say is there is something *that is identical among all of these similar representations*, this something is not located in any brain individually, so this something is immaterial. How do you know this something exists?

Jenna:

Atheists are really simply “pre-literate” about God, not having graduated from spiritual kindergarten yet. They are trying to take us “back” to a place humankind has never been: being concerned about whether or not God “exists” in order to be encountered.

Humans created God after God throughout our history of tribal cultures, atheism is definitely relatively new compared with theism, perhaps you’d prefer “post-literate”?

What differentiates your experiences of God and Jesus Christ from a Muslim’s experiences of Allah, or a Hindu’s experiences of their various gods? (Gods?)

I am not saying that these experiences are not real, I am saying that each religion is equal in its experiences of God, they merely use current languages and different books to talk about it, on my view.

My spiritual experiences are not lesser than a Christian’s. (Though I don’t believe in spirits, I’d call them peak or transcendent experiences)

Ray in 76:

Yes, that was exactly what I meant when talking to Melissa, thank you for clarifying.

Melissa:

I could be wrong about most things I think are true about the brain, but that would not relate to my claim that:

*you do not have a sound logical foundation for positing the existence of non-physical entities and causes.*

You have demonstrated an unwillingness to make any kind of claim relating to this that can be interacted with.

I do not draw a line between science and philosophy, for me philosophy is the art of building models of reality, and once those models make testable predictions they become science.

the words you write are not refuting my position and you have not thought through what you are writing

I have said that humans do not engage in formal thought as the people you refer to describe, thought is never determinate, and I have given you examples of the myriad of times thought is not determinate. It is not necessary to posit formal thought to explain human behaviour or the actions of minds. Do you have a response to that?

Ray,

The problem is at 6. The conclusion:

eventually we’ll see something like, “Hey, this group of neurons should, biologically, have fired at this point, but they didn’t!” or something like that.

doesn’t follow. We could just as easily conclude (as I do) that reductionism is false. Therefore biology does not reduce to biochemistry to chemistry to physics. Material things are not just matter in motion.

Oisin,

I do not draw a line between science and philosophy, for me philosophy is the art of building models of reality, and once those models make testable predictions they become science.

Whatever. Lay out your pseudoscientific argument then.

I have said that humans do not engage in formal thought as the people you refer to describe, thought is never determinate,

OK. No one ever does math or uses logic. You are offering an argument that seems to be using logical processes but whatever process you think you might be using might not be the process you are using so it invalidates your argument. No need to go any further, any argument you might give on this or any other topic is invalidated because you have undermined the reasoning process itself. It’s amazing what skeptics will do to avoid a rational conclusion.

How does it drive my brain into a state such that its resultant idea E is similar to the original D?

I’ve been discussing natural ends with Ray on another blog post, and I can’t help but see a similar problem for naturalism with respect to that here.

If E is different than D, is it the fault of Oisin’s brain or Tom’s brain? In Oisin’s world the answer must be neither. Casually-closed cause/effect relationships that lack a final cause can never result in an untrue, or erroneous effect because they are not directed toward an end. The effect is the effect, and you cannot say it should be some other way.

To say an effect isn’t true, or is in error, would mean that the effect is a mistake, that it missed the prescribed mark. But Oisin’s brain didn’t intend (final cause) anything because naturalistic physical process are not directed toward any natural end, they just play out.

So where does error fit in? The same question can be asked about logic if it’s purely a physical process.

Tom:

I am not asking how the brain works, Oisin, I’m asking how language could have the power you say it has.

We associate symbolic sounds with certain sets of neurons representing external and internal reality, and we associate certain symbols with these sounds. We are conditioned from birth to use these symbols to communicate with other humans, our brain having mechanisms that punish us for failing to communicate and reward us for successful communication, such that we learn to communicate with greater and greater accuracy with age. These empathy mechanisms allowing communication can of course be impaired, but I don’t need to go into that.

The only point is that it is not necessary to posit super-propositions that are non-physical, the physical representations could have come into existence without the add-on so you need further proof that these propositions exist, which I claim you do not have.

Which important claim remains supported?

*you do not have a sound logical foundation for positing the existence of non-physical entities and causes.*

Kinda sick of copy-pasting that, please remember it or look it up, as I have said it is my one important claim.

SteveK:

The effect is the effect, and you cannot say it should be some other way…To say an effect isn’t true, or is in error, would mean that the effect is a mistake, that it missed the prescribed mark

Humans make mental models of reality, making predictions according to their model and behaving according to the predictions. When the predictions not match what actually happens, we say that the prediction contained an error.

Oisin’s brain didn’t intend (final cause) anything because naturalistic physical process are not directed toward any natural end, they just play out.

You are pretending that the brain does not have motivational and self-regulating capacities, which is obviously untrue as we see in patients with frontal-lobe damage. The brain has internal punishment and reward systems, which illegal drugs skew to either remove the punishment briefly or to release lots of reward, to put it simply.

Melissa:

No one ever does math or uses logic. You are offering an argument that seems to be using logical processes but whatever process you think you might be using might not be the process you are using so it invalidates your argument.

Does no-one ever play chess on my view? On your view are the rules of chess understood and carried out by the spirit?

The rules of logic and maths are applied by the brain in a similar way to the way that the rules of chess are carried out, no-one would claim that the rules of chess are an integral part of the self or soul and so I would claim with logic and maths, we only have the laws of physics, our evolutionary history and neurplasticity to work with. This system can behave logically, and sometimes it does.

Bigbird:

For the sake of argument I’ll grant you 1) “Every function of the mind can be damaged by damaging a part of the brain”

Granting that would make it redundant to posit a soul, since the physical reality would appear to be enough explanation. Since we know that our current laws of physics would have to be wrong for a soul to interact with matter or for matter to have any additional characteristics, you would be hard-pressed to make anyone worry that this is just a correlation.

How about you tell us what would change your mind about your position?

Evidence that you have a sound logical basis for positing a non-physical something would be a start, next I’d need to see testable predictions based on dualism, then I’d probably need a very good explanation for the inconsistencies of your particular religion.

Everyone questioning my motives:

I believe that I am being reasonable, and have not been shown evidence to the contrary as of yet. I believe that your emotions are clouding your judgement on this issue, but I am open to bring proven wrong on that.

Yes, this is a game for me, but that is because I am extremely confident that I am correct, and this confidence stems from the fact that I am constantly checking to see if I am wrong about things and I change my beliefs when I am wrong. I hold no emotional attachment to my beliefs, they are like clothes that I wear until they don’t fit me anymore, at which point I get new ones. I think I have some pretty nice clothes at the moment, I’ll try on the ones you are recommending if I find that they fit better than mine.

Oisin,

We associate symbolic sounds with certain sets of neurons representing external and internal reality, and we associate certain symbols with these sounds.

One problem with this. To expand what you have written symbolic sounds are associated with neurons that represent (or symbolize or are directed towards) other external or internal realities. Given that you think physics could in principle give a complete account of neurons it follows that neurons are not pointed towards anything. Do you think you could reword your explanation to avoid the misleading teleological language?

Does no-one ever play chess on my view? On your view are the rules of chess understood and carried out by the spirit?

On my view the rules of chess are understood by the intellect. On your view no one could know whether they are implementing the rules of chess or some other process because the physical facts alone are unable to tell us.

