To what extent can the immaterial affect the material?

[QED]

In the topic titled When God knows a soul goes to hell..

Newtonian mechanics is an approximation to quantum mechanics. It's possible that the uncertainty principle can be more generalized with some yet undiscovered theory, however the uncertainty principle is a theorem in the theory of operators, a derivation of the Cramer-Rao inequality, derivation of the Fourier transform on general locally compact groups, formulation for Fourier integral operators on manifolds, along with other deep mathematical concepts. So, I would argue that the uncertainty principle points to some kind of platonic structure that has deep mathematical significance. Given its importance in explaining the virtual particles, Casimir effect, Hawking radiation, etc., I think we have good reason to believe that the immaterial affects the material.

I think this is a really tricky issue. For example, love can be considered to be immaterial and it can evidently affect material things through the actions of those in love. But then I'd argue that love is a signal riding on a material medium (the neural nets within our brains). I have often stated that wherever we look we find software to be supervenient on hardware. I am unaware of any evidence for pure Information that exists without a supporting material structure anywhere in the cosmos.

The question I wish to put here is how are we to know for sure that a platonic view is justified when all we might be doing is to default to this assumption simply because we lack a complete understanding of some phenomenon or other that we are studying. It seems to me that while Physics lacks a Grand Unification Theory we do not know if the laws we are observing represent restrictions of degrees of freedom imposed by some as yet undiscovered, underlying, material framework. The analogy that I like to use is the tracing-out of the image of a penny coin beneath a sheet of paper by rubbing over it with a pencil. If we never saw behind the paper, the impression might seem to comes to us from nowhere.

This topic covers the related issue of prescriptive vs descriptive laws and can serve to host debates that frequently go off-topic in other threads.

[harvey1]

Ok, can you explain why you believe that breathing can be described in terms of classical mechanics and chemistry, but consciousness cannot ?

I'm not saying that consciousness lacks a natural explanation. What I'm saying is that whatever explanation exists, the explanation will not fully account for the causal issues that consciousness raises. In the case of breathing, the causal issues are not as explicit, however I still contend that there are causal problems with any material causation explanation. This issue is more apparent with consciousness since a conscious person doesn't seem to themselves to be "just" an automaton who is operating in response to stimuli, there is the whole issue of choice. Does an individual have a real choice, or are they really just behaving as they must behave (chemical cause and behavioral effect)? If there are no real choices, then we must discount the most intuitive aspect to human behavior, namely that we are in charge of our own destiny.

However, philosophically, there's much more to it. There's the whole mental causation problem for physicalists. That is, if M (mental event) causes E (physical effect) and if P (physical event that describes M in terms of a physical description of goings on inside the brain), then either:

1. (M&P cause E)
2. (P causes E).

In case of (1), the cause is overdetermined. That is, you have too much explanation for the cause of E. In case of (2), there is no relationship between M and E, which clearly is a mistake. For example, if I write something nasty to you, I am not affecting P, I am affecting M. I have done nothing to your P to cause an E in you. When we think of language, a good author writes out their thoughts which can do all sorts of reactions to our M. We might go out and go to a Harry Potter movie after reading a Harry Potter book. The M of one author communicates to our M by the channel of a book, and this causes our E (i.e., to go to the movie).

Well, of course the debate begins here, and physicalists have their responses. But, even the physicalists are split as to what answers the problem of mental causation. With causation you need laws, and this seems to be a problem for psychophysical laws since no such laws appear to exist.

I think a great deal of these problems just go away if we look at humans having souls since M and P have a new kind of relationship. M is described by a configuration space that has certain restrictions based on the "mathematics" of this space. While P continues to be described by the configuration space of M, but it is separate from P as a physical reality of M. That is, P is the building, and M is the blueprint. Causes for E are due to M, but P exists as a referent which makes M have any meaning.

When we die, the entire contents of M no longer have any physical manifestation on earth, but the configuration space that was "us" continues to exist as our soul.

You posit the "real nature" behind all these processes; by the principle of parsimony, it's up to you to provide the evidence for this nature.

