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 does that make him an epiphenomenalist?

Well, epiphenomenalism is:

the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events... The central motivation for epiphenomenalism lies in the premise that all physical events have sufficient causes that lie within the class of physical events. If a mental event is something other than a physical event, then for it to make any causal contribution of its own in the physical world would require a violation of physical law.

I think this matches very closely to what Bugmaster 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.

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

It depends on what you mean by duality. If you mean a ghost in the machine, then I reject that form of duality. However, if you mean a metaphysical account that suggests that mind is not reducible to the physical brain, then I think there is an argument which I have already presented to Bugmaster and McCulloch (above).

[QED]

Harvey, do you recall an earlier conversation where I said that a bimetallic thermostat might be considered a primitive form of consciousness? As I see it all consciousness (and the mental states that go with it) can be reduced to something as trivial as a thermostat. I say this because this is where we get to if we follow the line of evolution from first principles. This is why I think a false dilemma has crept in. If we work from the top down -- viewing consciousness as some special property only possessed by advanced forms of life such as us then it does indeed look as if we need to bring some powerful magic into the picture. In other words I'm saying that the "magic" has always been there and it's as mundane as something as simple as the different expansion of dissimilar metals.

If you disagree then tell me where on the evolutionary line you think the magic "sets in".

[harvey1]

If you disagree then tell me where on the evolutionary line you think the magic "sets in".

Turtles all the way down, QED. The nature of the universe is that cause is a metaphysical thing--not a physical thing. It only becomes more pronounced higher up in the food chain, but the same issues are present all the way down to pure quantum states.

[QED]

The nature of the universe is that cause is a metaphysical thing--not a physical thing.

Can you support this assertion? I concede that I have a very limited perspective of the cosmos (being a rather humble collection of self-replicating molecules) but through the grace of my existence I have been able to observe much cause and much effect in my own lifetime and my common sense determines that in every instant cause is indeed a physical thing. Not only through experience and observation, but from logic too.

I tried reviving the Can there be real causation for a material atheist? debate. Perhaps we should continue this discussion there.

[harvey1]

Can you support this assertion? I concede that I have a very limited perspective of the cosmos (being a rather humble collection of self-replicating molecules) but through the grace of my existence I have been able to observe much cause and much effect in my own lifetime and my common sense determines that in every instant cause is indeed a physical thing. Not only through experience and observation, but from logic too.

QED, what was my whole thread about material causation about? Nobody ever came back and offered a counterexample that even in principle shows how causation could be explained as a physical phenomena. Not to mention, the current theories of quantum gravity are all based on platonic presumptions, so that also adds weight to the notion that fundamental science looks to immaterial concepts for causation.

I tried reviving the Can there be real causation for a material atheist? debate. Perhaps we should continue this discussion there.

Sure. But, you have yet to offer a counterexample. I'm not interested in unsubstantiated opinions. However, since you think you haven't offered a mere unsubstantiated opinion, I'll reply to that post.

[Bugmaster]

Sorry for the long delay in my replies; I'm really strapped for time right now, and my Internet access is spotty to boot.

I'm not sure I'd describe my worldview as pure epiphenomenalism. As far as I understand, under epiphenomenalism, mental events do exist, but they don't affect anything. That's a bit weird, philosophically speaking, because we have no reason to believe in these mental events, and they don't explain anything either (since they can't affect anything).

As I mentioned above, my view is even more materialistic than epiphenomenalism; I believe that mental exists do not exist, period. Let me illustrate my position with an analogy:

Let's say we have three rocks, A, B, and C. There are perfectly physical rocks lying on the ground, aligned in a line. When someone hits rock A toward B, it will eventually strike B. B, in turn, will start moving, and will eventually strike C. As the result, C will roll a few meters forward (then it will probably stop due to friction).

In my worldview, the above situation is no different from harvey1's scenario, where someone decides to build a dam, moves a bunch of rocks, and at the end the dam is built.

Oh, sure, the processes that occur in our brains when we build dams are a lot more complicated than rocks smashing together, but I don't believe there's any categorical difference between them. In both cases, you have some physical chain of events that leads to physical objects (be they rocks or synapses) getting rearranged in a physical world.