The rules of logic and maths are applied by the brain

Applied to what?

no-one would claim that the rules of chess are an integral part of the self or soul and so I would claim with logic and maths,

No one is claiming that the rules of logic and math are an integral part of the self or soul. Who exactly are you responding to here?

Since we know that our current laws of physics would have to be wrong for a soul to interact with matter

Why do you keep stating this as if it is in controversial, and without acknowledging the objections that you still haven’t replied to. If scientific reductionism is true then the current laws of physics would have to be wrong. Therefore we have at least two alternatives on the table: either there is no immaterial aspect of thought and reductionism is false. Now since there are sound arguments for an immaterial aspect of thought and none to support reductionism, we should reject reductionism.

I am constantly checking to see if I am wrong about things

So that’s why you refuse to read any of the references suggested to help you understand alternate viewpoints … hang on …

Oisin,

This statement is meaningless to me. Fingers point towards things. Your use of the word did not follow convention.

My suggestion is that if you are unaware of how terms are used in a particular field that you could make some effort to educate yourself.

The meaning of this is not clear. What do you mean by “making teleological language”

I didn’t write “making teleological language”. Careful reading is important if you going to understand the written word.

If you just say philosophy then it will be as if you didn’t answer at all.

Oh, the irony.

If scientific reductionism is true then the current laws of physics would have to be wrong

This makes no sense. I presume that you mean that we need a spirit to know things for sure, which is not justified.

Don’t presume, you’re sure to go wrong. I was just rewording your sentence to include the missing premise.

You have not shown how you know that any immaterial things exist.

This is surreal. Numerous arguments have been put forth in this thread by various commenters, arguments that you have failed to understand, let alone raise meaningful objections to, and these are just some of the possible arguments that we could have put forth.

Reductionism is too loose a phrase here, please either clarify and expand so that it is clear or choose a better word, otherwise I will not understand what you are saying,

That physics could in principle give a complete account of everything.

Lucky us. We get to experience many ironic moments in our discourse here.

Anyway, it’s time for sleep here. Enjoy your day.

PHILOSOPHY!!!

Tom:

I’m with you so far! But that is not necessary to this argument, all I’m saying is that you do not have proof of your claims. Though I presume you are saying it is necessary for logic to work?

SteveK:

Do you accept the concept of the philosophical zombie?

Tom and Oisin,

I question whether or not thoughts can be called “events” or analyzed as to what “caused” a thought.

Melissa in 87 and Tom in 88 give different responses to my outline in 76. If I understand correctly, Tom doesn’t see a problem with it, but Melissa does.

Melissa – I’m going to need more details about your exact objections to reductionism. Thought experiment – we develop nanotechnology to the point where we can build a molecularly exact duplicate of a human brain. We do so, and… what happens? Does it fail to operate, or what?

Tom – I understand that you want to establish (1); I’m just pointing out that it would seem to have detectable material consequences. Perhaps even (statistically?) measurable consequences. Which actually brings it into the realm of science, or at least into contact with that realm. That by no means indicates that (1) is wrong, of course, but it also opens up the possibility of it being falsified by science.

Tom:

I think you would say that your position is the result of some chain of logical reasoning, or that it was your reflection on certain facts, and the logical inferences you drew from those facts, that led you to your conclusion

Fair enough I guess, though I do find it unpleasant to be subjected to the Socratic method and would ask that you not do it again after this, please.

When I talk about logic I mean like a software program running on the brain, the rules of the program must be followed to have non-contradictory thoughts. This has been programmed into us, imperfectly, by natural selection and culture/education.

I hope you intend to answer the question of why you jump from very similar physical representations to non-physical propositions, I presume your answer will come out of this process soon.

Jenna:

I question whether or not thoughts can be called “events” or analyzed as to what “caused” a thought.

I understand, it’s really counter-intuitive when you haven’t had it all explained to you, but there is some seriously crazy and interesting things going on in our brains that we know nothing about until we study it! Here is one type of really weird thing that neuroscience had found that relates to what you said.

Holopupenko:

You actually characterize me quite well apart from the insults, I thought they were a bit rude but whatever, I guess you can say what you like.

I think you should answer Ray’s thought experiment in 123 before you continue calling me anti-scientific or whatever you were saying.

Ray,

I’m going to need more details about your exact objections to reductionism. Thought experiment – we develop nanotechnology to the point where we can build a molecularly exact duplicate of a human brain. We do so, and… what happens? Does it fail to operate, or what?

If does not reason rationally if that’s what you mean by operate. That’s the point of the objections to materialism.

Neither of you have put forward any reason to think that physics could in principle provide an exhaustive explanation for every physical thing therefore the claim that physics doesn’t leave any room for anything immaterial to act is also unsupported.

Holopupenko:

[Determinism reconciles with] free will by the application of the principle that grace always perfects nature rather than destroying it

I like that, also works for materialistic lack of free will! Though I suspect you don’t like my equating predestination with determinism… Oh well, is bottom-feeders take what we can get!

he so unscientifically asserts there’s only one way to look at reality: “Natural science is the answer because science works, b*****s!”

In principle, no scientist would assume that natural reality and natural causes are all there is, science is based on pure observation and logical thought. It’s just that the evidence provided for the existence of non-material anything is pre-suppositional, as we see here in Tom making the leap from material information representations to non-material propositions.

You start from the in-your-face, undeniable fact of the primary substances known as human beings who behave in a certain way per their natures, which includes the capacities for intellection and free will… and then descend down (dig deeper) for more details.

That is exactly what psychology and neuroscience does, the evidence from which supports the idea that minds are a natural by-product of evolution and natural selection, and are produced from a particular organisation of material (the brain).

Tom:

Oisin, there’s the Socratic method that tries to dig out the flaws in a person’s thinking, and then there’s the human interchange approach of asking questions to find out whether one understands what a person is thinking. If the latter approach is unpleasant to you, would you (pardon the question again) prefer that I proceed without understanding what you’re thinking?

The problem is that this looks like the first, since you stopped relying directly to my objection.

Proceed, but I don’t like being lead by your questions, I am only making a claim about your claims, my explanations for logic, material reality and spirits, etc., do not need to be right as long as I am right in saying you are making an unjustified assumption about non-material things. This last thing is the only position I will strongly hold to here.

Oisin,

Please expand on this. How would this (let’s call it) meat-human behave? What would it’s reasoning be like?

To repeat – it doesn’t reason.

Jenna:

What “assumptions” about “non-material things” are justified, if you happen to believe that any can be or are?

I honestly don’t know of any, I’ve never seen evidence that a non-material thing exists, which is why I claim that all claims to knowledge of such things relies on presupposing the answer. (edited to actually relate to the current discussion)

I consider the concept of non-material things to itself be a contradiction, since the word “things” implies material, an object, which of course, thoughts are not. Nor is language. Doesn’t the fact that we have thoughts and we have language refute the notion that there is no such “thing” as “non-material things.”

Tom is claiming that non-material propositions exist and interact with the material world via the soul, which is itself a non-material thing (thing being a vague catch-all, I would know what to call non-material… substances? beings of pure reason?)

Melissa:

To repeat – it doesn’t reason.

Okay I am genuinely giving up on you now, I love that this is how you respond to my request that you expand on what you are saying…

Oisin,

To repeat – it doesn’t reason.

Okay I am genuinely giving up on you now, I love that this is how you respond to my request that you expand on what you are saying…

I can’t expand on what it’s reasoning is like if it doesn’t reason. I hope this is enough of an expansion of my position for you to understand.

