Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
8+11 = 33. The pattern is "add 5 + 2n" to the previous answer.
8+11 = 28. The pattern is "alternate between adding 7 then 9 to the previous answer"
8+11 = 30. The pattern is "add 9 to get the next answer". The first line isn't part of the pattern.
8+11 = 38. The pattern is "the ? equals the previous 3 answers"
8+11 = 28. The pattern is "add 16 to the answer from two lines up". Note that this is different from the other 28 above even though it reduces to it in this particular example.
If you look hard enough you can find any answer you want in noise like this. Which is right? It's whatever the guy or girl who made it up says it is.
Trying to link that to atheists needing to reject materialism to really feel the magic of consciousness is quite a stretch - there's obviously some other sort of agenda at play here.
It seems reasonable to me for science to consider the possibility that either consciousness or aspects of it fall outside current paradigms but I don't know that this necessarily implies anything immaterial.
A lot hangs on the concept of "matter"/"material" and the word "materialism" tends to be used in a range of different ways, so let me try to be more specific about what I think are the flaws in materialism (and why I tend to label myself as an advocate of "physicalism" but not "materialism").
Technically, physics distinguishes between matter (quarks and leptons) and the force-carrying particles, but, of course, for the purposes of "materialism" the point is that Reality is composed of whatever "basic stuff" physics identifies, and it is all lumped together as "matter" or "material" in a loose sense. Also, of course, "information" plays an important role. It may seems a bit funny to think of information as "material" - but materialists, in general, don't want to exclude information from materialism.
For my purposes, the key aspect of materialism that I want to focus on is the general notion of "rule-following particles" - and, more specifically, the idea that the particles are ontologically independent entities that preexist higher-level measurement processes. The basic idea is that these quantum particles are the ultimate "real" things, and everything else - including consciousness - is essentially patterns that emerge from the activities of these mindless micro-particles. Physicists know that this picture is wrong, but saying exactly how it is wrong is difficult.
One way to get a better picture is to realize a distinction between "local" rule-following and "non-local" and/or "global" rule-following. With QM we are forced to realize that the rule-following of any quantum particle is, in some sense, the manifestation of a global phenomenon. There is something profoundly misleading about the way we typically think about "micro" and "macro" and quantum "particles". There is even something profoundly wrong with our notion of "rule-following" insofar as we tend to picture little chunks of "stuff" that "follows a rule." Instead of quantum particles "following rules" it is somewhat better to think of them as "manifesting" - as it were - the "will of Reality" in a holistic sense. Particles simple don't exist "down there" when we aren't trying to measure them. The macro-scale experimental set-up essentially creates the particle's properties in the process of measurement. Oddly enough, this doesn't mean that we have to completely give up on the idea of objectivity and become idealists, but it does mean that we need to somewhat reconceive objectivity.
Generally, objectivity is the idea that a thing "is what it is" independently of other things. Of course, even in our old Newtonian paradigm we knew that objectivity doesn't mean that things aren't interconnected. We already knew that nothing was totally independent of everything else, but there was this idea that in terms of "identity" or "essence" an object would essentially "be what it is" even if the rest of the universe disappeared. With QM, this idea of objectivity has to be revamped because now we have reason to think that the very essence of a thing is contextual. Things are not "determinate individuals" that are merely interconnected; rather, thing are essentially interdependent. Think of the number 7, for example. Is there any coherent sense in which 7 could exist in a universe all by itself? Is 7 still "7" if it is not also 4+3? Or "less than 8"?
So what is "objectivity" without some sort of ontological independence? Bohr set the stage for our new concept of objectivity. He characterized objectivity in terms of "permanent marks" on Reality that can be tested over and over again by different people who can all agree that, yes, the mark is still there, etc. The mark has no independent "thing-in-itself" existence, but somehow the information that we will gather whenever we look in a certain way is coded into Reality Itself in a more or less reliable way. Once an objective mark is made, the "objective existence" of the mark consists in the fact that the rules of Reality are now such that if anyone looks in a certain way, they will see the mark - not because the mark, as such, is "there" prior to (or independent of) the looking, but because Reality conspires, in a sense, to make sure that anyone who looks in the right way will see the mark. The observer is a physical system, the mark is physical, and the process of observation is a physical process, but "physical" now means something like "more or less reliable/predictable presentation/manifestation of information." The notion of some independently-existing "substance" that "just sits there" waiting for someone to look at it has technically disappeared from physics. But it seems that hardly anyone fully understands this, or believes it. Even many physicists routinely speak as though they have forgotten that the meaning of "objectivity" has changed.
