How is it that? This is a rant.


BaalChatzaf

Recommended Posts

How is it that Objectivists can deny the existence of a non-material God that produced a very material cosmos, and in the same breath can assert the existence of a non-material mind that can produce physical action and material output? How come? I see an inconsistency here. I would advise Objectivists to check their premises.

On what objectively observable concrete can the concept of "mind" be based? Something objectively observable can be collaterally witnessed/observed/measured by two or more alive and alert humans.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is it that Objectivists can deny the existence of a non-material God that produced a very material cosmos, and in the same breath can assert the existence of a non-material mind that can produce physical action and material output? How come? I see an inconsistency here. I would advise Objectivists to check their premises.

On what objectively observable concrete can the concept of "mind" be based? Something objectively observable can be collaterally witnessed/observed/measured by two or more alive and alert humans.

Ba'al Chatzaf

"Mind" has the same existence as any other concept. The referent is a working brain creating consciousness, everything represented by physical processes. You are quite willing to accept "mental illness" but not what is "ill." Both are metaphors. You keep denying epistemological reality while using it from A to Z.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Mind" has the same existence as any other concept. The referent is a working brain creating consciousness, everything represented by physical processes. You are quite willing to accept "mental illness" but not what is "ill." Both are metaphors. You keep denying epistemological reality while using it from A to Z.

--Brant

I actually gag on the term "mental illness". I prefer neurological dysfunction or some such term. I used the term "mental illness" in conjunction with treatment with drugs precisely to debunk the "mental" in "mental illness".

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Mind" has the same existence as any other concept. The referent is a working brain creating consciousness, everything represented by physical processes. You are quite willing to accept "mental illness" but not what is "ill." Both are metaphors. You keep denying epistemological reality while using it from A to Z.

--Brant

I actually gag on the term "mental illness". I prefer neurological dysfunction or some such term. I used the term "mental illness" in conjunction with treatment with drugs precisely to debunk the "mental" in "mental illness".

If people don't have a common language they argue over nothing more than that. The proper use of "mind" and "consciousness" denotes quality and type of mental functioning all with a physical basis--a cognitive summing up of those processes. You rip out the terminology and replace if with uncommon phaseology with the lagniappe that you don't have a "mind." Well, what you do have is a working brain. Same thing as what people mean by "mind." You rudely insist on your peculiar language or terminology, so to say, without respecting almost everybody else's. When you say you don't have a "mind" you are saying no one else does either, transmogrifying the epistemological into the purely meaphysical. Well, buster, we all have brains that more or else effectively work. (I don't include MSK in this; he's a special case.) It's just that people don't generally experience themselves as brains for that doesn't differentiate themselves from anybody else. It's my mind, not my brain. Consciousness or mind is the end neurological product of what the brain (and body, actually) does or creates.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is it that Objectivists can deny the existence of a non-material God that produced a very material cosmos, and in the same breath can assert the existence of a non-material mind that can produce physical action and material output? How come? I see an inconsistency here. I would advise Objectivists to check their premises.

On what objectively observable concrete can the concept of "mind" be based? Something objectively observable can be collaterally witnessed/observed/measured by two or more alive and alert humans.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I don't fully know what the mind is, nor, to the best of my understanding, does anyone else. But I find it difficult to doubt that I have a mind, that I am conscious (although I sometimes entertain doubts about other people). Nor do I see any contradiction between saying we have minds -- which may or may not be matter in a different form that we yet understand -- and denying the existence of God. The reasons for atheism are manifold, and do not depend on refuting the idea that a non-material being created the physical world.

I think the error in your thesis is the assumption that the justification of introspection must follow the rules of and be governed by the same means as extrospection; that is, that we can only ultimately justify our introspective awareness by means of our senses and that what we observe must ultimately be visible and tangible. But that's not what we find when we introspect, and that's not the means by which we introspect. No, we can't measure our minds, and they are not objectively observable as tables and chairs are, by other "alive and alert humans." But what do we mean by "alert"? We mean "conscious".

I submit that to finally explain introspection -- and its discovery of an internal world, and that there is a significant difference between the operations and contents of the internal and external worlds -- requires the discovery of natural laws that apply to consciousness. When we look outward, we find what we term the physical world, governed byy the laws of matter and energy, When we look inward, into consciousness, we discover thoughts and emotions and memories and ideas, etc., which are not tangible and which we don't discover through sight and touch. But to deny their reality would be as disastrous as to deny the reality of the external world because introspection did not discover it.