I will address one other point of yours:

When I talk about logic I mean like a software program running on the brain, the rules of the program must be followed to have non-contradictory thoughts. This has been programmed into us, imperfectly, by natural selection and culture/education.

A computer program is considered imperfect to the extent that it doesn’t implement the programmers intentions. The physical facts of the computer alone cannot tell us what function it is supposed to be performing. In the same way, the physical facts of brains cannot be interpreted as imperfect unless there is a function or set of functions that they are supposed to be implementing.

Tom:

Suppose I think there’s a real chance I misunderstand your position. I could skip the clarifying questions, and just reply directly to my potentially twisted picture of your objection. Would that satisfy your desire that I reply directly to your objection?

Granted. I thought you may have been plotting some rhetorical trick, but you were not, my suspicions were unfounded, I apologize.

I see where the problem is, Ray pointed to it already, but I tried playing your game instead of focusing on this:

Thought experiment – we develop nanotechnology to the point where we can build a molecularly exact duplicate of a human brain. We do so, and… what happens?

Assume it builds a body too. In fact, whoever is now reading this, assume that it is your own brain and your own body that had been built. What happens?

Tom:

Thought experiment – we develop nanotechnology to the point where we can build a molecularly exact duplicate of a human brain. We do so, and… what happens?

I don’t know what happens.

And yet you say here:

if causation is closed on the physical, then rational inference is out the window. If you have concluded by means of logic that the physical world is all there is, then you have concluded that the world is the kind of place wherein logical, rational conclusions cannot be made. You have concluded that you cannot conclude anything.

So if such a purely physical being existed, with our brains: the language part of the brain, the visual part, the motivation/inhibition/planning part, the emotional part, the behavioural part, the sensory part, what would it be like?

What would be missing from this organic machine that your non-material somethings would provide? You claim that rational inferences could not be made by it, logic could not be employed by it. Would it continually contradict itself, would it not be able to make rational inferences and so never learn to cook, or drive, or to learn a language? I say of course it could; neuroplasticity and the brain’s innate punishment/reward system would allow it to build a brain that could perform these tasks with practice.

Would it feel fear, or love? People who have their amygdala damaged can be prevented from experiencing these emotions, so presumably having it intact would allow for this experience? Would it act, talk and give every possible clue that it was experiencing emotions, when it actually was not? It would act for all the world like a human, crying, laughing, hugging, scowling.

My claim is that this is what we humans are. We know all of these parts exist, we know that without these parts the functions I have ascribed to them do not occur.

We do not know that immaterial somethings exist. You have tried to claim that rational inferences could not be made by material alone, yet on the other hand you claim you have no knowledge of what it would be like if there was a human that was only material. This is because you do not know what the material parts do, you do not know what the posited immaterial parts do, you do not have a sound basis for making your claim to knowledge about immaterial somethings, be they souls, propositions, etc.

My claim here is that, if such a thing existed, it would just be a human, there would be nothing missing. Since you cannot say what would be missing, you cannot claim that the material explanation for minds is lacking, and the utility of positing immaterial somethings disappears.

I’m done.

What directed the causes so that these things would come to exist? Chance.

Science!

Can you answer it without begging the question?

The answer to that question is of course not.

Try inserting the soul somewhere into this error-detecting physical system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cingulate_cortex

Oisin,

The nature of my refutation is that you assume that humans are rational and logical, which is patently untrue and the results of cognitive psychology in the field of human rationality would tell you this if you bothered to look.

We don’t need cognitive psychology to show us that humans don’t always reason correctly, you’ve provided plenty of evidence in this very thread of the truth of that.

If humans are purely material then a logically sound chain of rational inferences in never a cause of any action. Never. Not at all.

If you were to attempt to provide an argument to support this conclusion the conclusion itself refutes your argument.

Therefore if by chance you happened to be right it would not be because of any rational reasons. It would not count as knowledge.

We have explanations of how a brain can do these things in psychology and neuroscience,

Psychology and neuroscience study brains, yes, but it’s question-begging nonsense to make the claim that they only “see” the effects of physical particles in motion. Neuroscience and psychology do not provide the evidence you need.

Still waiting @140 for Oisin to show us exactly (with verifiable references) that there is any formal argument which concludes to the existence of immaterial entities by making a “leap”… or that any of these arguments presuppose the immaterial (to support his personal subjective opinion @ 137).

Watch for him to twist “evidence” to his liking and to discount any arguments–as sound as they may be–that conclude other than to his presuppositions… as he’s been doing all along. Here’s a “brilliant” example:

The nature of my refutation is that you assume that humans are rational and logical, which is patently untrue and the results of cognitive psychology in the field of human rationality would tell you this if you bothered to look.

Well, apart from the fact that I certainly am not making such an assumption wrt to him, this is laughable (indeed, Oisin is not thinking–he’s aping Rosenberg): in trying to “explain” to us or “reason” us into accepting his nonsense, Oisin appeals to the very thing he rejects.

Amazing. Atheism. What a repugnant self-serving concept.

Okay, Oisin, what directs the cause of natural selection so these things would come to exist? Nothing.

Tom:

Frankly, I don’t see Oisin trying to explain or reason us into accepting his position. If he were paying attention to what we were saying, and actually trying to address it, then I might agree that he was trying to reason and/or explain himself that way. I think instead he’s trying to repeat himself often enough so that we’ll accept his position.

Thus the use of same kind of tactics we see over and over again here:
(1) creation and recreation of the same strawmen (2) being argumentative rather than presenting real arguments (3) duck, dodge and weave, creating rabbit trails into the weeds or “throwing a lot of mud (or something else like it) against the wall to see what sticks” (4) a reliance upon Wikipedia as an authoritative source… etc… etc…

Someone once hypothesized (here or someplace else) that interlocutors like Oisin at one time happened to skim over a book on logic but mistook the section on logical fallacies for a “how to” manual.

Tom:

You said:

you have concluded by means of logic that the physical world is all there is, then you have concluded that the world is the kind of place wherein logical, rational conclusions cannot be made. You have concluded that you cannot conclude anything.

And I said:

If physical systems can replicate logical behaviour imperfectly, and if physical systems can learn new ways of behaving based upon stored information about its previous behaviours (neuroplasticity) which would be in essence rational inferences, then your objections here are void.

You said later:

How does language obtain that power? How does it drive my brain into a state such that its resultant idea E is similar to the original D?

My contention is of course that language can do this, but its ability to do so comes by way of its association with propositions, which are not identical with language-encoded words or sentences.

If you change the word “contention” to “hypothesis”, then it becomes obvious that you have not justified your claim.

As I have said:

My comment 77 is the best summary of the situation. You go from “representations of information are very similar from one brain to another” to “there is an immaterial something that is identical among all of the similar representations”. The first does not entail the second, and this is the only evidence you have provided, so your claim to knowledge of an immaterial something is still unjustified.

You said of my view:

The basic problem as it applies in this context is that logic implies that one thought follows another because it follows logically, whereas your system entails that one thought follows another strictly on account of physical necessity.

If causation is closed on the physical, then rational inference has no room whatsoever to poke its nose into the causal flow. Not even a little bit. You cannot speak, therefore, of sound logic under your system, because the soundness of a logical conclusion depends on the validity of its inferences, of which your system admits none whatsoever.

It allows logical processes to evolve over time, because animals that come to untrue conclusions about the world will not be able to predict the future correctly, human survival depended and depends on predicting the future.