No. Every philosophy has to provide an answer to the philosophical problems that beset us, and the ones having the best answer are in higher contention than the ones with the least best answer. I do think that a view that contains more meaning for life is part of that, but only in so far as it is a reasonable solution to the answers. I would never forgo rationality to have a meaningful account of the world, but I would always choose the most meaningful account if two views were both reasonable. No sense in being a pessimist.

[Bugmaster]

Does an individual have a real choice, or are they really just behaving as they must behave (chemical cause and behavioral effect)?

Does this even matter ? If there are no real choices, and yet the choice space is so complex that even turning every atom in the Universe into an XOR gate would not allow you to predict what I will choose, then for all intents and purposes I have free wil.

If there are no real choices, then we must discount the most intuitive aspect to human behavior, namely that we are in charge of our own destiny.

This, of course, implies that destiny actually exists, which I'd deny. I guess you could be using the word as a metaphor, meaning, "I really do control my decisions". However, that is also obviously false -- f.ex., people make bad decisions routinely, when tired or angry or drunk. I personally don't understand this need to cling to some pure notion of free will... I don't think we need it, philosophically speaking.

mental causation problem for physicalists. That is, if M (mental event) causes E (physical effect)... In case of (2), there is no relationship between M and E, which clearly is a mistake. For example, if I write something nasty to you, I am not affecting P, I am affecting M.

I, of course, deny the very existence of M. When you write something nasty to me, you are affecting keys, electrons, photons, and ultimately my retina and various parts of my brain, all of which are physical in nature.

It's nice to be able to use a metaphor for describing the processes that go on in our brains, as a shorthand; i.e., you don't say, "the following chemicals in the following parts of my brain combine to blah blah", you say, "I think I like apples". However, the notion of thought and consciousness is just that -- a shorthand, or a model (and a pretty shaky one at that) of the physical events that are going on.

At least, this is the way I see it. Note that my worldview is still naturalistic, not dualistic like yours is.

With causation you need laws, and this seems to be a problem for psychophysical laws since no such laws appear to exist.

I'm not sure what you mean by "psychophysical laws", but physical laws clearly do affect our thoughts, regardless of whether you're a dualist or not. We can stimulate the amygdala to produce fear, feed people drugs to nullify their schizophrenic symptoms, and even perform lobotomies to erase entire personalities. All of these operations are purely physical, yet seem to produce mental effects. If dualism is true, and mental effects do in fact exist, then you need to explain how this is possible.

When we die, the entire contents of M no longer have any physical manifestation on earth, but the configuration space that was "us" continues to exist as our soul.

This would be a neat idea, but I still don't believe that M exists at all... and now you have to prove certain properties of M, not just its mere existence, so your task is even harder.

I would never forgo rationality to have a meaningful account of the world, but I would always choose the most meaningful account if two views were both reasonable. No sense in being a pessimist.

I would personally choose the account that's most likely to be true, no matter how sad it makes me (if indeed it does that at all). This is why I'm a materialist.

[harvey1]

Does this even matter ? If there are no real choices, and yet the choice space is so complex that even turning every atom in the Universe into an XOR gate would not allow you to predict what I will choose, then for all intents and purposes I have free wil... I, of course, deny the very existence of M. When you write something nasty to me, you are affecting keys, electrons, photons, and ultimately my retina and various parts of my brain, all of which are physical in nature.

I didn't say I would write something nasty to you...! Any way, in principle are you suggesting that our thoughts and actions today were probablistically predetermined at birth just like any physical phenomena? For example, we have a pretty good idea that Halley's comet will probably be close to earth in 2061. Are you saying that in theory we can predict what someone will probably be thinking in 2061 if we had a similar level of understanding of the world that we have in order to calculate Halley's next pass? If so, that seems like an extraordinary claim, based on what evidence could you make such a claim?

"I really do control my decisions". However, that is also obviously false -- f.ex., people make bad decisions routinely, when tired or angry or drunk. I personally don't understand this need to cling to some pure notion of free will... I don't think we need it, philosophically speaking.

Understandable. However, there's a big difference between saying that our decisions are interdependent of physical variables and saying that we don't make any decisions that actually make us the decision maker. That is, decisions are entirely the result of a causal chain of chemico-physical events. Saying that we are not in principle the decision makers of many of our decisions seems to me to be contrary to our experience, including our collective scientific experience. Afterall, don't scientists decide on which experiments to perform? If the future experiments are entirely a result of chemico-physical happenings, then why can the experiments that are conducted be explained in ordinary language (e.g., "researchers were curious if this experiment were conducted whether the results would conform to theory," etc...)?