Thus, questions such as "but how do you account for my mental thoughts causing physical events" are meaningless in my worldview, because I don't believe that mental events exist at all. When I say, "I am thinking about an apple", I'm merely describing an aspect of an extermely complex physical structure (my brain) in simple terms.

QED hit the nail on the head when he said,

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 think this is the real reason that many people believe in dualism; it's certainly the reason for Searle's weird views on AI (which I'll gladly discuss in a separate thread). People really have a difficult time, emotionally, accepting the notion that our consciousness could be no different from rocks, on the basic level. Yes, this notion may be emotionally troubling for some, but that doesn't make it false.

Note, however, that my example above (with the rocks and the dam) does not automatically make theism impossible. It still allows for some sort of a Prime Mover (who would still have to be physical in nature, of course) who set up the rocks and created the Universe etc. I don't believe such a Prime Mover exists -- or, at least, I don't believe that the Prime Mover is an intelligent being that has a purpose for us -- but that's really a different subject.

[Bugmaster]

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

But wait, I thought that you said that mental events have an independent existence ? In that case, damaging the brain shouldn't matter, because physical damage to the physical brain cannot affect the mental events that make up our mental minds.

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

No; I just believe that our physical properties are highly advantageous, speaking from an evolutionary perspective. In the long run, they are much more advantageous than some other physical properties that non-human animals have. For example, in a sufficiently large population, abstract thought beats tigers' claws every time.

I'm not sure I understand your "cc: system" analogy:

...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.
...
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.

As I see it, the "wanting" part is still a physical event; no one sends email to it. Wanting to pick up a cup, and contracting muscle X in group Y in one's biceps (sorry, I'm not up on my anatomy) are the same kind of an event.

I think it is much more likely that whatever conflicts with most of our commonsense realism is wrong, don't you?

Not necessarily. Commonsense realism tells us that the Sun is a small yellow ball in the sky; that the Earth is flat; and that vibrating tree leaves cause the wind to blow. I don't think we can entirely trust commonsense realism -- though, of course, we can't entirely distrust it either. It's a good heuristic, but we need more rigorous methods of investigation (such as science) to ensure that we have a viable model of the world.

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..

That's exactly it :-) From my point of view, the statement "the village elder wanted to improve the water supply", and a long and complicated list of neurochemical interactions are both modeling the same physical event. The first model is less accurate, but a lot simpler, so that's the one we tend to use where accuracy is not required. However, if the village elder suddenly started having splitting migraines, we'd want to switch to a more accurate model (brain chemistry) in order to understand the underlying causes.

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.

I'm still not entirely sure what these emails are that you speak of, but I agree with the second part of your sentence. We have the unique ability to share information, and to develop new and adaptive behaviors in the lifetime of a single individual. We can even run simulations of the world in our heads, developing proper behaviors for situations that haven't even arisen yet. This allows our babies to be virtually invincible compared to, say, insect babies. The capacity for thought is our unique biological advantage (at least, unique on Earth as far as we know). Some squids have a unique ability too -- they can change their skin color based on their surroundings -- but abstract thought is still way better.

Anyway, I think we both agree that mental events cause our physical bodies to move; we just disagree on what mental events are. I claim that mental events are our model for describing yet another kind of bodily movements (albeit on a microscopic scale), whereas you claim that mental events have an independent dualistic reality. I think my view is more parsimonious, however.

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.

Ok, I'm going to have to get some clarification on that.

Please devise an experiment -- it can be a thought experiment, akin to Einstein's thought experiments with clocks on starships -- that will prove or deny the irreducibility of mental events. I suggest that you start by devising an experiment that would demonstrate the existence of mental events. This experiment has to be scientific; that is, it has to involve only physical, measurable objects and quantities (such as length, mass, electrical charge, whatever).

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.

Sure, but why should the state of your physical stomach affect your mental desire for food ? While we're on the subject, why is it that the physical changes in your blood, that occur due to the alcohol you consume, can affect your mental capacity to make decisions ?