A computer’s logic is about the algorithm, not about the content; it will run the same algorithm equally well with any input.

If the algorithm changes with every output, and there are multiple interacting algorithms, and these begin to become specialized for certain types of inputs such because certain types of outputs are selected as being better than others (natural selection), then this comparison is invalid. Humans are not computers, they are much more complex than a single algorithm running over and over and over again the same way each time.

Physical systems cannot be true or false about anything.

The selections of certain outputs over others removes this objection.

Look, I see what you are trying to do. You could not justify your claim that non-physical somethings existed, so instead you tried to attack the material explanations for these phenomena such that only the non-material explanation was left. This does not work. All you have said is that computers cannot reason like humans can, which is a straw-man. Even if it were not, this would not preclude other material explanations for these phenomena, you are trying to create a false dichotomy and succeeding because most everyone here already agrees with you without question.

However, you have still provided no evidence that a non-material anything existed.

I will not respond to your condescension, it is beneath you.

Tom:

You’re still pretending, and not owning up to it.

Pretending to want to communicate? Then why would I be here?

I thought about this, had a quick read over stuff and found an error in your explanation of my view that I missed before (my italics):

A complete physical explanation would be an exhaustive explanation, because the potential “explanatory space” is 100% physical. There is no other category or type of cause or explanation; physical explanations are it, period.

I would think that explanations can work at various levels of abstraction, which is the basis of Dennett’s Intentional Stance. He says:

“Here is how it works: first you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then you figure out what beliefs that agent ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose. Then you figure out what desires it ought to have, on the same considerations, and finally you predict that this rational agent will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs. A little practical reasoning from the chosen set of beliefs and desires will in most instances yield a decision about what the agent ought to do; that is what you predict the agent will do.”

This is a useful fiction, like a center of gravity, but deep down these things are the results of physical processes that do not have beliefs, etc., themselves.

If you want me to stop posting after this, just let me know, I will accept your judgement. I stand by what I have said here about justifying claims, and I thank you for your time.

Tom:

SteveK:

rationality is not the same thing as cause and effect relationships

Oisin:
I’m a little fascinated by this, extremely succinctly and accurately put.

So we are defining rationality differently then, in this case. You are defining rationality with regard to immaterial propositions and souls, I am defining rationality with regard to the degree that an organism predicts the present or future states of the world.

Is my definition wrong?

What’s your take on this?

Separately: where do you see errors in my post 175?

Tom:

You say that physical computations are not genuinely “about” other things in the universe, they are merely reactions going to completion.

You say that the results of these reactions cannot be true or false, they just are what they are, physical reactions, and physical reactions cannot physically react in a “true” or “false” way.

You say that physical material does not follow the laws of logic and rationality, it follows the laws of physics, the two types of law are not related.

You say that there is no known mechanism whereby mere physical processes could reliably produce truth-related outputs.

You say that the only way for truths to be known and logic and propositions to have any meaning is to posit non-material propositions that our language and information representations refer to, and souls that can interact with the non-material.

Fair?

If so, please explain why I think you are wrong.

Tom, this is dishonest of you. You asked me about my views on logic and the material universe, you did not refer to my position in this argument at all, and have repeatedly ignored the bulk of what I have said, you have not shown that you understand.

See 187 and 175 for the current state of affairs.

Tom:

You say that physical computations are not genuinely “about” other things in the universe, they are merely reactions going to completion. Rational inference is really a matter of being about the content being processed, whereas computations would be indifferent to the inputs and outputs, they just do their thing according to the laws of physics, so the calculations would not be “about” the content in any meaningful sense.

If physical systems can create algorithms that take in inputs, and produce outputs, and these outputs are selected for by natural selection, then the algorithms that produce certain types of results remain. If the algorithms are changed by the results of their outputs, and also by the inputs the receive as a result of their outputs, they will remain stable if the accurately predict the inputs that will be received, so they can be said to be “attempting” to predict the future inputs on the intentional stance. These attempts to predict the future inputs are what logical reasoning and rationality are.

You say that the results of these reactions cannot be true or false, they just are what they are, physical reactions, and physical reactions cannot physically react in a “true” or “false” way. Physical reactions do not know truly whether the propositions they are representing are true or false, they just follow their programming and mark things TRUE or FALSE based on what they have been programmed to mark TRUE or FALSE.

The trueness or falseness of the predictions of such systems does not necessitate that they “know” instantly whether their outputs are true or false, they “find out” from the next set of inputs they receive. The trueness or falseness of the prediction can be measured in the level of change to the algorithm, a perfectly true prediciton will result in no change, a false prediction will result in changes and the degree of change displays the degree of falseness as it is a scale.

You say that physical material does not follow the laws of logic and rationality, it follows the laws of physics, the two types of law are not related. I think that is pretty self-explanatory, the interaction of matter is not the same as the validity or invalidity of the inferences of propositions.

The laws of logic can evolve over time in the physical systems I describe above, they do not need to be perfect on this view.

You say that the only way for truths to be known and logic and propositions to have any meaning is to posit non-material propositions that our language and information representations refer to, and souls that can interact with the non-material (and material – edit).

As material explanations for logic and reasoning exist, this claim is not necessarily true. Further, if such reasons were not known, this claim would still not necessarily be true, it would need supporting evidence, but it has been defined in such a way as to avoid making any predictions about what such evidence would look like.

To treat this view of non-material propositions and souls as evidence is incorrect, it is the claim, and you have not justified it.

Splash the bogey…

Tom:

The rules of logic are in fact precisely the kind of thing that could not have evolved–unless you’re thinking that in, maybe, the early Devonian a rock could have been a cloud at the same time in the same relationship

You are mistaking your own view for mine, that logic and propositions have a non-physical existence.

in what manner would fitness have been apparent to evolution? In what manner would it have been not-apparent?

To quote myself answering this question before you asked it:

The trueness or falseness of the prediction can be measured in the level of change to the algorithm, a perfectly true prediciton will result in no change, a false prediction will result in changes and the degree of change displays the degree of falseness as it is a scale.

States of affairs, or the universe, existed since the big bang. The systems that predicted what inputs the universe would input into them were selected for, the ones that did not predict their inputs changed or were not used at all.

I still don’t know what in that claim was “defined”–the antecedent to the second “it”.

No idea what this means.

I’m going to have to do further work on this predictive algorithm thing.

Hmm. I think you are gonna dig yourself a hole if you go down that route.

I’m going to bed, goodnight, thank you for clarifying my thinking, Tom, I’ve found this debate extremely helpful. God bless.

Doesn’t that mean that it’s predictive if it navigated the past successfully? And isn’t that a strange sense of predictive?

Inferences are more complex forms of this, they would require combinations of algorithms or something.

This is how you propose the rules of logic would have come gradually to be (evolved).

Specifically it would’ve been during the population bottleneck during the evolution of our ancestors in the plains of Africa, the population was small, weak and slow and had to catch animals by running them to exhaustion or using simple tools to kill them. They had to track them using cues in their environment to predict their condition and future behaviour, and they probably used prediction in other ways but it doesn’t matter.

I do not need to explain the course of evolution to you, Tom.

Since my argument is even vaguely plausible, and other arguments may be equally or more plausible, your false dichotomy crumbles. It is not true to say that anyone has proven materialism wrong here, so you can’t just assume the existence of non-material things.

Melissa:

There is no logic, rational inferences, or anything else … there is (as Oisin likes to remind us) … no room for anything else.