Bohr used the word "phenomenon" to get at the idea that I've referred to in various posts as "Reality Itself" or "Reality as a Whole" etc. Each observation is a configuration of Reality as a Whole. When a mark is made (i.e., the "collapse of a wave packet" etc.) what happens is essentially a reconfiguration of Reality as a Whole. That's why Bohr was not panicked by the EPR paradox. Spatiotemporal locality is a derivative concept. Some types of information "travel" no faster than the speed of light, but ultimately no information is "stored locally." Information is intrinsically global; the limitations of spatiotemporal structure emerge from this fundamentally "global essence" of Reality.
"Matter" is Reality's way of experiencing Itself from derivative local perspectives. You could say that matter is a verb. "Matter-ing" is a self-referential, self-limiting process. The properties of the material world are the Self-referential phenomenal "feelings" of Reality in a given moment, and what we think of as "physical causality" is just our way of representing the way in which Reality reveals Itself to Itself. So long as we understand matter in this sense - matter as a verb - matter as Reality's holistic process of Self-Revelation, then I could be comfortable calling myself a "materialist." But since "matter" in everyday contexts tends to be associated with "dead" local-rule-following chunks of essentially preexisting, determinate stuff that "does stuff" more or less independently (aside from interconnections like gravity, etc.), I tend to avoid calling myself a "materialist." The term "physicalism" is not much better but, for me at least, it seems to evoke a slightly broader conception of "whatever physics ultimately identifies" as the fundamental stuff of Reality, which in Bohr's case, would be "phenomena" - and I can live a bit more comfortably with "phenomena" because I'm fairly confident that physics can never really abandon the holism of QM, and the holism forces our conception of Reality to be less "mechanical" and more "organic" and even potentially "spiritual" in some broad sense. After all, if the subjective/qualitative aspects of Reality are real, and if Reality is a holistic "One", then the fundamental stuff of Being is not a mere collection of lifeless, mechanical quantum drones following a deterministic algorithm.
If Reality is holistic, then Existence has to be far more profound and potentially even more "meaningful" than the run-of-the-mill imagery that is generally conjured up by the term "materialism." The founding fathers of quantum physics understood this decades ago, but a lot of people today still don't seem to get it.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 05-10-2016 at 10:05 AM..
If Reality is holistic, then Existence has to be far more profound and potentially even more "meaningful" than the run-of-the-mill imagery that is generally conjured up by the term "materialism." The founding fathers of quantum physics understood this decades ago, but a lot of people today still don't seem to get it.
I have no particular issue with it when you put it this way. Non-local interdependence has profound implications in how we understand the material world, but it is still the material world. I understand that you are trying to circumvent the mental imagery of what that means that is persistent for many people.
On the other hand there aren't many practical applications of this that are relatable. Some current experiments in communications technology that attempt to convey data instantly through quantum entanglement might be among the early innovations that would begin to shift common perception around these things. If we can build reliable general-purpose quantum computers that can do something other than quantum annealing problems, that would help. A fully realized AI technology that appears conscious and relatably interactive would impress, too.
Something (probably more than one something) has to bring this out of the realm of blue-sky thought experiments for the Average Joe.
8+11 = 33. The pattern is "add 5 + 2n" to the previous answer.
8+11 = 28. The pattern is "alternate between adding 7 then 9 to the previous answer"
8+11 = 30. The pattern is "add 9 to get the next answer". The first line isn't part of the pattern.
8+11 = 38. The pattern is "the ? equals the previous 3 answers"
8+11 = 28. The pattern is "add 16 to the answer from two lines up". Note that this is different from the other 28 above even though it reduces to it in this particular example.
If you look hard enough you can find any answer you want in noise like this. Which is right? It's whatever the guy or girl who made it up says it is.
Trying to link that to atheists needing to reject materialism to really feel the magic of consciousness is quite a stretch - there's obviously some other sort of agenda at play here.
But that's exactly what Gaylenwoof was trying to say. It probably needs padding out a bit.
Let's look at underdetermination:
Underdetermination is a thesis explaining that for any scientifically based theory there will always be at least one rival theory that is also supported by the evidence given, and that that theory can also be logically maintained in the face of any new evidence.
In other words, there are a number of ways to solve the puzzle and given the right explanation for how you got there, none them appear to be wrong.
I think what Gaylen is saying about science is that there may be paths we haven't even thought about, or maybe we have discounted paths because we are not prepared to be open minded enough to even consider them, and he's applying this idea to the exploration of consciousness.