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...).

I think wave functions are material, though. Just like rocks...

[harvey1]

I'm not sure I'd describe my worldview as pure epiphenomenalism. As far as I understand, under epiphenomenalism, mental events do exist, but they don't affect anything. That's a bit weird, philosophically speaking, because we have no reason to believe in these mental events, and they don't explain anything either (since they can't affect anything).

How can something exist and not affect anything? Anyway, you do recognize that we do have thoughts and such, right? It would seem that you are just saying that the mental can be fully reduced to the physical, and this is epiphenomenalism. Too bad Spetey is not around any longer to straighten this mess out...

[harvey1]

But wait, I thought that you said that mental events have an independent existence ? In that case, damaging the brain shouldn't matter, because physical damage to the physical brain cannot affect the mental events that make up our mental minds.

Well, as you might have read some of my comments to QED, I'm not committed to the material causation thesis. In my view, there are causal laws and causal relations that exist. So, there are causal relations that exist between P and M. There are also causal laws that exist which state that when P has a certain relation to M, then EM occurs. Likewise, when M has a certain relation to P, then EP occurs. These causal laws are not strict laws (i.e., psychophysical laws) in that we cannot reduce exactly how P will bring about EM and M will bring about EP. However, there are some general guidelines. So, for example, if P is massively damaged by an unfortunate accident, then the range of EM occurrences will be affected in some predictable ways. This is because of the causal laws that this is so. Similarly, if M really becomes twisted, then the range of EP occurrences will be affected in predictable ways too.

No; I just believe that our physical properties are highly advantageous, speaking from an evolutionary perspective. In the long run, they are much more advantageous than some other physical properties that non-human animals have. For example, in a sufficiently large population, abstract thought beats tigers' claws every time.

Are you saying that nature could not possibly have allowed zombies to engage in abstract thought without M? I thought M doesn't exist in your account?

I'm not sure I understand your "cc: system" analogy:

Another way of stating is that P causes M and E. There's no overdetermination in your view where P&M cause E, right? (I realize that you said that M does not exist, but surely you recognize that humans have mental properties such as beliefs, right?)

Wanting to pick up a cup, and contracting muscle X in group Y in one's biceps (sorry, I'm not up on my anatomy) are the same kind of an event.

Yes, but when we want to pick up a cup, we can visualize the benefit of drinking from the cup, so that has little or nothing to do with the electrical impulses being sent to the muscle, right? Couldn't the brain send the impulse without us having a belief of wanting to drink from the cup? Are you saying we must have an intention of picking up the cup as a result of the brain "telling" the muscle to pick up the cup?

It's a good heuristic, but we need more rigorous methods of investigation (such as science) to ensure that we have a viable model of the world.

True, but even scientific results require some kind of commonsense realism. For example, if an instrument reads 10.4830 which is needed to be recorded for the purpose of the experiment, shouldn't the person reading the instrument normally write this information down so that that data can be studied later? What would happen to science if we couldn't trust such commonsense realism about all instrument readings?

Please devise an experiment -- it can be a thought experiment, akin to Einstein's thought experiments with clocks on starships -- that will prove or deny the irreducibility of mental events. I suggest that you start by devising an experiment that would demonstrate the existence of mental events. This experiment has to be scientific; that is, it has to involve only physical, measurable objects and quantities (such as length, mass, electrical charge, whatever).

Currently there are no such experiments to measure whether a mechanism is a genuine emergent phenomena, or whether it just appeared due to chance or other mechanisms (e.g., natural selection).

why should the state of your physical stomach affect your mental desire for food ? While we're on the subject, why is it that the physical changes in your blood, that occur due to the alcohol you consume, can affect your mental capacity to make decisions ?

Chemical changes in the brain affect the complex behavior of the emergent system called the mind.

I think wave functions are material, though. Just like rocks...

I thought we agreed that you believe that wave functions are tools?

[Bugmaster]

How can something exist and not affect anything?

That's the question I always ask dualists :-)

Anyway, you do recognize that we do have thoughts and such, right? It would seem that you are just saying that the mental can be fully reduced to the physical, and this is epiphenomenalism.