Incorrect, you are contradicting me. Your understanding and explanation for these things is just not coherent with the science of what human beings are, you need to come to views without making pre-supposed assumptions about things you can’t know, here being non-material something.

Everyone:

I think this argument is over. Good luck learning about human evolution and the neuroscience of reasoning processes, it’s absolutely fascinating. I’ll probably check back to read, but I have nothing more to post about. Thank you all, I genuinely appreciate it, but please remember that I am no atheist, I just think that miracles have not occurred. Question everything!

Melissa, you had no interest in honest interaction at any point here, so I’m not surprised your viewpoint remains unchanged seeing as it was never open to question in the first place.

Your knowledge of chemistry obviously surpasses mine but your knowledge of what it means to human is simply incorrect. If you take issue with that, 197 is a good place to start, otherwise your claims about my lack of understanding just look lazy and poorly-thought out. If you want to take part you need to actually engage with what is said.

Melissa:

Would you just for once be honest with yourself and admit that the account you give of “physical” rational inference is pure speculation.

I’ve actually repeatedly said that my explanations could well be wrong, for example in comment 83, directly to you! This is just showing again that you are not an honest interlocutor.

a relevant objection to the arguments against materialism. You have not done that. You haven’t even managed to offer a valid objection to a single one of them. Instead you have regaled us with “useful fictions” and just-so stories of how logic evolved.

The mere possibility of my arguments negates the dualist explanation, because the dualist explanation has to assume that there is no other explanation possible. Further I have repeatedly refuted anti-materialist arguments, if you have a problem with my arguments please respond to them directly and present your logic fully and openly so that conversation can be had.

However, your intellectual dishonesty will lead to you just making claims about my arguments without direct references, and further saying they are refuted by your dualist arguments that you will conveniently also not reference.

Admit you have no interest in genuine communication, whether you’re arguments are valid or invalid, so please stop writing comments at me.

However, your intellectual dishonesty will lead to you just making claims about my arguments without direct references, and further saying they are refuted by your dualist arguments that you will conveniently also not reference.

Pretty good prediction right there…

Tom:

With all due respect, permitting Oisin to continue is diminishing your blog.

I’ve been watching the conversation and am amazed that Oisin has stuck around as long as he did given his reception. I want to make two points that I hope add to the conversation:

1) Philosophical arguments make great starting points for investigation and can lead real advances but they cannot prove anything about the world without confirming evidence. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity started as thought experiments without empirical backup. I was not until astronomical observations were found to be consistent was it accepted.

The arguments about the rules of logic and such in this thread should be treated the same way. Until we find actual evidence that they are are true they remain just interesting arguments.

2) Philosophical arguments can seductively “obvious” and it can be really difficult to pinpoint where the flaws lie especially when they rely on basic assumptions we are making about reality. That’s why asking commentators to logically disprove your philosophical arguments really not advancing the conversation. There are other ways they can be disproved. For example, Astronomers had really convincing philosophical arguments that epicycles were true.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/aristotle.html

“That ancient astronomers could convince themselves that this elaborate scheme still corresponded to “uniform circular motion” is testament to the power of three ideas that we now know to be completely wrong, but that were so ingrained in the astronomers of an earlier age that they were essentially never questioned:
– All motion in the heavens is uniform circular motion.
– The objects in the heavens are made from perfect material, and cannot change their intrinsic properties (e.g., their brightness).
– The Earth is at the center of the Universe.”

Even when our every day experience says that the philosophical argument is wrong, it can be extremely difficult to point out the exact problem. For example, philosophers spend centuries trying to find the flaws in reasoning for Xeno’s Paradox even though it is clearly false.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/

Please have some humility and understand that you could be wrong. Assess the real world evidence. Are the soul and “immaterial logic” the new epicycles?

@221

Looks like Bill K should take a little of his own medicine, re: have a little humility. This, for example, betrays a huge ignorance regarding the relationship between philosophy and the natural sciences:

Philosophical arguments make great starting points for investigation and can lead real advances but they cannot prove anything about the world without confirming evidence.

You can not be further from the truth because philosophy is a reflection upon reality–not an inventor of reality. Philosophy deeply, fundamentally depends on our understanding the extra-mental world (a.k.a. known as the natural sciences) so that correct broader understandings can be reasoned to. One reasons to higher verities from those directly accessible to our five primary senses.

The “scientific method” (switching to epistemology for a moment) is not “out there” waiting to be discovered by any of the natural sciences. The “scientific method” is arrived at through philosophical reflection using how people engage with the real world through their senses to acquire knowledge. The “scientific method” is not an object that any of the natural sciences can study because there’s no sensory access to the object called the “scientific method”… in the same way that biologists do NOT study life–they study living things.

What about “causality” (now switching to ontology)? Does “causality” exist like an aardvark exists? No. It’s a higher verity which we come to understanding by reasoning from the sensory world to the non-sensory world. If this is not respected, you get chowder heads like David Hume who reduce causality to a “convention” because it’s not accessible to our senses. Well, no duh, Sherlock–of course “causality” is not sensory accessible because it’s not an object of the senses–it’s an object of the intellect. When one focuses on the existence of causality, that requires a wholly different science than the natural sciences, namely metaphysics.

So, really, Bill K, your other points fall as a result of your lead-in error. A little humility is, indeed, in order. Zeno’s paradox is no more a “paradox” than some of the nonsense Russell tried to convince us of as being “paradoxes.” It’s just that one must make proper distinctions and not just understand “space” and “position” in the modern metrical sense, but “place” and “location” in the ontological sense… and making proper distinctions is basically the one-liner job description of the philosopher.

BTW:

If we accept Bill K’s approach to reality, then every MC Escher work is a true paradox. In fact, not a single one of them is. Escher “crammed” reality into a pathological 2D state, and those that admire his work say “wow!” without thinking further. Of course his drawings will appear to be paradoxical: they’re trying to represent 3D reality within the confines of a 2D reality… and problems will arise, but not paradoxes.

@226: Like

I’m liking the “Like” button thingy.

I hope Bill K also likes #223 because it serves to set him straight. His current understanding is upside down.

But the materialist means: consciousness as an irreducibly qualitative, subjective, first-personal, airy-fairy, and touchy-feely phenomena does not really exist. There exist only third-person, objective phenomena.

This was my point to Oisin way back in #138. It’s a point made by everyone here, I think. Oisin continues to consciously believe his conscious beliefs don’t exist – and because “science” has demonstrated that Oisin is correct, “science” has demonstrated that contradictions exist.

Ahh… the wonders of “science”. Fortunately we still have science, which is far more reliable than “science”.

What a mess.

djc:

We don’t need intentionality to exist beyond the useful fiction of the intentional stance.

Which means everything you have written about (@ #232) is meaningless, because it cannot be about anything that is real.

Tom,

This is an interesting evolutionary model, to say the least. Trying to meet you on your own ground, I’m curious as to which you think came first, though: agreement between two organisms that “blue” is “blue,” or the law of identity? Was it simultaneous, as in, their agreement actually was (or constituted) the formation of the law of identity?

The law of identity is the agreement on “blue”, they’re the same thing, I’m noting. I see no need to suppose that a law of identity exists floating around and connects up with two organisms sharing agreement on blue. The law of identity is something we’ve given a name to that happens to refer to something as conceptually simple as a neural connection between a sound and a color.