We have barely even scratched the surface of understanding what consciousness even is, so unless we get a little more open minded about it, we may never know. Of course the trouble with science is that you need something that is testable with observable results, so maybe we just don't know what it is that we have to test yet.
But if you consider the quantum world, the smallest thing we can actually physically observe with our eyes (and the help of electron microscope) is an atom, but we know that subatomic particles exist because they can be observed indirectly (tracks / radiation that sort of thing).
According to Penrose, we just don't have the right physics yet to understand consciousness, so maybe the time has come to really start thinking outside of the box.
Another point I'd like to make that is probably relevant to this discussion is a phenomena called 'The half-life of facts' made popular by Samuel Arbesman, which basically boils down to this:
Quote:
Because scientific knowledge is growing by a factor of ten every 50 years, this means that half of what scientists may have known about a particular subject will be wrong or obsolete in 45 years.
On the internet and in life in general, everyone is an expert on everything these days. Everyone will very positively tell you for example what you should and shouldn't eat to be healthy, what the latest scientific development is etc etc. But the truth is, nobody knows for sure, which of the 'facts' we know to be true today, will be superseded or overturned completely in the future. So it's always good to keep an open mind.
Trying to link that to atheists needing to reject materialism to really feel the magic of consciousness is quite a stretch - there's obviously some other sort of agenda at play here.
For whatever it is worth: My agenda is to figure out the best way (or at least a plausibly good way) to characterize a metaphysical position that inspires us to reject what ought to be rejected (e.g., Biblical God fantasies encouraging people to stone adulterers to death, etc.), while encouraging us to investigate potentially useful lines of research (e.g., the rules of QM may turn out to be different for living brain matter than they are for particles scooting through a cloud chamber, or smacking into a photoplate, or whatever). My other central agenda is to find ways to express my own beliefs and intuitions insofar as I have developed them. Based on past threads, I already know that you will rake me over the coals for virtually everything I say, and that's perfectly fine with me because once in a while you help me see where, even by my own lights, I have gone off the rails.
Practically everybody seems to agree that some revolutionary ideas may be needed in order to understand consciousness, reconcile gravity with the Standard Model, explain Dark Energy and/or Dark Matter, and so on. I tend to agree with the majority on this. But my passion - my "hobby" if you will - is to read as much as I can, and think as deeply/creatively as I can, to get a peek at the missing pieces of the puzzle. Perhaps I'm too far removed from this or that scientific and/or academic discipline to have a reasonable shot at solving any portion of the grand puzzles, but I figure that, as hobbies go, mine is no more pointless than collecting beer cans or watching sit-coms on TV. I'm also learning Spanish even though I'm not sure I'll ever have any use for it. The value for me in is the enjoyment - and, perhaps, it is a bit like buying a lottery ticket. The chances against winning might be astronomical, but the dream is more fun if you actually but buy a ticket once in a while, despite the ridiculous odds. And I'm writing a sci=fi novel, so my hobby doubles as research for getting the science elements as realistic as I can get them.
Posting in this forum is mostly just for the fun of it. I read so much academic stuff that I sometimes like to take a break and get a sense of how the minds of non-academics (or different academics, or not-so-high-level academics) relate to these esoteric ideas. Yet another hobby, of sorts.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 05-10-2016 at 11:21 AM..
On the internet and in life in general, everyone is an expert on everything these days. Everyone will very positively tell you for example what you should and shouldn't eat to be healthy, what the latest scientific development is etc etc. But the truth is, nobody knows for sure, which of the 'facts' we know to be true today, will be superseded or overturned completely in the future.
Yes and no. Established scientific theories to my knowledge have never been "overturned completely" since the invention of the scientific method. No one has ever been so wrong that they have established a completely incorrect scientific theory. Rather, these explanatory frameworks are expanded in scope with more nuanced understanding, such as the progression of Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity to QM. Newtonian physics is entirely sufficient for general purpose use to this day.
Now when you are talking about specific things within a theory -- such as what constitutes healthy eating within modern medicine -- it seems to me that a lot of the apparent churn there is simply a function of popular culture and newstainment outlets confusing association with cause. That seems quite rampant. Or culturally or politically predetermined overlays on simple facts resulting in nonsense like pot being considered as addictive and dangerous as cocaine because both are "illegal drugs" and of course all illegal drugs, even those that once were perfectly legal, are really, really, bad, automatically.