I, of course, deny the very existence of M. When you write something nasty to me, you are affecting keys, electrons, photons, and ultimately my retina and various parts of my brain, all of which are physical in nature.

In my opinion, the chief problem with your epiphenomenalism is that the mental aspects of our physical experience (which is considerable!) would have no other biological purpose than to provide a selective advantage for our species. That is, even an epiphenomenalist must require that the mental properties of the mind have a selective advantage, otherwise nature would never have selected for us to have mental constructions in the first place. From the epiphenomenalist perspective (i.e., if we ignore for the moment those selective advantages of natural selection), there's no practical reason why mental properties are necessary. For example, the chemico-physical processes could just cause us to eat, or cause us to sleep, etc., and the "language" of our thoughts can be just mumble-jumbo (e.g., a dream-like state, a schizophrenic state, an LSD experience state, etc...). As long as the mumble-jumbo thoughts have no effect on our survival as a species, there's no reason that nature would have gone so far out of the way in constructing an illusion of free will and mental constructs which appear to causally change the world.

So, I'm presuming that you agree that the mental properties have some selective advantage, although they have no causal purpose other than limiting our behavior beyond that which allows our species to survive, is that correct? If so, then the next hurdle for epiphenomenalism is to explain why we are not only able to survive with mental properties added to our selected traits, but why is it that they appear to causally affect the world so successfully that we have good reason to believe that the appearance of the world reflects the actual world? This is more than just scientific realism. It is a commonsense realism including such basic mental thoughts such as we live on a planet, there is water on this planet, etc., etc.. To deny that there are these things would be absurd. Therefore, epiphenomenalism would not only have to admit that natural selection selected for us to have a selective advantage for survival by selecting for mental property traits, it also selected for us to have a very accurate mental realization of the world.

If you agree that our mental representation is a real (or approximately real) realization of the world, then I think you are forced to agree that causally our minds affect the world based on our thoughts as we understand them to be. For example, if we build a dam, commonsense realism requires that we believe that we actually built a dam. Putting this in epiphenomenalistic language, there was an evolutionary advantage in us having a mental construct of the world where we believe that our thoughts led to causally bringing about a dam, but we must realize that the mental thoughts did not really causally bring them about. However, commonsense realism requires that we do believe that our mental thoughts causally brought about the dam, and therefore there is a severe problem with epiphenomenalism. Had we not had those particular thoughts about causally bringing about a dam by constructing it, then it is sure to God that the dam would not have come to exist.

Of course, the epiphenomenalist wants to say that the thoughts only existed because they were the result of the chemico-physical layer that made us have the thoughts so that we continue to exhibit better survival skills (and therefore conform to our genetic predisposition which natural selected for), but then we are forced to give up the thoughts as the real reason that a dam now exists there. It is a pseudo-reason if the epiphenomenalist is right. That's the contradiction, however. If the cause for the dam is not really the mental thoughts that led to the construction of the dam, then we really do not have a real or approximately real mental representation of the world (i.e., we are terribly misled on the real causation of a physical phenomena), therefore we are wrong to accept commonsense realism. However, if we are wrong to accept commonsense realism, then we must accept absurdity. Occam's razor requires that we reject epiphenomenalism since it asks us to accept absurdity versus the more parsimonious explanation which is that our mental thoughts do cause humans to build dams, etc., and this mental causation is a real phenomena.

It's nice to be able to use a metaphor for describing the processes that go on in our brains, as a shorthand; i.e., you don't say, "the following chemicals in the following parts of my brain combine to blah blah", you say, "I think I like apples". However, the notion of thought and consciousness is just that -- a shorthand, or a model (and a pretty shaky one at that) of the physical events that are going on.

As I think I showed above, this leads to absurdity and therefore must be rejected.

At least, this is the way I see it. Note that my worldview is still naturalistic, not dualistic like yours is.