I am not sure what you mean by "reduced". If you mean something like, "the so-called mental events are merely physical events in disguise", then yes, I'd agree.

Ultimately, I don't think I view causality the same way you do. From my point of view, causality is merely another model that we have made up to approximate the real world; it is no different (at least, not categorically different) from gravity or relativity or Boyle's law. Thus, your strong focus on causality in your arguments is not really making as big of an impression on me as you'd like :-)

Anyway, I asked you how brain damage (physical event) could affect one's mind (mental property), and you responded:

However, there are some general guidelines. So, for example, if P is massively damaged by an unfortunate accident, then the range of EM occurrences will be affected in some predictable ways. This is because of the causal laws that this is so. Similarly, if M really becomes twisted, then the range of EP occurrences will be affected in predictable ways too.

That's not saying much, though. Essentially, your answer is, "mental minds are affected by physical brains because of causality". Well, ok, but how does this causality work ? What are its rules ? How would we test them ? By what mechanism does it operate ? Why is it, for example, that brains are causally connected to minds, but facial hair is not ? Without at least an attempt at an explanation, your answer sounds like a tautology.

Are you saying that nature could not possibly have allowed zombies to engage in abstract thought without M? I thought M doesn't exist in your account ?

Er, I'm not sure what that means at all. As far as I know, zombies don't exist, but, if they did, we'd beat them every time, because their freakish superhuman strength would be no match for our shotguns.

All I'm saying is that our capacity for abstract thought can be easily explained from an evolutionary perspective, because it offers a tremendous evolutionary advantage, and is thus a trait that would be selected for in nature.

As I said, I do not recognize "...that humans have mental properties such as beliefs", as you put it. I think that humans have certain physical properties that we tend to describe in terms of beliefs. I.e., when I say, "I believe in Santa Claus", all I'm really doing (philosophically speaking) is describing a particular physical state of my brain. This distinction actually becomes very important in psychology; at some point, the psychiatrists stop talking in terms of beliefs ("the patient believes the world is ending tomorrow"), and start talking in terms of chemistry ("the patient's brain is lacking a certain chemical").

You keep talking about intentions and thoughts and beliefs as being separate from physical actions; i.e.,

...when we want to pick up a cup, we can visualize the benefit of drinking from the cup, so that has little or nothing to do with the electrical impulses being sent to the muscle, right? Couldn't the brain send the impulse without us having a belief of wanting to drink from the cup?

I simply see the electric impulses coming from your stomach, the neural connections in your brain, the electrical activity in the synapses that represents your intention to pick up the cup, and the signals the brain sends to the muscles, as parts of the same physical process. From my standpoint, sending signals to the muscles, and visualizing the benefit of drinking from the cup, are two examples of the same kind of activity (even though one of them involves a lot more work than the other).

True, but even scientific results require some kind of commonsense realism. For example, if an instrument reads 10.4830 which is needed to be recorded for the purpose of the experiment, shouldn't the person reading the instrument normally write this information down so that that data can be studied later?

Isn't this part of the scientific method ? What's the alternative ?

Chemical changes in the brain affect the complex behavior of the emergent system called the mind.

Oddly enough, this is exactly what I believe... but... "I don't think that word means what you think it means". Emergence is the complex behavior that arises out of simple parts; however, it's still the behavior of the original system. You, however, believe that brains give rise to mental entities which are categorically different from the substance that brains are made of; this is no longer emergence. Note that emergent properties can always be traced back to the simple components -- but, in your case, this is impossible, because minds and brains exist in two separate, incompatible realms.

I think wave functions are material, though. Just like rocks...
I thought we agreed that you believe that wave functions are tools?

Yeah, it's difficult to stay verbose all the time... I should have said something like, "our current model of the real world, which we call 'a wavefunction', still describes a physical entity which exists in the same realm as the entity described by the model we call 'rocks'. These wavefunctions may or may not exist, but, at present, we're reasonably certain that our 'wavefunction' model correlates closely to some property of the real world".