When I observe that something as simple as a neural connection gives rise to logical behavior, it is much easier to see it as forming naturally by evolution and not requiring an intelligent designer.

You say rightly that language cannot exist without logic. What about proto-language? What preceded agreement on “blue”? A simultaneous leap from (a) content-free behavioral signaling (logic-free language) to agreement that “blue” is “blue,” and (b) the non-existence of logic to the law of identity, seems like rather an amazing saltation to me. What could possibly have been the genetic precursors, the adaptive predecessor, to that?

As I’ve argued, logic is a term we’ve given to aspects of the fundamental nature of language and communication. However, it doesn’t exist apart from that. If you have signaling, you have logical behavior in so far as the signal is processed and understood. So I don’t know what to make of “logic free language”. That seems to be a contradiction in terms.

Melissa,

one of the reasons why we think it’s necessary to include abstract objects as having actual existence outside of our minds if we want to make sense of our experiences and what they tell us about the real world. Did you *intend* your arguments to convince us of something that is true about the real world?

Reification can help or hurt, it depends on the circumstance. In this case, I think it is hurting our understanding of our shared perception.

(Note I take our shared perception as real enough for all practical purposes and that’s what I mean by “real world”.)

I think that the idea of an “observer” presupposes intentionality of the real, not fictional kind.

A computer mimics intentionality but does not experience it. If a computer suddenly becomes an observer, does that mean then has real intentionality? I’ve always thought that if this happened the computer still wouldn’t have real intentionality, but would have the experience of what goal-directed behavior feels like from the inside.

The symbols and equations are a model of physical law represented ultimately in neural structures of the human mind, but they are not physical law itself.

In what form does this law exist, and where is it located when it is not being represented in neural structures of the mind?

Melissa,

Before we go any further could someone please explain how an explanation that depends on something we know to be not true could itself be true.

I don’t know what you’re asking for here, sorry.

Reification can help or hurt, it depends on the circumstance. In this case, I think it is hurting our understanding of our shared perception.

(Note I take our shared perception as real enough for all practical purposes and that’s what I mean by “real world”.)

Why? So you’re trying to neither convince me of anything about the real world, nor of anything about your own idiosyncratic “real world” because that would require shared perceptions which just aren’t there.

There’s nothing idiosyncratic about being careful and allowing for the possibility that shared human experience may not necessarily having anything to do with ultimate reality. That’s just allowing for unknowns, i.e. brains in a vat scenarios.

But shared human perceptions are there. We’re genetically alike enough to think and experience things with a high degree of similarity and therefore it is possible for me to develop a world image made up shared human perception in the form of symbols, language, images, etc. And then take a leap of faith and assume that is real enough to act on and engage with.

A computer mimics intentionality but does not experience it. If a computer suddenly becomes an observer, does that mean then has real intentionality?

??? If an observer presupposes intentionality and a computer doesn’t have intrinsic intentionality then a computer cannot suddenly become an observer.

Let me rephrase that. As a thought experiment, suppose a computer suddenly becomes an observer. Assuming you agree that a computer can successfully mimic intentionality (by holding representations that are about other things and acting on those representations to achieve goals that are directed towards other things), does that mean it now has real intentionality?

I would say “no”, merely being inside and experiencing representations that are “about” other things should not magically bring intentionality into existence.

SteveK,

The symbols and equations are a model of physical law represented ultimately in neural structures of the human mind, but they are not physical law itself.

In what form does this law exist, and where is it located when it is not being represented in neural structures of the mind?

My view, i.e. the physicalist view, is that “physical law” doesn’t exist anywhere at all. The workings of the universe match physical models developed by human brains and that’s the point of those models, but those models aren’t to be confused with the universe itself.

Edit: let me clarify that further since I’m using physical law in two senses and shouldn’t. If “physical law” is taken as the actual workings of the universe, then it isn’t anywhere one can point to except to point to the actual workings of the universe. If “physical law” is taken as the models we develop to explain and predict the universe, these are only in shared neural patterns in human minds.

djc,

You seem to be contradicting yourself when you say this:

Can logic tell us anything about the real world beyond our experience of it? All it can say is that our knowledge is consistent with the body of symbols and language accumulated by mankind

and this:

The workings of the universe match physical models developed by human brains and that’s the point of those models

Maybe some clarification is needed.

djc,

As a thought experiment, what if the computer becomes self aware? Is the attribute of self-awareness, becoming an observer, enough to turn mimicked intentionality into real intentionality? My feeling is “no”. Rather, the computer would only have the experience of what representations feel like

Of course the computer would not have real intentionality, but it also wouldn’t have the experience of what representations look like, because it by itself doesn’t have representations. To be an observer is to have your attention directed towards something. It’s intentional.

The first quote I would leave as is. The second quote I would rephrase as

“The observed workings of the universe match physical models developed by human brains.”

Which for pragmatic reasons you consider close enough. Which means that ultimately you think that the mathematical equations and logic do reflect something true about the rest of the real world, not just human language.

I’d like to see your response to G.Rodrigues second argument if you have one.

Melissa,

Of course the computer would not have real intentionality, but it also wouldn’t have the experience of what representations look like, because it by itself doesn’t have representations. To be an observer is to have your attention directed towards something. It’s intentional.

But I’m noting that the only difference between an observer with intentionality and a computer (or insect or animal) mimicking intentionality is self-awareness. So the intentionality problem dissolves into the self-awareness/consciousness problem: intentionality is just the experience of information representation, no real problem for physics as long as physics can account for self-awareness/consciousness. And of course I don’t know how physics can account for self-awareness/consciousness, but it clearly is an attribute of this universe and must be amenable to the scientific method somehow.

Which for pragmatic reasons you consider close enough. Which means that ultimately you think that the mathematical equations and logic do reflect something true about the rest of the real world, not just human language.

As long as true does not mean “absolutely true” and “real world” does not mean “ultimate reality”.

I’d like to see your response to G.Rodrigues second argument if you have one.

I would take issue with “(2) It is possible that logical laws do not hold and hold true”. Logical laws are defined to be true so can not be anything but true. A = A is true because it is defined to be true.

But the problem side-stepped by the argument is that beliefs need more than logic to be valid, they also need correct knowledge of the world. For that I believe Solomonoff induction provides a way to get around Hume’s Problem of Induction so I would disagree with (8). This at least gives us a direction to go to pursue truth if not to actually reach it.

If the intentional terms are doing any real work in the explanation then it results in a contradiction. If they are not then it shouldn’t be that hard to drop them. The fact is that the use of words the presuppose meaning and intentionality are the only things that give these explanations any kind of plausibility.

“The computer refuses to print”. This uses intentional terms incorrectly yet still gets the point across quickly and easily. The alternative is a lot wordier. I don’t see a big problem here.

djc,

I forgot to respond to this:

As long as true does not mean “absolutely true” and “real world” does not mean “ultimate reality”.

Which is very cute but fails to shed any light on the matter. Note that I am not suggesting that true means that the models provide an exhaustive description of what they are modelling, nor am I suggesting that we are talking about absolute certainty. What I want to know is do the models tell us anything true about reality at all?

Melissa,

And I saying the difference is nothing to do with self-awareness. An animal or an insect does have intrinsic intentionality in that it can be directed toward other things. A computer does not, the intentionality is in human minds.

If you believe insects have real intentionality, what about protozoa, bacteria, protozoa, virii? Is there intentionality in all life or is there a continuum from non-intentionality to intentionality in your view?