I don't think my view is against methodological naturalism. It is against metaphysical naturalism. That is, the processes operating inside the brain can provide scientific reasons for any particular thought and/or action. However, I do not think that those scientific reasons provide metaphysical reasons for particular thoughts and actions. The typical dualist view is a ghost in a machine account where there is a lack of a scientific reason for conscious thought, etc.. I don't think this is the case. I think every conscious thought, every intention, etc., has a scientific reason.

I'm not sure what you mean by "psychophysical laws", but physical laws clearly do affect our thoughts, regardless of whether you're a dualist or not. We can stimulate the amygdala to produce fear, feed people drugs to nullify their schizophrenic symptoms, and even perform lobotomies to erase entire personalities. All of these operations are purely physical, yet seem to produce mental effects.

By psychophysical laws I'm saying there are no strict laws which require certain mental events to be explained or predicted. There are, however, regions in the brain that account for the particular mental event from a more general non-strict lawful perspective. For example, there might be a physical law that requires Halley's comet to come back around the sun in 2061, but there is no such physical law that makes me think that I ought to eat lunch. There might be, and almost undoubtedly are, non-strict laws that my brain senses a feeling of hunger, but there is no strict law that requires that I think that I must eat right now.

If dualism is true, and mental effects do in fact exist, then you need to explain how this is possible.

Well, for starters, I have an entirely different perspective of causation than you. For example, I think there are mathematical reasons why the physical world operates generally as it does. These mathematical reasons are a cause of behavior in the world. That doesn't mean that I deny that there are no physical reasons for an event, it is just that I see a natural boundary between efficient cause and final cause. The efficient cause is what science explores. It is the methodological nature of science to find efficient causes. I don't identify an efficient cause with the final cause. The final cause is needed to actually explain, metaphysically-speaking, why a certain efficient cause happens which gives a full explanatorial picture of why a certain event happens. The problem with materialists is that they are duped by this distinction. They assume that an efficient cause is also the final cause, and in this way they end up coming up with absurdities such as mental properties do not actually exist.

This would be a neat idea, but I still don't believe that M exists at all... and now you have to prove certain properties of M, not just its mere existence, so your task is even harder.

I think I showed that M must exist in order to avoid absurdities. If M exists, then it cannot exist as a chemico-physical representation since that's what it means for it to exist.

I would personally choose the account that's most likely to be true, no matter how sad it makes me (if indeed it does that at all). This is why I'm a materialist.

There's always a certain amount of indetermination in any belief. Therefore, there must be other factors in belief selection that exist other than purely epistemic factors. This is where pragmatic factors come into play, and ultimately I think pragmatic factors are dominant. That is, the reason why we have epistemic factors is because those epistemic factors are largely pragmatic ones. We cannot lose sight of what epistemic factors are actually based on, and therefore in any belief we hold we must always consider all the pragmatic factors as part of the weighing of which belief to hold.

[McCulloch]

Does this even matter ? If there are no real choices, and yet the choice space is so complex that even turning every atom in the Universe into an XOR gate would not allow you to predict what I will choose, then for all intents and purposes I have free will.

Any way, in principle are you suggesting that our thoughts and actions today were probablistically predetermined at birth just like any physical phenomena? For example, we have a pretty good idea that Halley's comet will probably be close to earth in 2061. Are you saying that in theory we can predict what someone will probably be thinking in 2061 if we had a similar level of understanding of the world that we have in order to calculate Halley's next pass? If so, that seems like an extraordinary claim, based on what evidence could you make such a claim?

I hope that you don't mind me jumping in the middle of this. I don't think that saying that being able in principle to be able to predict what someone would be thinking in 2061 is an extraordinary claim. Any more than being able to predict the weather accurately at a certain place and time in 2061. For all practical purposes we cannot predict the weather more than five days in advance. Why? Because there are just too many things which may affect the weather. Therefore, FAPP we cannot predict what someone would be thinking at a future date. But that does not mean that either phenomena is not deterministic. Physical science has observed only two types of events: those which are physically caused and those which are random. And the random ones only exist on a quantum scale. I would have to believe that to postulate a third type of event, I think you are calling it M, which is neither random nor has a physical cause would be an extraordinary claim.

