Imagination and Causality in Quantum Physics

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I was confused myself by the term "explain" when you brought it up. You are the one who said life was explained by reductionism and even gave three cheers. I found that confusing.

Where did you get such an utterly caricatural view of science?

I wasn't talking about science, but philosophy instead.

It is not enough to look at details and miss the obvious. We must do both. Philosophy deals with the obvious and science deals with the details. There is something called "life" that exists. No amount of detailing (or "reduction") is going to erase or change that fact.

Of course, genetic engineering, as in your example, is handling "mechanisms" (your word). I presume that these are mechanisms of living things, i.e., life? Not mechanisms of, say, rocks?

You may find my speculations on the possibility that there are parts of reality human beings are not equipped to perceive "trivial" or "nonsense," but there it is. Do you have any reason to presume that the 5 senses are all that is needed to perceive all of reality? If you were a bat, would you deny that light exists?

My point with this is that we have to bring everything into our mode of awareness to understand it, not that it exists to suit our mode of awareness, and that I do not know of any phenomena that exists solely as a single attribute. Things come in bunches, so anything I am speculating about right now would be "bunched" with some kind of indication of its existence (like heat does with light for the bat). I think that by speculating about anti-matter, black holes and so forth (just to use some very obvious examples), science even goes in that direction as a matter of course.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

It is not enough to look at details and miss the obvious. We must do both. Philosophy deals with the obvious and science deals with the details. There is something called "life" that exists. No amount of detailing (or "reduction") is going to erase or change that fact.

Well, there is for example also something called "weather" that exists. No amount of detailing is going to change that fact. Well, so what? Does that mean that we can't explain the weather?

Of course, genetic engineering, as in your example, is handling "mechanisms" (your word). I presume that these are mechanisms of living things, i.e., life? Not mechanisms of, say, rocks?

Not of rocks, but what about molecules? Are these living things?

You may find my speculations on the possibility that there are parts of reality human beings are not equipped to perceive "trivial" or "nonsense," but there it is. Do you have any reason to presume that the 5 senses are all that is needed to perceive all of reality? If you were a bat, would you deny that light exists?

I don't think so, as bats are not blind... But even if they were blind, if they were intelligent enough they could in principle infer the existence of light, just as we can infer the existence of X-rays, although we can't perceive them directly.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Don't panic, Paul (and RCR). Our resident insect isn't right about everything, IMO. I was thinking more of his particular remarks about (re)programming when I said that. I'm coming to think that the self-reprogramming analogy might be a better one than I had once thought it.

However, (a) I do not think that "reductionism" is right. I think that the reductionist approach views the universe at root in a backward direction, as if the universe were put together, piece by piece, from separate parts, whereas I've long toyed around with the idea (actually, rather similar to Kaballah and the idea of the "shards") of the parts being relative precipitates from the totality. An image which might be helpful here is the difference between the Gibsonian understanding of perception, in which what we see is a total visual field, from which features are abstracted and discriminated -- versus the view of perception as being pieced together in additive fashion from bits of sensation.

(b ) I think that thus far there's a very big piece of the puzzle being left out of the scientific picture, a "piece" which pertains to the origins and workings of voluntary motion, and most specifically of exertion, of making an effort. I'm not seeing how this would arise in a classical system (or a q.m. system either). (E.g., to give a broad-stroked image of what I'm talking about with the term "exertion": a car doesn't try to drive at 100 mph, but an athlete does try to jump the high jump. More generally, effort is of the essence in voluntary motion -- of which, I'll add, I consider "thinking," as I believe Rand meant that, a subcategory. I of course depart from Rand's view that thinking is the locus of "will," since I think the origins of "will" goes back to the origins of voluntary motion.)

I'm always intrigued by your ponderings, Paul, though I haven't yet had time to catch up to details of material you wrote while I was gone. I do, though, have troubles understanding what you mean by some of your terminology. An important case in point is the usage Dragonfly picked on yesterday, "proactive causation." I think I kind of get a feel of what you mean by this, but I don't understand why you use the word "proactive." Are you borrowing from Branden's speaking of being "proactive" in regard to one's life? But, if so, you don't appear to be meaning what he does. He's talking of using foresight and taking an active role in getting one's life course to proceed in the directions one wants, but I don't see how this would apply to the behavior of fundamental particles, which I don't think could be said to "want" anything.