My view would be that insect “intentionality” is no different from computer “intentionality”. They both use information processing and modeling that superficially looks like beliefs and desires. Neither experience true beliefs and desires because both lack consciousness, the ability to be an observer.

Whenever you have an information processing system like a brain/computer, it has neurons/transistors that “represent” things outside the organism. It has neurons/transistors that cause the organism to act in particular ways towards other objects, to achieve some sort of “goal”. For neurons/transistors alone, I don’t a problem accounting for this with physicalism because the physical connection between the neurons/transistors and the objects or goals can be precisely measured: it requires simulating the program over time with sensory inputs and observing the resulting connection to the output behavior, a direct, deterministic result. Assuming consciousness is non-existent in the above brain/computer, do you see any problem with this analysis? Is there a problem for physicalism here?

From G. Rodrigues:
(1) It is possible that human minds did not existed. Proof: uncontroversial.

(2) It is possible that logical laws do not hold and hold true. Proof: since logical laws are human mental artifacts, follows from (1) and actualism: for something to hold and hold true it must exist in some sense (left unspecified).”

While I agree that something must exist for it to hold and hold true, the inverse does not seem to me to be true. Something that does not exist is not therefore automatically false. Nonexistent should mean it can neither be used as true or false; in fact nothing should be derived from it.

In the case of the computer you are just communicating that the printer isn’t printing. You, however, are attempting to provide an explanation in purely physical terms, that is supposed to be devoid of formal and final causes (or meaning and intentionality if that is more familiar to you). You should be able to see the problem here.

My language assumes that we are sophisticated computer programs having consciousness, so it seems safe to talk as if we have beliefs and desires. I’m not sure which language should be off-limits. How would you propose using intentional language under the assumption we are sophisticated computer programs with the attribute of being self-aware conscious observers?

What I want to know is do [mathematical equations] tell us anything true about reality at all?

I assume so and I hope so, but I’m in no position to guarantee it.

Melissa,

The intentionality of the computer is in the mind of the programmer and user. There is no actual representation happening in side the computer. What is in the computer only counts as a representation because that is the way it is interpreted by us. Why do you conclude that insects lack consciousness?

I assume that if the programmer dies, the intentionality disappears?

Part of a working theory of consciousness under materialism is that a brain must be sophisticated enough to model other minds and that self-awareness in some sense emerges by modeling the self, a meta-model. It does not seem currently likely that insect brains have the complexity to model other minds this way.

In a computer the transistors only represent things by virtue of the human interpreter. The computer is a tool to accomplish a human goal. The physical connection between the object or goal cannot be measured because it is not in the physical facts.

Take a computer program that reads an input and feeds it straight to an output. The physical connection would be obvious. How about a logic gate with two inputs and one output, the output only occurring if both or either inputs are true. Again, I think the physical connection is obvious. Now add a register between inputs and outputs such that the connection happens only after a delay in time, now functioning as a state of memory, requiring a clock cycle delay to transport input information to output. All computer programs basically connect these 3 simple elements up in enormously complex ways. But as long as the physical connection between inputs and outputs is seen in the simple elements, surely it exists in the more complex program.

I’m basically saying that the behavior of computer program is fully consistent with physicalism. You may deny that computer programs can come into being under physicalism (if they require intelligence) but I would think you should agree that they do not violate physicalist principles while running. That was what I was trying to figure out from your earlier comment.

back to G. Rodrigues’ second proof:
(2) It is possible that logical laws do not hold and hold true. Proof: since logical laws are human mental artifacts, follows from (1) and actualism: for something to hold and hold true it must exist in some sense (left unspecified).

I’ve interpreted this to be a false premise. Saying logical laws “do not hold” first presumes their existence. Saying logical laws “do not hold true” first presumes their existence. Non-existent logical laws rules out the possibility that they do not hold or hold false. Therefore the premise is false and the argument is false.

But more importantly the argument assumes that we need to justify logic. I say we don’t, logic is defined to be part of accurate communication and all it does is guarantee that language is understood consistently between minds that observe. To grasp the ridiculousness of questioning logic, imagine if one person utters the sound “blue” and points to the sky, the other shakes his head and utters “opossum” while pointing to the sky, and they then part company. Rejecting logic is rejecting the possibility of communication.

Whether or not we are sophisticated computer programs having consciousness is the question under dispute so any part of the argument that assumes that would be question begging. I would propose that since physicalism entails that formal and final causes do not exist, that if you are trying to give an explanation to show that physicalism is true that you avoid words that presuppose these things.

That’s understood.

If you have a reason to think that the mathematical formulas tell us something about the real world then you are contradicting your statement that logic cannot tell us anything about the real world.

I was distinguishing pure logic from observations. Mathematical formulas are observations in model form. Observation is the key to all knowledge, and logic is the way of making sure our encoding of observation in language, sound, symbol and bits is accurately and consistently communicated.

Even assuming that theism can adequately explain the issue and naturalism cannot, it by no means follows from that alone that only theism can adequately explain that fact. There are alternatives to theism other than naturalism and nontheism in general which may also be able to adequately explain it with the same reasoning.

Where is the evidence the human brain be the only complex physical object in the universe to have an interface with another immaterial realm? Where is the evidence for the existence and nature of this immaterial world? Even if it exists, where is the evidence of God? God seems to be slotted into by mere assertion. Where is the evidence it is a loving God? Given the vast amount of suffering and premature death in the world, and the absence of a satisfactory theodicy, there is every reason to suppose an unloving or evil god if at all. The same “evidence” can not confirm equally well incompatible hypotheses. There is no good objective evidence presented that God exists.

Here is a blog post by Ed Feser in which he examines some of the “the fallacies committed by those who suppose that contemporary neuroscience has radically altered our understanding of human nature, and even undermined our commonsense conception of ourselves as conscious, rational, freely choosing agents.”
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/03/scruton-on-neuroenvy.html#more

He begins by quoting British philosopher Roger Scruton who refers to these fallacies as “neuroenvy”.

Neuroenvy… consist[s] of a vast collection of answers, with no memory of the questions. And the answers are encased in neurononsense of the following kind:

‘The brains of social animals are wired to feel pleasure in the exercise of social dispositions such as grooming and co-operation, and to feel pain when shunned, scolded, or excluded. Neurochemicals such as vasopressin and oxytocin mediate pair-bonding, parent-offspring bonding, and probably also bonding to kith and kin…’ (Patricia Churchland).

As though we didn’t know already that people feel pleasure in grooming and co-operating, and as though it adds anything to say that their brains are ‘wired’ to this effect, or that ‘neurochemicals’ might possibly be involved in producing it. This is pseudoscience of the first order, and owes what scant plausibility it possesses to the fact that it simply repeats the matter that it fails to explain. It perfectly illustrates the prevailing academic disorder, which is the loss of questions.

Later in the same article Scruton goes on to explain:

To describe the resulting ‘science’ as an explanation of consciousness, when it merely reads back into the explanation the feature that needs to be explained, is not just unjustified — it is profoundly misleading, in creating the impression that consciousness is a feature of the brain, and not of the person.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/7714533/brain-drain/

In other words, besides begging the question, the fallacy of neuroenvy is smuggling a materialistic ontology into a yet-to-be-settled question under the pretense that it is science.