Some of it, too, is just people trying to keep their ox from getting gored ... the people who claimed 100 years ago that there was nothing new to invent or patent, for example, or the president of IBM in the 1940s suggesting there might be a market for perhaps a half dozen computers worldwide. These weren't settled fact even in their day, they were simply misunderstandings or failures of imagination or a desire to prognosticate or stave off unwanted perceptions or even just had implicit caveats and weren't even meant to be taken literally.
Then there is the conceit of every generation -- related to the "nothing new to invent" BS mentioned above -- that THIS generation represents some pinnacle of human endeavor rather than just a laughably incomplete effort to understand reality that will be just as obsolete in 2116 as we now regard scientific understanding of 1916 to be.
So no, I don't think much of what we know now will be swept away and invalidated, it will simply be built on and re-conceptualized in unanticipated ways. It is conventional wisdom and assumptions that shift suddenly, not so much science itself. For example self-driving cars are still in early days but appear destined to take over from piloted vehicles. But this isn't some sudden development, it has been systematically building for decades. Self-driving cars have always been possible, though for the moment until recently impossible in practical terms. And they would still be further in the future if insurance companies hadn't figured out their salutory impact on their claims payouts.
I am also resistant to this idea that science is mostly wrong today or at any given point in time because theists often try to show that science is a form of faith, or that evolution could be rescinded if there weren't a conspiracy of tenured scientists resisting the Truth, or just generally that science can't make up its mind and is some sort of ad hoc patchwork of godless humans to contradict holy writ. Science is right enough that planes routinely don't fall from the sky, we have visited much of the solar system, have worldwide wireless communications and wide screen high res color TVs in most homes, etc. None of that works because science is half right. It works because it's spot on.
Yes and no. Established scientific theories to my knowledge have never been "overturned completely" since the invention of the scientific method. No one has ever been so wrong that they have established a completely incorrect scientific theory. Rather, these explanatory frameworks are expanded in scope with more nuanced understanding, such as the progression of Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity to QM. Newtonian physics is entirely sufficient for general purpose use to this day.
Now when you are talking about specific things within a theory -- such as what constitutes healthy eating within modern medicine -- it seems to me that a lot of the apparent churn there is simply a function of popular culture and newstainment outlets confusing association with cause. That seems quite rampant. Or culturally or politically predetermined overlays on simple facts resulting in nonsense like pot being considered as addictive and dangerous as cocaine because both are "illegal drugs" and of course all illegal drugs, even those that once were perfectly legal, are really, really, bad, automatically.
Some of it, too, is just people trying to keep their ox from getting gored ... the people who claimed 100 years ago that there was nothing new to invent or patent, for example, or the president of IBM in the 1940s suggesting there might be a market for perhaps a half dozen computers worldwide. These weren't settled fact even in their day, they were simply misunderstandings or failures of imagination or a desire to prognosticate or stave off unwanted perceptions or even just had implicit caveats and weren't even meant to be taken literally.
Then there is the conceit of every generation -- related to the "nothing new to invent" BS mentioned above -- that THIS generation represents some pinnacle of human endeavor rather than just a laughably incomplete effort to understand reality that will be just as obsolete in 2116 as we now regard scientific understanding of 1916 to be.
So no, I don't think much of what we know now will be swept away and invalidated, it will simply be built on and re-conceptualized in unanticipated ways. It is conventional wisdom and assumptions that shift suddenly, not so much science itself. For example self-driving cars are still in early days but appear destined to take over from piloted vehicles. But this isn't some sudden development, it has been systematically building for decades. Self-driving cars have always been possible, though for the moment until recently impossible in practical terms. And they would still be further in the future if insurance companies hadn't figured out their salutory impact on their claims payouts.
I am also resistant to this idea that science is mostly wrong today or at any given point in time because theists often try to show that science is a form of faith, or that evolution could be rescinded if there weren't a conspiracy of tenured scientists resisting the Truth, or just generally that science can't make up its mind and is some sort of ad hoc patchwork of godless humans to contradict holy writ. Science is right enough that planes routinely don't fall from the sky, we have visited much of the solar system, have worldwide wireless communications and wide screen high res color TVs in most homes, etc. None of that works because science is half right. It works because it's spot on.
I think the emphasis is more on 'superseded'. However there are a number of 'facts' that are now found to be false. Here's a list some old obsolete ones:
I actually remember teaching a lesson as part of a science fair, based on the idea that the human tongue, has 'zones' that recognise bitter, sweet, sour and so on, straight out on a science textbook. It is now recognised that there is no evidence for it.