Ellen

___

[Paul Mawdsley]

You may find my speculations on the possibility that there are parts of reality human beings are not equipped to perceive "trivial" or "nonsense," but there it is. Do you have any reason to presume that the 5 senses are all that is needed to perceive all of reality? If you were a bat, would you deny that light exists?

Michael, I think I get where you are going. Let me change it a little. If there is a more fundamental substance than light or quanta, how would we be able to say anything about it's nature? Shining light on light does not help us to see light. Constructing a view of the underlying nature of light and quanta that is consistent with the evidence and with our concepts of causality would be a possible approach.

Paul

[Ellen Stuttle]

And, an interjection about the exchange between Dragonfly and MSK: Looks to me like you two are hung up on a different meaning of "something." Michael appears to mean, literally, some THING, which of course the scientific view would not say life is. There's a whole set of interrelated phenomena which we describe by the term "life," but the idea that there's some extra ingredient -- a some THING -- which has to be added to the physical constituents to produce those phenomena has been left behind by biology.

Ellen

PS: Dragonfly, please notice my post above as well. I think it's more than once happened when I've posted two posts in a row that you've only seen the second one.

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I always learn the most amazing things talking to you. I didn't know bats had eyesight and I just looked it up. Dayaamm! I thought they used bio-radar. Another childhood illusion shattered. Ah, the pain of losing innocence!

The essence of my example still stands, though. There are many species without eyesight. But I will certainly make sure I look the critter up first before I decide to present one again.

You said something that I never have understood in your attitude:

Well, there is for example also something called "weather" that exists. No amount of detailing is going to change that fact. Well, so what? Does that mean that we can't explain the weather?

Of course you can. Do reductionists never look at the beginning? It is so obvious to me that before you can explain anything about the weather, you must isolate it enough to study it. You must say, "There is something called weather. It is made up of rain, sun, seasons and so forth. I know because I perceive these things. Hmmmm. I think I want to study this." You can't study weather by studying any old thing that appears before you like a shoe or a rock or a tree.

Philosophy is a starting point, not an end point. You keep criticizing it for not being an end point. The Chinese say the longest journey starts with the first step. I would say it starts even earlier - with deciding to go and thinking about where. That is philosophy. The actual journey is science. I am beginning to think that reductionists only think from the end to the beginning, never from the beginning. Here is a comical example, but I feel it illustrates perfectly what is going on about our discussion of life. Let's talk about some weather, since you mentioned it.

A person looks at rain and says he would like it explained to him because he wants to know how to keep his crops wet so they will grow better. He encounters a reductionist who then explains to him a whole bunch of technical terms on the molecular qualities of air and raindrops, temperature variations, the earth's movement, and so forth. Then comes the killer. On a subatomic level, there are properties that cause subparticles to group and separate and such interaction forms "heavy" air molecules and ultimately raindrops, but the only rational conclusion is that "wet" does really not exist at all, since this grouping and separating behavior is also seen in other subatomic particles.

Hmmmmmm...

The guy gets tons of information except how to keep his crops wet. And if, scratching his head, he insists on keeping his crops wet, he is told that his concern is either nonsense or trivial since any so-called wetness is some kind of byproduct. (Maybe he should learn how to reduce his hunger out of existence - or at least reduce it down to some kind of byproduct - so he will not have to grow crops at all!)

You asked me if molecules are living things. Of course not. They are components of both living things and nonliving things.

Paul,

Your example of a more fundamental substance for light is a very good example of what I am talking about. However, it is more scientific than I would give (my focus is on the simple right now, which is philosophy). What man does when he cannot directly perceive something, yet it is in a form that is graspable by a sense organ is (1) amplify/diminish it through instruments (telescope/microscope for instance), (2) transpose some element of it from one sense to another (spectrograph from sound to sight, for instance),or (3) a combination of some or possibilities, including amplifying/transposing already amplified/transposed data. (He also fiddles with stuff to isolate the elements he wants to study, but I want to keep things simple right now, so I will not list possibilities for that too.) Lastly, when none of this is possible, man infers - and then he tests what he can to present evidence to his senses, which is what you mentioned.

Something has been bothering me for ages about the mind/body connection. For as much as people talk, it has yet to be explained. I hear from reductionists that consciousness for example is a byproduct of chemical and molecular reactions. I see a strong influence and interaction there, but is that what consciousness is? I see influence flowing the other direction also. Any doctor will tell you that a positive attitude aids recovery. That's just one example. I knew a man who literally died of a broken heart (it took him two years in deep apathy). The mind influenced these physical things from its end.