I'm suggesting something quite commonsensical. That we aknowledgle the fact that we we are conscious, even if we don't yet know the full nature of consciousness -- that we acknowledge the fact that our minds, throuh the medium of our bodies, have the power to create "physical action and material output"-- and that, accepting those happy factss, we proceed to study our internal world without the a priori demand that that world follow all the rules of the external world. But we can't study it if we don't acknowledge ts existence.

Barbara

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm suggesting something quite commonsensical. That we aknowledgle the fact that we we are conscious, even if we don't yet know the full nature of consciousness -- that we acknowledge the fact that our minds, throuh the medium of our bodies, have the power to create "physical action and material output"-- and that, accepting those happy factss, we proceed to study our internal world without the a priori demand that that world follow all the rules of the external world. But we can't study it if we don't acknowledge ts existence.

Barbara

There is only one world and we all live in it.

When we finally achieve a nearly complete theory (that day is not yet) it will apply to everything. So far all empirical evidence indicates that the brain and its operations are physical and subject to physical laws. There is no mysterious inside. My inside is embedded in your outside and visa-versa.

The good people (PhD's in neurophysiology) at Rutgers observed the workings of my brain using MRI scans, CAT scans and PET scans. No sign of any immaterial mind. It ain't there. It is like the aether beloved of 19th century physicists. It is not found and there is not evidence that it is there. No aether, no (immaterial) mind. What we have are brains, glands and nerves and someday we will understand more completely how they work.

You are seeking something for which there is no objective evidence. Not an iota.

BTW, there is no reliable way to distinguish introspection from hallucination and an introspection cannot be independently witnessed, observed or measured. It is a totally unsatisfactory basis for knowledge. One man's introspection is another man's insane delusion or post hoc rationalization. In short, introspection is ka ka. If a physicist ever invoked introspection for a scientific result he would be laughed out of the business.

As to consciousness, that can be established objectively by a number of scanning devices. Looking and measuring will do just fine. The MRI I spent a half hour in clearly indicated to the technicians that I was conscious. They did not need my introspections.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bob,

You do not even attempt to explain volition as causal agent, despite looking all around you and seeing it operating. You claim it does not exist even as you clamor for people to exercise their volition. (And I showed you Wilber using volition on his own brain operations.)

You preach and preach and preach, but it's wrong to blank out what you see.

As I said in another post, you can't smell blue, or taste it or hear it or feel it, but it exists and those with sight perceive it. You are claiming the mind doesn't exist because you cannot see, hear, taste, smell or feel it. Have you ever thought that maybe those organs did not evolve to perceive conscious awareness?

If the mind is to be measured, it must be measured in terms of the mind and only then transposed to other senses.

EDIT: For the record, the way I take your arguments is as if you were saying the following: "People talk and talk and talk and I listen and listen and listen and I still did not hear blue. I don't need any blue to hear correctly. Blue does not exist."

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ba'al, what you've done in your last post, presumably as an argument against my post, is merely to state your original position once again -- more emphatically and dogmatically this time --- without addressing a single suggestion I made. it's discouraging. You might as well have written:"Sez you!"

Barbara

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ba'al, what you've done in your last post, presumably as an argument against my post, is merely to state your original position once again -- more emphatically and dogmatically this time --- without addressing a single suggestion I made. it's discouraging. You might as well have written:"Sez you!"

Barbara

O.K. Sez you. Where is your verified empirical evidence to support your view. I keep telling you, that you have none. If I am wrong present the empirical evidence please.

My argument against "mind" (as a substance) is the same as the atheist argument against the existence of God. There is no evidence to support either.

Which gets me back to the Rant. Objectivists deny God on the grounds there is no evidence and that the concept makes no sense. I deny "mind" (as a substance) in an entirely similar fashion. Why invoke mind when we have a perfectly good brain that explains everything we do and know?

Invoking "mind" (as a substance) is wretched excess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The question is: is anyone claiming here that mind is a substance? Perhaps a relevant quote would help.

By definition a substance is a self-standing object whose existence does not depend on other substances. The man to consult is Descartes.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)

Rene Descartes is the father of the Mind-Body problem. He postulates that res cogitens is a separate substance from res extense. All of the vexations of this problem flow from Descartes position.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited by BaalChatzaf
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ba'al, what you've done in your last post, presumably as an argument against my post, is merely to state your original position once again -- more emphatically and dogmatically this time --- without addressing a single suggestion I made. it's discouraging.

