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]

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.

In other words, beyond the selective advantages for the species, the epiphenomenalist cannot claim any reason for why we have mental properties. That is, they certainly can't cause anything by themselves since any mental property (M-stuff) is really another way of referring to causal P-stuff. So, for example, an "epiphenomenalist" would immediately be challenged if they said that we have mental properties because mental properties act as a mid-level function to the lower neurological functions. This kind of functionalism would not be available to an epiphenomenalist since M-function talk is just causal P-stuff, and in that case the M-function talk doesn't (causally) do anything.

Now, in terms of natural selection, you are right. The species having M might be at an advantage in terms of any number of reasons. Maybe our mental constructs is the most efficient encoding/decoding system to relay P-stuff going on in one person to another. Or perhaps the two hemisphere brain has some restrictions on how P-stuff can function while at the same time enabling our species to take best advantage of their natural surroundings, etc., etc..

However, as I said to Bugmaster, any of these potential schemes must recognize that the world around us must be fairly accurately represented using mental constructs, otherwise the argument is absurd. We would imagine through our mental constructs that there's a lake in front of us, when in fact there's not. We would smell corn, when in fact we are smelling potatos. This cannot be since obviously we function very well in our world, and it is unimaginable how that could be unless our mental constructs are really accurately depictions of our environment. This is what I referred to as commonsense realism.

Now, here's the part that does epiphenomenalism in. If it's true that we have a highly accurate mental representation of the world, then it is also true that our mental representation of our mental-properties-as-being-causally-affecting-the-world must also be the case. Natural selection could not have selected a set of mental properties for the human species that accurately represented the world and still left us with these same mental properties as being an illusion in terms of their causal efficacy.

The only way this selected trait (of mental properties accurately representing the world) can be considered tenable is if it also causally affected the world. If it lacked this causal efficacy, then it could not bring about any effects (by definition of it not being a cause). If so, then having interaction with nature to understand it would not be possible (and hence there would be no accurate depiction of the world).

I suppose that an epiphenomenalist might say that P-stuff could make someone have a false sense that their mental constructs had causal efficacy, but then they would also have a false sense of an approximately accurate understanding of the world. This is because one's knowledge of the world is based on their causal interactions with the world which is based on evaluating/experimenting with all the likely possibilities. However, if one is not in control of causally carrying out these epistemic functions (and actually has a false sense about it), then everything about the world is up for grabs. It is worse than living in the Matrix. At least with the Matrix we control our thoughts but our inputs are messed up. Here, the inputs are presumed reliable, but we aren't the one's controlling our thoughts. We can't even know if we failed to ask the right questions, or for that matter, know if we interpreted the incoming environmental inputs correctly.

Well, this is preposterous. In fact we know that there is water when there is water because we can touch it. If we want to know more, we can decide to make those further tests. If we are using invalid logic, we can be shown to be wrong and how our logic is wrong. The P-stuff is following through with what our mind wants (i.e., M-stuff). There is absolutely every reason to think that our mental constructs are part of physical cause. Natural selection itself is our mental conception of how nature operates, and therefore this model is based on M-stuff, not P-stuff.

I think we need a certain level of rationalism in any belief system. That level ought to include the whole-hearted acceptance of commonsense realism (e.g., we exist). If we cannot manage that, then there's no reason to even think about such matters.

[harvey1]

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.

Well, this is the trick. How can one offer an entirely physicalist theory of the mind that is not epiphenomenalist. If M supervenes on P, then in what sense is M causally relevant? If it is not causally relevant, then why mention it as something that actually exists?

My contention is that science allots for immaterial cause as long as it is lawful (e.g., uncertainty principle causing virtual particles). I think this is the best recourse to address the problem of mental causation.

[harvey1]

Why do you refer to "Bugmaster's epiphenomenalism" ?

I'm not sure what you're asking. The obvious answer is because he's arguing for this position. Is that what you mean?

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.

I just responded more on this issue to McCulloch. However, the logic goes like this (real quick):

1. According to epiphenomenalism, any causal interaction with the world via mental constructs is based on a false sense of cause
2. Some kind of causal interaction with the world is needed to construct mental constructs of the world
3. Our mental constructs provide a very good approximate representation of the world (commonsense realism)
4. Commonsense realism requires for us to test all the known possibilities our conceptions might require in order for a mental construct to be verified as an approximately accurate representation
5. Epiphenomenalism is false (from 1-4)

Notice, (1) forbids the epiphenomenalist from using a mental construct to attribute actual causal interaction with the world, however we have very good approximate mental representations of the world (from 3). We need causal interaction of our mental constructs to the world to bring about commonsense realism (from 2, 3, 4). Therefore, epiphenomenalism is false since we need mental constructs in causal contact with the world to bring about commonsense realism, hence (1) and (3) cannot both be true. Since (3) is less speculative than (1), we are bound by Occam's razor to reject (1).