Going back to philosophy, which is the art of identifying starting points for thinking, we see people throughout the ages tell of certain mental phenomena. (I prefer not to specify one right now so as not to get sidetracked from the principle I wish to discuss. Leave it to say that I am not talking on a New Age level.) When science has tested them, no repeatable results have been obtained so far. Yet people continue to report them.

We can conclude from this:

a.) Such people are deluded.

b.) Such people are lying.

c.) Proper tests have not been devised - i.e., the wrong things are being tested.

d.) There is something going on we have yet to understand, since it will not go away.

e.) All four of the above, depending on the case.

Obviously my vote goes to "e." I see the errors and charlatans and so forth. But I also definitely see a possibility of something we do not have a sense organ to perceive "bunching" with things we do and causing behavior that is highly similar to different individuals, but erratic enough to not produce repeatable results. This would be because the controls for such tests are not controls of "it." (Please understand, this must always be qualified by "if 'it' exists.")

This is just speculation. But since the issue will not go away - new reports do keep coming in every day - I believe it is worth looking into. Inference could be a wonderful tool here.

I think the mind/body connection could be speculated on with profit by this kind of thinking outside the box, too. At least such inferences could then move into the realm of scientific inquiry and out of the realm of religion, where anything goes explanation-wise.

And then back to basics - good old trial and error to map "it" for starters.

Ellen,

There's a whole set of interrelated phenomena which we describe by the term "life," but the idea that there's some extra ingredient -- a some THING -- which has to be added to the physical constituents to produce those phenomena has been left behind by biology.

When a loved one dies, some THING precious went with him/her - not just DNA. I find it odd that biology left this THING behind, especially as it is so precious.

So to your statement, let me add, "Amen."

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Ellen,

I don't disagree with Dragonfly's computer analogy. It makes sense to me and accounts for many of the processes in the brain but not all. Dragonfly's perspective accounts for all of the brains processes except for the initiation of actions of consciousness-- eg: the action of choosing a course of action; the action of choosing to increase one's level of focus; the action of choosing to increase one's level of effort; the action of choosing a state of creative flow to solve a problem; the action of asserting consciousness in a very focussed manner to piece together new integrations, patterns or programs; etc. In reactive causation action is initiated when energy is transferred from one entity to another. Where does the energy come from that causes an act of choosing and asserting?

Life and consciousness proactively seek to gain, maintain, and increase integration. When the organism's internal dynamics undergo a state of reduced integration, it resists this state and acts to increase integration. This principle goes against Newton's Laws of Motion. Extrapolating from Newton's Laws, any system moved out of a state of integration should remain out of integration until an outside force brings it back into integration. The interesting thing about living entities and conscious entities is they are always moving themselves back towards integration. In fact, this is a fundamental principle of life and consciousness. This is the principle behind self-generated, goal-directed action. This is the principle behind learning and growth. This is the principle behind self-actualization. This is also the principle behind evolution. Gaining, maintaining, and increasing integration is an internal force that drives individuals and species to new levels of integration. This is the basic principle behind volition and creative self-assertion: the act of choosing, and of asserting the self in the imagination and the world, is initiated by an internal force guided by the principle of increasing the integration of the organism. This is what I mean by proactive causation: the energy to initiate action lies within the entity that acts; it is part of its identity, not another substance that is transferred between entities as reactive causation suggests. This is more than the conversion of energy from potential to kinetic, as with a battery in a remote control car. This is a remote control car manufacturing itself, assembling itself and pressing its own trigger. It is the force of integration. It is the counterbalance to the second law of thermodynamics.

I don't think the principle of proactive causation just magically appears at the level of living and conscious entities. The principle must extend all the way down to the most fundamental levels of existence if causality is a metaphysical law. This is why it is worth the time to reinterpret the evidence and descriptions of existence produced by the sciences from the perspective of proactive causation. What happens if we try to understand the observations and laws of physics from the perspective of proactive causation? What happens if we try to understand fundamental particles from the perspective of Aristotle's, "the principle of motion lies within?" What does this do to change our understanding of the great theories of physics? Can it create a picture that makes more intuitive sense than the current picture which is based on reactive causation? I think so.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

With life, in your considerations, don't forget all the other goodies of being alive, like pleasure and pain, sex and reproduction, growth in both size and capacities, nourishment from killing and eating other life, and probably a bunch of other stuff like that.