Barbara,

There is a name for this kind of rhetoric. It is called preaching.

As an OL policy, I do not let prolific posters preach too much. I learned to keep a lid on this the hard way.

Some preaching is OK, since we all come from different contexts, but I personally don't like it. I have no doubt intelligent readers can recognize dogma when they see it.

I find too much preaching stifles rational discussion and derails focus on good ideas. I have seen it time after time. People end up trying to examine the obvious with the dogmatist in the face of his fundamentalist faith. They become frustrated when communicating elementary identification becomes complicated (all the while trying to understand why the absurd is being preached at all) and forget that the good idea was on the table in the first place.

Notice that preaching often comes with a good strong dose of emotional appeal and indirect intimidation (or direct at times). The dogmatist has to replace facts with something and provoke people, otherwise they won't listen.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ba'al, what you've done in your last post, presumably as an argument against my post, is merely to state your original position once again -- more emphatically and dogmatically this time --- without addressing a single suggestion I made. it's discouraging.

Barbara,

There is a name for this kind of rhetoric. It is called preaching.

As an OL policy, I do not let prolific posters preach too much. I learned to keep a lid on this the hard way.

Some preaching is OK, since we all come from different contexts, but I personally don't like it. I have no doubt intelligent readers can recognize dogma when they see it.

I find too much preaching stifles rational discussion and derails focus on good ideas. I have seen it time after time. People end up trying to examine the obvious with the dogmatist in the face of his fundamentalist faith. They become frustrated when communicating elementary identification becomes complicated (all the while trying to understand why the absurd is being preached at all) and forget that the good idea was on the table in the first place.

Notice that preaching often comes with a good strong dose of emotional appeal and indirect intimidation (or direct at times). The dogmatist has to replace facts with something and provoke people, otherwise they won't listen.

Michael

Good diagnosis. It is best to recognize and name fundamentalism, regardless of the name the proponent may prefer to give to it.

Bill P (Alfonso)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My argument against "mind" (as a substance) is the same as the atheist argument against the existence of God. There is no evidence to support either.

Invoking "mind" (as a substance) is wretched excess.

Please make up your mind. You keep saying mind yes and mind no. Substance yes and substance no. The mind (consciousness) is generated by the (physical) brain as far as anyone knows. That makes it physical. No physical, no mental. Maybe when I die I'll find out differently, but I won't be coming back to tell everbody about it.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael, what the f*** :question: :question: :question: :question: :question:

So now, anyone who argues with moral confidence and certainty -- and disagrees with you -- is "preaching" ??? :no:

Well, chalk me up as a "preacher," pal. And condescend if you must, and moderate me if you must, because I'm not backing down. (Or ignore me, which is what virtually everyone seems to have done so far. :tongue: )

The idea that mind is something a spiritual or non-physical "something," distinct from the brain and yet having "causal efficacy," power to make the brain do things, is ~clearly~ a lingering byproduct of Descartes' dualism. Well, this is Roger Bissell speaking, and I am here to tell you that M'sieur Descartes' time is up. :devil:

Some of us seem to be at the equivalent to the primitive stage before which human beings were able to realize that the lightning flash they see and the thunder clap they hear are not distinct entities, but just two aspects of one and the same natural phenomenon. We have a direct awareness of each through different streams of energy impinging on different receptor cells in our bodies, but at some point humans learned to integrate those streams of data into awareness of a unitary event in nature.

Were they wrong ?? Of course not !! No more than babies are wrong when they integrate their tactile data and their visual data into an awareness of one unitary entity, their mother. No more than those of us are wrong who integrate our introspective (mental) data and our visual (neuroscience) data into an awareness of one unitary entity, our brain, and what it is doing.

But don't think that I regard OL Objectivists as particularly obtuse or perverse about this. :poke: I think that virtually the entire O'ist movement is subtly infested/infected with residual Cartesian dualism. It's one reason that Objectivism has been spinning its wheels for 40 years or more on the nature of mind and the free will/determinism issue.

I take some comfort in the expectation that, before much longer (indeed, recent reports suggest we're already on the cusp), science will catch up to speculative philosophy, and the Cartesian-tainted theories and the Behaviorist (there is no mind) theories alike will receive a much-deserved burial.