According to Feser, Scruton is “almost exactly right.” He then goes on to explain what he means:

The reason I say that Scruton has things “almost exactly right” might be evident from this comparison. Paint chemistry might have some relevance to understanding the beauty of a painting; for example, it would not be without interest if it turned out that certain colors retained their vibrancy for a longer period of time if they were painted with paint having such-and-such a chemistry. Similarly, we can allow that neuroscience can give us some insight into human behavior…

But paint chemistry is obviously only a part, and a relatively small part, of understanding the beauty of a painting. And brain chemistry is only a part, and a relatively small one, of understanding human nature. In particular, it gives us only what Aristotelians call the material cause of human behavior, and part of the efficient cause; but it does not give us the formal or final causes, or the entirety of the efficient cause…

Once again, whatever advances there have been in neuroscience, we are a long way from explaining free will, consciousness and person-hood scientifically. At present no one has a clue how we even could explain those things scientifically.

djc,

Yes, assuming the computer or software program is being used by a person. But once a human mind is no longer using a computer or program that is operating, does intentionality cease or go on operating? A thought experiment would be Voyager 1 after a human extinction event. Does all intentionality cease as Voyager 1 goes on taking pictures and transmitting?

The computer will continue to be directed towards the goals of the programmer. Although if some other intelligent life came along they would not be able to determine from the physical facts alone, what that goal was nor what the physical facts were representing.

No, I’m definitely disputing 3. It makes no sense to talk about the laws of logic not holding or being false.

And I would not say that logic has nothing to do with the actual world, rather that pure logic is distinct from observations. Observation is the key to all knowledge, and logic is the way of making sure our encoding of observation in language, sound, symbol and bits is accurately and consistently communicated.

Given how you’ve described logic it only makes no sense to talk of logic not holding or being false with respect to it’s use in consistent communication. How about you spell out the connection between logic and the actual world as you see it because from what you’ve already said I don’t see one.

I don’t see how you can support that. For ‘model’ substitute ‘digital photograph’. Certainly a digital photograph is an encoded form of human observation. It is represented with colors and pixels which are effectively part of a mathematical model of vision perception.

Except that a digital photograph is a representation of a particular event. The mathematical models in physics claim to be universally applicable, they are not just representations of particular events.

GrahamH,

The mere fact that there is much to learn about the human brain, and still many mysteries for the sciences to discover, I do not see as reason why slotting into that mystery the immaterial or a God is a convincing argument for the existence of those things.

Lucky then that that is not the argument.

Why should consciousness be any exception?

Since science studies the quantitative aspects of reality and ignores the qualitative, relegating everything that cannot be quantified to the mind, it is obvious that consciousness, being largely to do with qualitative experience, will resist the same kind of reduction.

@ Tom, No my statement is more “Denying a supernatural explanation when there is no objective evidence for the supernatural explanation is sound.”

@Melissa
“…science ignores the qualitative”? Not too sure what you are really saying here and I would be interested in the evidence in that statement. Regardless of how I understand what you say, there seems to be overwhelming evidence for a dependant link between minds and brains including the following:

1. When the brain is directly stimulated or put in a physical state you have a corresponding experience.

2. Types of injuries to the brain can mean you can have no mental states at all.

3. Other injuries to the brain destroy various mental capacities, and which capacity is destroyed is tied directly to the particular region of the brain that was damaged.

4. When we examine the mental capacities of animals, they become more complex as their brains become more complex.

5. The development of mental capacities is correlated with the development of neurons in the brain in all species.

The supernatural is not required to demonstrate the dependence of consciousness on the brain, confirming that the mind must die with the body. The conclusion that nothing mental happens without the occurrence of a corresponding physical event seems very sound.

I should add again that this so-called Evidence for God article on this page is very deficient in any actual evidence that the mind is immaterial, let alone providing any evidence for God. If there was some I would be very appreciative to examine it.

GrahamH,

Not too sure what you are really saying here and I would be interested in the evidence in that statement. Regardless of how I understand what you say, there seems to be overwhelming evidence for a dependant link between minds and brains including the following:

If you don’t understand what I wrote how do you think you can provide evidence against it? A correlation between the brain and mental states is irrelevant to my point and not at all unexpected given my position.

My point us a simple one – for the purposes of pushing forward our ability to predict and control nature through the scientific method material things are reduced to those aspects that may be quantified. Everything that couldn’t be reduced in this way was relocated to reside solely in the mind, for example redness, warmth etc. Therefore the problem of qualia (how to explain redness, warmth etc) is actually created by the materialist definition of matter and for obvious reasons the same technique cannot be used to reduce mind to the physical.

I should add again that this so-called Evidence for God article on this page is very deficient in any actual evidence that the mind is immaterial, let alone providing any evidence for God. If there was some I would be very appreciative to examine it.

Since the point if the OP was not to provide evidence if the immaterial but rather to answer a common objection to the immaterial raised on another post do you really think it surprising that there is no argument for the immaterial itself that would be a seperate blog post. This post is part if a series, I suggest you hang around for the rest.

GrahamH,

I am otherwise free to add my thoughts to the discussion.

Of course you are free to add your thoughts to the discussion but since they are not relevant to what I wrote why address them to me?

I also do not accept that Qualia or phenomena related to it is off limits or inaccessible to any discipline of the sciences that rejects or does not need the supernatural simply because you assert it is “obvious”,

If you want to interact with the reason I gave of why it is obvious that qualia cannot be reduced to the physical as it is defined for the sake of science you may. I would appreciate though if you did not attempt to make my argument into something that it is not as you have done here.

GrahamH,

Sorry, I shouldn’t have been snappy, and I misread one of your sentences.

The definition of qualia or such things is tangential to the argument. Consider, that for the sake of science our experience of the world is reduced to only those aspects that can be quantified. Things are nothing but colourless, odorless, unintentional matter. Anything that didn’t fit this quantitative method is labelled subjective and moved to the mind. Now if the mind is going to be explained by science then it too must be reduced to quantitative unintentional matter. The problem is that what has been parked there just is the qualitative and intentional and there is no where else to hide these things. Therefore if you are going to eliminate the mind you also eliminate subjective experience (consciousness) and intentionality.

GrahamH,

The only thing I can’t help noticing from your argument is that it should also apply to other species in the animal kingdom. They have experiences in the world too? So at this stage, they seem to be included within the same phenomena of consciousness you outline, and we haven’t yet got to the “humanness” part that may be related to the OP.

With respect to animals that is correct. The interaction problem came up as a response to Tom’s post on free will which is why the connection to humanness. In my opinion consciousness does not require anything immaterial but it is problematic if you insist that all natural phenomena are reducible (in principle even if not in practice) to physics. Free will and the intellect are those aspects of humanness that require some kind of immateriality.

MNb,

Rather than your hammering away at Tom, please allow me to recommend a great book with deep and credible research on the topic of brain, mind and religious experience. It’s by William P. Alston (1991). Perceiving God: The epistemology of religious experience. This book is what I call “heavy lifting” on the topic, but well worth it. Alston’s careful research and argumentation thoroughly IMHO debunk what he calls an “epistemological imperialism” inherent in materialism vs. common human experiences and ultimately, Christian mysticism. On p. 243, Alston says this: “Again scientific philosophers will claim that everything that exists falls within the purview of science; anything that is alleged to fall outside the domain of scientific investigation is thereby deemed to dismissal as nonexistent. But again it is no part of science to make imperialist claims like this.”

Science can legitimately and credibly study the brain. It cannot study the mind, nor can it establish that the brain “causes” the mind.