All these elements are part of life and not part of computers.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael,

I still think that at least a factor -- though there's probably more to it -- in your not communicating with scientific types over the "life" issue is the many and equivocal meanings of the English word "something." So let me ask specifically: Are you saying that "life" is a form of particle? of chemical compound? of fluid? or of...? Does life have "mass"? Your describing "life" as a THING carries such connotations for me, and I suspect for Dragonfly. But I doubt that you mean these connotations.

Paul,

I read your post and then did something -- there's that equivocal English word again -- I would have been well advised to do much earlier: I looked up the meaning of "proactive" in my trusty Webster's New Collegiate. There I found a general meaning which seems to make sense in terms of what you're talking about but isn't what I'd thought you meant (since I'd thought you meant the term in the narrower sense in which Branden uses it), viz., "involving modification by a factor which proceeds that which is modified." The way Branden uses the term in his writings entails "having intention," and I'd thought that you were getting the term from Branden. But, then, I couldn't understand why you'd speak of "proactive causation" in describing the actions of "basic constituents" (such as "quarks"). If all you mean is along the lines of the wide definition quoted, this makes a LOT better sense to me of your thesis. Could you comment as to whether you find this definition acceptable or not?

Ellen

__

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Good question and I don't have the answer. I certainly am not satisfied with a phrase that stopped me cold in my tracks once, "nonphysical existence." Since existence is an axiom derived from sensory referents, and sense only perceives the physical, there's something rotten in Denmark with this formulation logic-wise.

The crux of this question goes into the essence of what is philosophical and what is scientific. I mentioned a Rand quote somewhere else from the ITOE workshops, but I will mention it again. On checking it, I decided to include the paragraph that follows since it has direct bearing on this issue. It is from ITOE, expanded edition (2nd), p. 289-290.

Philosophic vs. Scientific Issues

Prof. B: Is the concept of "matter" a philosophical concept or a scientific one?

AR: In the way we are using it here, as a very broad abstraction, it is a philosophical concept. If by "matter" we mean "that of which all the things we perceive are made," that is a philosophical concept. But questions like: what are different things made of? what are the properties of matter? how can you break it down? etc.—those are scientific problems.

Philosophy by its nature has to be based only on that which is available to the knowledge of any man with a normal mental equipment. Philosophy is not dependent on the discoveries of science; the reverse is true.

So whenever you are in doubt about what is or is not a philosophical subject, ask yourself whether you need a specialized knowledge, beyond the knowledge available to you as a normal adult, unaided by any special knowledge or special instruments. And if the answer is possible to you on that basis alone, you are dealing with a philosophical question. If to answer it you would need training in physics, or psychology, or special equipment, etc., then you are dealing with a derivative or scientific field of knowledge, not philosophy.

Prof. B: I'd like to apply this to the "mind-brain" issue—that is, what is the relation of conscious activity to brain activity? That would be a scientific question.

AR: Yes.

Prof. B: With certain provisos from philosophy, such as that consciousness is causally efficacious and that free will is possible.

AR: Philosophy would have to define the terms of that question. In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts. But then actually to find the specific relationship, that's a scientific question.

Properties of the Ultimate Constituents

Prof. E: Could you argue, on metaphysical grounds, that all observed properties of an entity are ultimately explicable in terms of, or reducible back to, properties of their primary constituents?

AR: We'd have to be omniscient to know. The question in my mind would be: how can we [as philosophers] make conclusions about the ultimate constituents of the universe? For instance, we couldn't say: everything is material, if by "material" we mean that of which the physical objects on the perceptual level are made—"material" in the normal, perceptual meaning of the word. If this is what we mean by "material," then we do not have the knowledge to say that ultimately everything is sub-subatomic particles which in certain aggregates are matter. Because suppose scientists discovered that there are two different kinds of primary ingredients—or three, or more? We would be in the same position as the pre-Socratics who were trying to claim that everything was air, water, earth, and fire because that's all they knew.

This discussion is fascinating and pertinent, but I am afraid if I include more here I will start skirting the limit of fair use. It covers "potentiality" and the error of "applying concepts based on the macroscopic level of observation to the submicroscopic, subatomic level."