REB

P.S. -- Unlike Ba'al, I do not denigrate or minimize the value of introspection. The entire science of psychophysics, for example, owes much to introspective reports by experimental subjects. I just don't think we're being aware, when we introspect, of anything other than our brains and what they are doing. That is why, IMO, some form of Dual-Aspect or (Mind-Brain) Identity has to be true.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm suggesting something quite commonsensical. That we aknowledgle the fact that we we are conscious, even if we don't yet know the full nature of consciousness -- that we acknowledge the fact that our minds, throuh the medium of our bodies, have the power to create "physical action and material output"-- and that, accepting those happy factss, we proceed to study our internal world without the a priori demand that that world follow all the rules of the external world. But we can't study it if we don't acknowledge ts existence.

Barbara

There is only one world and we all live in it.

When we finally achieve a nearly complete theory (that day is not yet) it will apply to everything. So far all empirical evidence indicates that the brain and its operations are physical and subject to physical laws. There is no mysterious inside. My inside is embedded in your outside and visa-versa.

The good people (PhD's in neurophysiology) at Rutgers observed the workings of my brain using MRI scans, CAT scans and PET scans. No sign of any immaterial mind. It ain't there. It is like the aether beloved of 19th century physicists. It is not found and there is not evidence that it is there. No aether, no (immaterial) mind. What we have are brains, glands and nerves and someday we will understand more completely how they work.

You are seeking something for which there is no objective evidence. Not an iota.

Hmmmph. That is like saying that you examined a stream of photons coming from a lightning bolt and found no objective evidence for the existence of thunder ! :rolleyes:

You're examining the wrong data stream, my friend! Introspection results from another form of direct awareness of things going on inside our heads, and it provides data we ignore or reject at our peril.

BTW, there is no reliable way to distinguish introspection from hallucination and an introspection cannot be independently witnessed, observed or measured. It is a totally unsatisfactory basis for knowledge. One man's introspection is another man's insane delusion or post hoc rationalization. In short, introspection is ka ka. If a physicist ever invoked introspection for a scientific result he would be laughed out of the business.

As to consciousness, that can be established objectively by a number of scanning devices. Looking and measuring will do just fine. The MRI I spent a half hour in clearly indicated to the technicians that I was conscious. They did not need my introspections.

Perhaps not ~your~ introspections. But how do you think they validated the functioning of those devices in the first place? Once the correlations are made between scan data and introspective data, I agree that the temptation and tendency is to regard the introspective data as "training wheels" and to toss them away. But claiming that they are not necessary ~at all~ has to be some form of Stolen Concept Fallacy. (This is parallel to the naive Scientific Realists who want to toss out perceptual data as deceptive and invalid, since it does not tell us that solid objects are "really nothing but" mostly empty space.)

Also, are you not aware of the fact that more and more specific identifications of brain/mental processes are being made all the time, assisted by experimental subjects who report to the experimentors about what they are thinking or feeling or perceiving or imagining? Again, as experimentors get better and better at "mind-reading," they can identify more and more of what is going on in someone's consciousness without their verbal-introspective report. But this is all ~built~ upon the initial discoveries which relied on introspection. And you want to deny its relevance? Feh. :no:

Ba'al, there has to be an alternative to the remnants of Cartesian dualism that you and I both reject, and your denigration of one of the most vital forms of direct awareness we have (the introspective awareness of what our brains are doing).

REB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Roger,

sigh...

Disagreeing with me is not the equivalent of preaching. Delivering sermons is the equivalent of preaching.

As to the subject of our disagreement, what if I am not discussing Cartesian dualism?

(And, from what I understand of it, I most definitely am not.)

In your crusade as a hammer, have you considered that there might exist something more than nails?

btw - There is a vast difference between disagreeing with you and disagreeing with Bob. You, at least, look at the arguments and don't just repeat the same things—proclamations—over and over in abundance.

Bob is good when he is not preaching and provides actual information.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

I believe that the assertion of an objective "fact" also includes what can be established in REASON, not just detected by the senses. In reason, we have a mind, not just a brain. In reason, there is no basis whatsoever for postulating a "god". I probably haven't said it correctly. It's been 18 years since I read OPAR.

Edited by RagJohn
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe that the assertion of an objective "fact" also includes what can be established in REASON, not just detected by the senses. In reason, we have a mind, not just a brain. In reason, there is no basis whatsoever for postulating a "god". I probably haven't said it correctly. It's been 18 years since I read OPAR.

your mind IS your brain, properly functioning. There is no such thing as a stand alone mind which is a separate substance from the rest of you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now