Einstein himself got a few things wrong. He understood the universe to be static (not expanding or contracting) and had to add in his cosmological constant to account for it.
In fact, we have gone through many changes in our view of the universe behaves as chronicled here:
Ideas of the size of the solar system, our position within it, the age of the earth, the age of the universe, the size of the universe and the numbers of stars and galaxies it contains has varied wildly over the last few hundred years and I doubt we are close to anything like an accurate number yet.
I think the emphasis is more on 'superseded'. However there are a number of 'facts' that are now found to be false. Here's a list some old obsolete ones:
This is why I qualified with "since the introduction of the scientific method" which I roughly date to 1700 and mostly associate with Newton. You could reach further back, to Bacon in the 1200s I believe, but the fully developed modern SM goes back to the 18th century. Most of what this link cites are prescientific notions or, as with cold fusion, were never established as fact or more than hypothesis. I'm talking about established, accepted, proven scientific theory in the modern sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruithne
I
I actually remember teaching a lesson as part of a science fair, based on the idea that the human tongue, has 'zones' that recognise bitter, sweet, sour and so on, straight out on a science textbook. It is now recognised that there is no evidence for it.
Einstein himself got a few things wrong. He understood the universe to be static (not expanding or contracting) and had to add in his cosmological constant to account for it.
In fact, we have gone through many changes in our view of the universe behaves as chronicled here:
Ideas of the size of the solar system, our position within it, the age of the earth, the age of the universe, the size of the universe and the numbers of stars and galaxies it contains has varied wildly over the last few hundred years and I doubt we are close to anything like an accurate number yet.
Yes and things like the taste bud zones are all specific notions within otherwise sound theoretical frameworks and amount to details that had to be adjusted or corrected for.
As for the sun orbiting the earth or the age of the universe these things have remained stable once definitively shown to be as they are. Neither of us expects there to be an announcement next week that the earth doesn't orbit the sun after all, or that the universe really is 10,000 years old (the standard fundamentalist wet-dream).
I notice that although you mention that maybe there are better metaphysical approaches you don't mention any of them nor do you discuss how to determine if they are better.
Metaphysical positions (whether consciously explicated, or unconsciously assumed) have an impact on both science and human culture in a broader sense. Even if a particular metaphysical assumption has no obvious scientific value, it could still have some profound human value so long as it is not blatantly inconsistent with science. Right or wrong, most advocates of materialism have (perhaps unintentionally in some cases) perpetuated a sense of "meaninglessness" of life, mostly by pushing determinism and/or straight-out denying free will. Perhaps this is an unnecessarily "bad rap" for materialism, but it has nevertheless been the historical trend. To make a long story as short as possible: A lot of people feel that they have to be materialists in order to "think scientifically" but this is simply not true. On the flip side, a lot of people seem to think they need to reject materialism and/or science in order to live a "spiritual" life. This, too, is simply not true. Science seeks "mechanistic" explanations - i.e., we try to identify the most basic rules of nature and then show how higher-level patterns of behavior emerge naturally from these basic rules. But "seeking a natural mechanism" is not the same as committing to a "mechanistic" metaphysics. The subjective, qualitative feel of an experience could be a mechanism in the sense required for scientific explanation. It is perfectly possible for qualia to be causal processes in the physical world without violating science. It would almost certainly violate QM as currently formulated, but it would not have to contradict science as a methodology. To see how this could work, I would suggest taking a look at Daniel Dennett's notion of "heterophenomenology." Dennett himself is an "eliminativist" but his approach works equally well whether you are an eliminativist or not. (He designed it specifically to fill that role.)
In a previous post I hinted at the idea that the currently formulated rules of QM won't apply to living brain processes. More specifically: I'm predicting that QM, as we currently understand it, is a special case of a broader theory that is yet to be formulated. The deeper theory, once established, would cover both sentient and non-sentient systems. If I were a genius, I would not only predict that the new theory will treat sentient system differently, but I would also give precise predictions about how the systems will differ. If I could do that, I'd suddenly have a very busy lecture schedule, and they'd eventually build statues of me. As it is, I am just a tiny blob floating in a vast sea of head scratchers.
I'm exploring a few options, some of which can be found in these threads in the philosophy forum:
Practically everybody seems to agree that some revolutionary ideas may be needed in order to understand consciousness, reconcile gravity with the Standard Model, explain Dark Energy and/or Dark Matter, and so on.
Sure, but that has nothing to do with metaphysics. All of those are conclusions based on the findings of naturalism and empirical observation.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