[Bugmaster]

I didn't say I would write something nasty to you...!

I was speaking hypothetically :-)

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?

Honestly, I'm not sure, and I don't think it matters much. I suppose that it might be possible in principle; however, comet orbits are vastly less complex than brains, and thus it would take an enormous amount of knowledge to predict human behavior (as compared to the amount of knowledge required to predict comet orbits). Furthermore, our brains are affected by our environment; depending on the desired degree of accuracy of your prediction, you might have to simulate the brains of everybody on the planet, which is not really feasible (at least, not until the magical wondorous Singularity comes along, heh). This is why I'm saying that, in practice, the question whether or not our thoughts are predetermined doesn't really tell us much.

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.

I don't think you fully appreciate the materialsm-ness of my position. I think that we, ourselves, are "a causal chain of chemico-physical events". All we are is chemicals in motion; there is no decision-making part of us that's separate from these chemicals. From the scientific standpoint, this crude model of humans makes a lot of sense, because it explains the effects of brain damage on personality; the results of MRI scans, the recently invented remote control for humans, etc. -- as well as the entire field of neuropsychology (or cognitive science or whatever it's called). Dualism has trouble explaining things like this, because it relies on having separate mental entities for everything.

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.

Firstly, this is not a problem -- on the contrary ! It makes very good evolutionary sense for a species to have the capability for abstract thought, because this allows an individual to build up mental models of the world, and to predict what would happen, almost in real-time -- as opposed to waiting for his children and grandchildren to evolve proper behaviors.

Secondly, as Carl Sagan points out, natural selection does not select the objectively best traits; it just selects the ones that are good enough for the environment. Thus, some traits that provide evolutionary advanatges can have weird side effects -- such as moths who fly into candle flames due to their simple navigation systems (based on light sources); sickle-cell anemia (the mild form of which protects against malaria); the human appendix (it's not harmful enough to disappear); and, according to Sagan, the human tendency to develop religions (an artifact of our very useful pattern-matching mechanisms).

So, on the one hand, our capacity for abstract thought has a massive evolutionary advantage; on the other hand, it may have some side-effects, but they are either neutral, or not harmful enough to make a difference; thus, I disagree with you when you say:

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.

Come to think of it, what do you mean by "mental constructs which appear to causally change the world" ? I certainly have no illusions of changing the world by will alone, though I suppose some Wiccans might.

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..

Yes, it's common sense, but that doesn't make it necessarily true. For example, we could all be living in the Matrix, or zoned out on nano-drugs, and all these planets could be nothing more than elaborate illusions. True, the probability of this actually being the case is vanishingly small, but it's still possible.

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.

Right -- we didn't just will the dam into being, we built it out of rocks and such. It's rocks that are ultimately important, not thoughts.

but then we are forced to give up the thoughts as the real reason that a dam now exists there.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the real reason"... As I see it, the real reason the dam exists is that someone went out and physically moved the rocks.

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.

As I think I have shown above, this is false :-) Having shaky models is already much, much better than having no models at all. Quantum physics is not required in order to build a dam; Aristotelean mechanics would suffice. And the power to build dams, and other custom artificial structures, is a clear evolutionary advantage, so it makes sense that we'd eventually develop the capacity for it.

I think every conscious thought, every intention, etc., has a scientific reason.

I still don't see how this can be, since you've moved your dualistic entities -- the "mental properties" you refer to -- beyound the realm of science, which can only study the physical. You can claim that our thouhgts, etc. have some sort of reasons, but I don't think you can claim that these reasons are scientific.

...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.

I suppose that's true, but the hungrier you are, the higher the probability that you'll decide to eat... right ?

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.

I think I have shown quite clearly why I think that mental properties do not exist. And I am still not seeing how you explain the fact that changes to our physical bodies (especially brains) affect our mental states -- and vice versa. I understand that you are postulating a logical reason that necessitates this, but I don't think it's parsimonious.