On life, lets start at the beginning. Using Rand's concept of philosophy as being simpler than science, being available to all humans without the use of specialized instruments, then we have our perception. We see something living near us. We see that it dies. It never comes back yet its carcass remains. We perceived it when it was in the carcass, and we perceived when it was no longer present.

There is an "it" there. We see lots of them all the time. I suspect "it" entails one of the undiscovered "primary ingredients" Rand mentioned. I don't know. All I do know is that "it" exists. There are many "its" that I happen to love and admire. I object to this "it" being called merely a result and not an entity in itself. I know better on a philosophical level because I have to deal with all kinds of "its" every day and even my own "it" (which is problematic at times, but that's another issue).

btw - It is amusing to compare Rand's undiscovered "primary ingredients" with Branden's "underlying reality" idea. I wonder if his evil influence on her was so great that it pushed her into being equally mystical and New Age years after the affair terminated?

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Maestro MSK talks about the, er..."stuff"

btw - It is amusing to compare Rand's undiscovered "primary ingredients" with Branden's "underlying reality" idea. I wonder if his evil influence on her was so great that it pushed her into being equally mystical and New Age years after the affair terminated?

Hah! I hope they didn't find any crystals or pyramids when they went in there...

Isn't that what it always gets reduced down to? "Stuff?" William James actually called it "stuff."

I just want to know if I get a Sam's Club membership, I can get quantity (quantum?) deals on "stuff."

I have needs , man.

rde

Checking sale adds for stuff specials.

[Dragonfly]

Don't panic, Paul (and RCR). Our resident insect isn't right about everything, IMO.

I can wait. Dragonfly's Dangerous Ideas are a universal acid, so one day...

However, (a) I do not think that "reductionism" is right. I think that the reductionist approach views the universe at root in a backward direction, as if the universe were put together, piece by piece, from separate parts, whereas I've long toyed around with the idea (actually, rather similar to Kaballah and the idea of the "shards") of the parts being relative precipitates from the totality.

The way we do science does in itself imply nothing about the way the universe was formed. It is rather dictated by the question which method is efficient. And there is no doubt that the enormous success of science is due to the reductionistic method. And in fact it is reductionism that unifies our knowledge so that we no longer have many different fields of study that are completely unrelated. We have made enormous advances in biology since we know the chemical and physical processes that form the basis of biological structures. In the same way chemistry is based on molecular and atomic physics. Newton's discovery that the movement of celestial bodies is described by the same laws as a falling apple is another example of the unifying effect of reductionism. By looking at the parts we get a better understanding of the whole. Of course we shouldn't make the error that Dennett calls "greedy reductionism", trying to describe a higher level in the hierarchy of knowledge in terms of a much lower level, like using quantumchromodynamics to study the digestive system of cockroaches, but I think that is rather obvious. Further the universe is in a sense put together piece by piece; in the extremely hot soup at the beginning of the big bang there was hardly any structure, just elementary particles and radiation, all those complex structures didn't evolve until much later.

(b ) I think that thus far there's a very big piece of the puzzle being left out of the scientific picture, a "piece" which pertains to the origins and workings of voluntary motion, and most specifically of exertion, of making an effort. I'm not seeing how this would arise in a classical system (or a q.m. system either). (E.g., to give a broad-stroked image of what I'm talking about with the term "exertion": a car doesn't try to drive at 100 mph

A car with cruise control does.

, but an athlete does try to jump the high jump.

Why would a robot not be able to try to jump the high jump?

More generally, effort is of the essence in voluntary motion -- of which, I'll add, I consider "thinking," as I believe Rand meant that, a subcategory. I of course depart from Rand's view that thinking is the locus of "will," since I think the origins of "will" goes back to the origins of voluntary motion.)

I see you still have some of those weird ideas... Does a bacterium have voluntary motion?

[Paul Mawdsley]

Don't panic, Paul (and RCR). Our resident insect isn't right about everything, IMO.

I can wait. Dragonfly's Dangerous Ideas are a universal acid, so one day...

...we will all be pulled to the dark side. Unless we seek wisdom and choose not to.

Does a bacterium have voluntary motion?

Maybe not. Proactive motion is another thing.

Ellen,

I wrote a detailed response to your post yesterday, stepped away from the computer just before posting, and came back to find the program had crashed. Short answer to your questions: My view of proaction is broader than and contains Branden's view; it does not include intentionality but is a necessary condition for it; I think the definition you suggested is on the right track but lacks precision.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I really liked an explanation you just gave.