[McCulloch]

In my opinion, the chief problem with your epiphenomenalism is that the mental aspects of our physical experience (which is considerable!) would have no other biological purpose than to provide a selective advantage for our species. That is, even an epiphenomenalist must require that the mental properties of the mind have a selective advantage, otherwise nature would never have selected for us to have mental constructions in the first place. From the epiphenomenalist perspective (i.e., if we ignore for the moment those selective advantages of natural selection), there's no practical reason why mental properties are necessary. For example, the chemico-physical processes could just cause us to eat, or cause us to sleep, etc., and the "language" of our thoughts can be just mumble-jumbo (e.g., a dream-like state, a schizophrenic state, an LSD experience state, etc...). As long as the mumble-jumbo thoughts have no effect on our survival as a species, there's no reason that nature would have gone so far out of the way in constructing an illusion of free will and mental constructs which appear to causally change the world.

Not so. The chief advantage of our species is our adaptability and communication. In order to be able to work together and to be able to adapt to new and unforseen circumstances, it was necessary to develop the ability to create mental constructions. That is the practical reason why mental properties are necessary. Species which rely more on instinct than us simply cannot adapt to changing circumstances as rapidly as we can.

[harvey1]

I would have to believe that to postulate a third type of event, I think you are calling it M, which is neither random nor has a physical cause would be an extraordinary claim.

Why? That's the one claim that we are most familiar with in our experience. To deny it requires a great deal of evidence. All of our scientific theories are mental conceptions. In fact, if M is an illusion, it is quite possible that anything that depends on M is also an illusion, including scientific thought. Once we lose M we have no real means to gauge what is true and what is not. M is the only anchor to reality that we can possibly have. If you cut that anchor, you better have very convincing reasons, and I've seen very little convincing evidence.

[harvey1]

Not so. The chief advantage of our species is our adaptability and communication. In order to be able to work together and to be able to adapt to new and unforseen circumstances, it was necessary to develop the ability to create mental constructions. That is the practical reason why mental properties are necessary. Species which rely more on instinct than us simply cannot adapt to changing circumstances as rapidly as we can.

McCulloch, please re-read that quote:

From the epiphenomenalist perspective (i.e., if we ignore for the moment those selective advantages of natural selection), there's no practical reason why mental properties are necessary.

[McCulloch]

Not so. The chief advantage of our species is our adaptability and communication. In order to be able to work together and to be able to adapt to new and unforseen circumstances, it was necessary to develop the ability to create mental constructions. That is the practical reason why mental properties are necessary. Species which rely more on instinct than us simply cannot adapt to changing circumstances as rapidly as we can.

McCulloch, please re-read that quote:

From the epiphenomenalist perspective (i.e., if we ignore for the moment those selective advantages of natural selection), there's no practical reason why mental properties are necessary.

Quite so. Why should the selective advantages of natural selection be ignored? They seem rather key to the point. There may be some reason, thought I cannot think of it, for ignoring them for the moment, but we must not ignore them very long. Maybe I'll jump back in when we are done ignoring natural selection.

[McCulloch]

I would have to believe that to postulate a third type of event, I think you are calling it M, which is neither random nor has a physical cause would be an extraordinary claim.

Why? That's the one claim that we are most familiar with in our experience. To deny it requires a great deal of evidence. All of our scientific theories are mental conceptions. In fact, if M is an illusion, it is quite possible that anything that depends on M is also an illusion, including scientific thought. Once we lose M we have no real means to gauge what is true and what is not. M is the only anchor to reality that we can possibly have. If you cut that anchor, you better have very convincing reasons, and I've seen very little convincing evidence.

But I am not denying the existence of mental conceptions. I am denying the assertion, made by some, that mental conceptions have some kind of immaterial cause which seems to be beyond science.

[QED]

In my opinion, the chief problem with your epiphenomenalism is that the mental aspects of our physical experience (which is considerable!) would have no other biological purpose than to provide a selective advantage for our species. .

Epiphenomenalism is the view in philosophy of mind according to which physical events have mental effects, but mental events have no effects of any kind. In other words, the causal relations go only one way, from physical to mental

Why do you refer to "Bugmaster's epiphenomenalism" ? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry is a good read, but sad to say leaves me no better off in trying to understand the point you're trying to make.