This is where pragmatic factors come into play, and ultimately I think pragmatic factors are dominant.

Ah, can you give me an example of a pragmatic factor ? I'm not sure what they are.

Anyway, sorry if this response was rushed; I'm strapped for time at the moment. I'll respond to your other posts tomorrow, hopefully.

[harvey1]

Hi Bugmaster,

I think at some point we really have to pick one topic and stick with it. It's hard to come to the forum and see 3 topics from one person, since it's also good to discuss topics with others as well. So, my preference is this topic, but if you have another pick, then that's okay...

From the scientific standpoint, this crude model of humans makes a lot of sense, because it explains the effects of brain damage on personality; the results of MRI scans, the recently invented remote control for humans, etc. -- as well as the entire field of neuropsychology (or cognitive science or whatever it's called). Dualism has trouble explaining things like this, because it relies on having separate mental entities for everything.

I have no problem explaining brain damage since the brain is damaged it cannot think, etc..

Firstly, this is not a problem -- on the contrary ! It makes very good evolutionary sense for a species to have the capability for abstract thought, because this allows an individual to build up mental models of the world, and to predict what would happen, almost in real-time -- as opposed to waiting for his children and grandchildren to evolve proper behaviors.

But, wait a second. Are you saying that the mental properties have a function that is in addition to the physical properties? I thought you said:

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.

So, on the one hand, our capacity for abstract thought has a massive evolutionary advantage; on the other hand, it may have some side-effects, but they are either neutral, or not harmful enough to make a difference;

The question, though, is whether the mental properties actually exist. That is, they are irreducible to the physical properties even in principle. If I understand you correctly, you say they are reducible. I say no. So, mental properties really have no bearing on abstract thought since it's just a "cc:" system anyway. The physical properties do all the work, and oh by the way, they send an e-mail to the part of the brain that recognizes one's own self to "understand" this and "make a decision" to do that.

...I disagree with you when you say:

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.

Come to think of it, what do you mean by "mental constructs which appear to causally change the world" ? I certainly have no illusions of changing the world by will alone, though I suppose some Wiccans might.

Whenever we decide to do something, e.g., drink from a cup, we believe that it is our own mental desire to drink that actually causes us to pick up the cup and drink from it. However, if there is no M as you suggest, then picking up the cup and drinking from it isn't because our mind caused our body to make certain motions to pick up the cup. Rather, it's because the physical properties operating inside our brain had a certain kind of interaction that caused that physical operation to be carried out, and oh btw, it sent an e-mail to the self to "want" to drink from the cup.

Yes, it's common sense, but that doesn't make it necessarily true.

No, but do you really think we ought to entirely reject commonsense realism (e.g., you are reading these words, etc.)? I think it is much more likely that whatever conflicts with most of our commonsense realism is wrong, don't you?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the real reason"... As I see it, the real reason the dam exists is that someone went out and physically moved the rocks.

Of course, that's not a reason why someone made the dam. That's a reason why the dam exists, but it doesn't tell us why the dam was made. If you say that there are no real mental properties, then the decision to make the dam was not because it was seen as a way to improve water supply of a community, etc.. The reason would have to do with this neuron fired here, and that neuron fired there, and this neuron didn't fire because the human DNA stopped carrying that protein sequence 15 million years ago, etc.. Oh, and btw an e-mail was sent to the part of the brain that has the sense of self that their reason for making the dam was to improve the water supply of that community. These e-mails keep getting sent because a set of neurons that became active 5 million years ago are genetically encoded. The species that had those neurons fire were able to communicate over short distances and share a great deal of information, and this helped them survive and have more babies.

As I think I have shown above, this is false. Having shaky models is already much, much better than having no models at all. Quantum physics is not required in order to build a dam; Aristotelean mechanics would suffice. And the power to build dams, and other custom artificial structures, is a clear evolutionary advantage, so it makes sense that we'd eventually develop the capacity for it.

You've only begged the question. How can you dismiss the notion that our thoughts are not causally affecting the world by deciding to make whatever bodily movements are necessary to make it happen? The claim that we aren't mentally causing events to happen (i.e., mental causation) is an extraordinary claim. Where is your evidence?

I think every conscious thought, every intention, etc., has a scientific reason.

I still don't see how this can be, since you've moved your dualistic entities -- the "mental properties" you refer to -- beyound the realm of science, which can only study the physical. You can claim that our thouhgts, etc. have some sort of reasons, but I don't think you can claim that these reasons are scientific.