And in fact it is reductionism that unifies our knowledge so that we no longer have many different fields of study that are completely unrelated.

(...)

By looking at the parts we get a better understanding of the whole. Of course we shouldn't make the error that Dennett calls "greedy reductionism", trying to describe a higher level in the hierarchy of knowledge in terms of a much lower level, like using quantumchromodynamics to study the digestive system of cockroaches, but I think that is rather obvious.

I see nothing at all essentially to disagree with here. What I have encountered (but I don't remember it being from you) is an attempt by some of the more scientifically oriented to replace all the different manners of unifying knowledge with the "greedy reductionism" approach.

I got into a pretty nasty argument once on another forum where I was being blasted by both Objectivists and scientists (and, as you would guess it, the Objectivists were the nastiest). I have more words now than I did back then, so I will try to explain what caused all the hollering.

I started talking about size of perception. We perceive things at what I will call a mid-size level since this level fits our body size - thus the size of our sense organs. When we look at the macro level, outer space, etc., but even more projected things like infinity, we are looking from the bottom up so to speak. We cannot do otherwise without inference because that is our size. Even when we talk about things like the big bang, we are using concepts from our mid-range that might not be applicable on a macro level, which we do not perceive on a macro level because we can't. We simply are not big enough and, as I have suggested elsewhere, we might not have a proper sense organ for perceiving macro-organization even if we were big enough.

The same holds true for the micro level - we look from the top down. We examine subparticles, but when we live our normal lives, we deal with people and flowers and trees and chairs and tables and so forth. The person who lives all that is the one who examines subparticles, so it is almost natural that he would try to seek the organizing principles of mid-range forms on a subatomic level.

Now projecting that, this could also apply to a type of existent. Say, life. What is the smallest life form known? Life, from what I see, is essentially a mid-level phenomenon. Even the smallest bacterias, etc., only need a simple microscope to be seen.

On a subatomic level (so far in human progress at least), you get agglomerations of subparticles that form (somehow) genomes and DNA. But DNA is not life as we know it mid-level. It is only one component of life. I have read often from the scientific side that consciousness essentially is nothing more than a result of subparticle activity. It is an attribute, not an entity.

This gets kind of silly on mid-level. Can you imagine the following declaration of love? "I, the attribute, am deeply in love with you, the attribute. Your subparticles really turn my entities on. Your causation is hot on your higher levels of organization!"

This is where they get to "greedy reductionism" and completely miss the fact that there actually are other principles - mid-level principles so to speak - working in the digestive tracts of cockroaches. (Keeeerist, what an example!)

Like it or not, we are stuck looking at the universe in all directions from a mid-range perspective. The only way to change that perspective is to speculate and infer.

With that in mind, I would modify your claim that reductionism unifies our knowledge to stating that it is one manner of unifying our knowledge. With that qualification, I heartily agree that it is an extremely powerful and effective manner.

That should not make a person contemptuous of other manners of unifying knowledge, though. Philosophy is extremely useful for this at the mid-range size. Looking at philosophy from the size angle, it could be said that philosophy is not only a starting point for knowledge, it starts from mid-level perception.

One last thought. Even though I hinted at the following, I want to make it clear. The implication of size in philosophy is that in addition to our perception being limited to mid-level, there are unique types of existents that are mid-range only, where unifying principles break down after a certain level of reduction or expansion.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Michael, I think I get where you are going. Let me change it a little. If there is a more fundamental substance than light or quanta, how would we be able to say anything about it's nature? Shining light on light does not help us to see light. Constructing a view of the underlying nature of light and quanta that is consistent with the evidence and with our concepts of causality would be a possible approach.

Our concepts of causality are empirically derived concepts, not a priori concepts, so they're the end point and not the starting point. Further you'd better leave these kinds of speculations to the physicists (like string theory, branes, supersymmetry, TOE). We don't know if these will lead to something or if these are dead ends, but at least they know what they're doing. Philosophical speculations about these things without deep knowledge of the field are completely useless. You'd better look for different subjects.

[Dragonfly]

PS: Dragonfly, please notice my post above as well. I think it's more than once happened when I've posted two posts in a row that you've only seen the second one.

I've seen it... but I don't know if I can keep up with all the posts...