Sure. Science can certainly discover that our mental properties behave as an irreducible system that somehow supervenes on the physical. From a purely scientific endeavor, there is nothing too formidable about that. If it is shown that the mental irreducibly supervenes on the brain, science has succeeded in its role. It is then up to philosophers to debate whether "irreducible" means metaphysical irreducibility or epistemic irreducibility. I say that it means metaphysical irreducibility, and of course the physicalist would say that the mental properties are only irreducible for all practical purposes (FAPP).

I suppose that's true, but the hungrier you are, the higher the probability that you'll decide to eat... right ?

Sure, but it is my choice to eat. The mental properties decide what the physical property (of eating or not eating lunch) is going to ultimately be.

...I am still not seeing how you explain the fact that changes to our physical bodies (especially brains) affect our mental states -- and vice versa. I understand that you are postulating a logical reason that necessitates this, but I don't think it's parsimonious.

Again, if we are talking about science, then I agree that there is a methodological mechanism that operates in some irreducible fashion. This mechanism can be shown to supervene on the physical brain, and it can shown to be a physical mechanism in that sense. However, metaphysically the irreducibility of the "mental mechanism" means that the mental properties are an object that is distinct from the physical brain that it supervenes upon. The object has actual existence. That is, it is part of the furniture of the universe.

Now, if it is shown that all real objects have wave functions including the universe itself (just to use quantum cosmology as an example), then the full metaphysical description of an object is more than just its material composites, it also includes its immaterial wave function (again, the wave function-talk is used just as an example...). Hence, souls exist if we equate souls with the non-material wave function...

[QED]

Why do you refer to "Bugmaster's epiphenomenalism" ?

I'm not sure what you're asking. The obvious answer is because he's arguing for this position. Is that what you mean?

I quoted you this from wikipedia:

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.

I hadn't seen Bugmaster talk in terms of "mental events having no effects of any kind" or "causal relations going only one way". That's all.

I can't help thinking that this is all based on a false dilemma. The brain is clearly the organ of thought and decision making. Mr. Sea Squirt digests his brain once he's used it to find a suitable rock to live upon for the rest of his life. Is the problem as trivial as incredulity in certain people who feel that wet tissue simply couldn't support the thing that we call consciousness?

[harvey1]

I hadn't seen Bugmaster talk in terms of "mental events having no effects of any kind" or "causal relations going only one way". That's all.

He had said:

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.

I can't help thinking that this is all based on a false dilemma. The brain is clearly the organ of thought and decision making. Mr. Sea Squirt digests his brain once he's used it to find a suitable rock to live upon for the rest of his life. Is the problem as trivial as incredulity in certain people who feel that wet tissue simply couldn't support the thing that we call consciousness?

I don't think so. The problems of artificial intelligence are not trivial ones. I don't know about you, but I don't think it helps to trivialize the problem because one holds a certain philosophy.

[Dilettante]

I'm sorry if I am a little late. I have read your posts and I would like to add a Spanish perspective here. Compared to our Spanish materialists, you views on what counts as "material" are a bit narrow. According to the philosophical system of pluralistic materialist Gustavo Bueno and his followers, there are three genera of materiality (that's the word they use). They call these M1, M2, and M3.
M1 includes everything that is part of the exterior, physical world and occupies a place in individual space, such as objects, events, relationships between things, etc.
M2 includes everything that is part of our inner world, in the present time, such as emotions, feelings, sensations. These things may be "invisible" but they are real and are affected by external stimuli not only individually but collectively (political campaigns, commercial advertising, etc).
M3 refers to all those abstract things and concepts which are not in time or space, such as the Euclidean geometric space, prime numbers, etc.
None of these three genera is reducible to any of the other two.

For pluralistic materialism, the problem you are discussing probably does not even arise.

[harvey1]

For pluralistic materialism, the problem you are discussing probably does not even arise.

It's an interesting point of view. From my perspective, something is "material" if it reduces in principle to space, time, matter, energy. Matter and energy are currently divided into bosons and fermions.

[QED]

I hadn't seen Bugmaster talk in terms of "mental events having no effects of any kind" or "causal relations going only one way". That's all.

He had said:

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.

Why does that make him an epiphenomenalist?

The problems of artificial intelligence are not trivial ones. I don't know about you, but I don't think it helps to trivialize the problem because one holds a certain philosophy.

Can you show why the problems of AI would force us into resorting to some form of duality?