[Dragonfly]

Something has been bothering me for ages about the mind/body connection. For as much as people talk, it has yet to be explained. I hear from reductionists that consciousness for example is a byproduct of chemical and molecular reactions. I see a strong influence and interaction there, but is that what consciousness is? I see influence flowing the other direction also. Any doctor will tell you that a positive attitude aids recovery. That's just one example. I knew a man who literally died of a broken heart (it took him two years in deep apathy). The mind influenced these physical things from its end.

See my post on the notion of downward causation. We use here different levels of description as they are the appropriate levels for the subject, so for brain events we use the higher, intentional level ("the mind") as that is how we can make sense of all the synapses in the brain, while we use a lower, physical level of description as that is appropriate for physiological changes. But in principle we could describe the whole process in physical terms (in practice this is not possible while the brain events are far too complex and we still have to learn a lot about them). So there is no essential mystery here, although our knowledge in this area is still very limited.

Going back to philosophy, which is the art of identifying starting points for thinking, we see people throughout the ages tell of certain mental phenomena. (I prefer not to specify one right now so as not to get sidetracked from the principle I wish to discuss. Leave it to say that I am not talking on a New Age level.) When science has tested them, no repeatable results have been obtained so far. Yet people continue to report them.

I think you're confusing two things: when science tests people who tell of certain mental phenomena the existence of such mental phenomena may be very well confirmed. What is not confirmed however is the notion that these are evidence that something supernatural ("New Age") is happening.

We can conclude from this:

a.) Such people are deluded.

b.) Such people are lying.

c.) Proper tests have not been devised - i.e., the wrong things are being tested.

d.) There is something going on we have yet to understand, since it will not go away.

e.) All four of the above, depending on the case.

a.) happens; b.) happens; I see no evidence for c; d.) is a wrong inference: that it won't go away doesn't mean that we don't understand it, a.) and b.) will continue to happen; just as the fact that religion won't go away doesn't imply that there must be something in it.

There's a whole set of interrelated phenomena which we describe by the term "life," but the idea that there's some extra ingredient -- a some THING -- which has to be added to the physical constituents to produce those phenomena has been left behind by biology.

When a loved one dies, some THING precious went with him/her - not just DNA. I find it odd that biology left this THING behind, especially as it is so precious.

No, there is no "thing" that goes away, the structure is no longer functioning and that may be sad enough, but it needs no extra "thing" for an explanation. What you call a "thing" is that structure with its organization, with its intentionality as long as it works.

[Dragonfly]

With life, in your considerations, don't forget all the other goodies of being alive, like pleasure and pain, sex and reproduction, growth in both size and capacities, nourishment from killing and eating other life, and probably a bunch of other stuff like that.

All these elements are part of life and not part of computers.

Not yet.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Can you please tell me what the essential difference is between these two statements you made?

1. There is no "thing" that goes away.

2. The structure is no longer functioning

For the life of me (yup, the "thing" of me), I cannot see a difference between this "thing" going away and your "structure" no longer functioning. (I meant "go away" in the colloquial sense of "no longer be present," not in the sense that it went somewhere else.)

One implied difference I keep getting is that you seem to be attributing a characteristic to my "thing" that it has no components (which would be ridiculous if that were what was being proposed) and seem to be saying that the components of your "structure" are the sole source of the organizing principle of it.

Is that your meaning?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I can wait. Dragonfly's Dangerous Ideas are a universal acid, so one day...

...we will all be pulled to the dark side. Unless we seek wisdom and choose not to.

Ha, ha! You cannot escape your fate...

The Prince of Darkness

[Dragonfly]

One implied difference I keep getting is that you seem to be attributing a characteristic to my "thing" that it has no components (which would be ridiculous if that were what was being proposed) and seem to be saying that the components of your "structure" are the sole source of the organizing principle of it.

Is that your meaning?

I find it hard to follow you here. But to answer your last question: yes, the components of the structure are the sole source of the organizing principle. Isn't that wonderful? I see no need to pose some extra "thing" (which to me means something physical, it doesn't seem the right term for an organization or a structure), just as there is no extra "thing" to explain a computer or a TV, which also may die by ceasing to function.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Ha, ha! You cannot escape your fate...

The Prince of Darkness

Spoken like a true determinist.

Artist formerly known as The Prince of Light. B)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

This is the source of our disagreements.

I see no need to pose some extra "thing"...

I do.

I perceive it.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I perceive it.

That shows that perception is fallible...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I perceive it.

That shows that perception is fallible...

LOLOLOLOL...

Touché.

(And I still perceive it.)

Michael