Imagination and Causality in Quantum Physics


Paul Mawdsley

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Dragonfly,

Well, if you reason about the number of angels that can dance on the point of a needle...

I thought your concern was how many subparticles could dance on the point of a needle...

:)

Anyway, who is saying such dastardly things? Let us denounce him immediately as a charlatan!

Seriously, where is this stuff coming from that you keep complaining about?

Michael

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One can reason about the nature of God. One can reason about the relationships of the sides in a right angle triangle. One can reason about the nature of infinity. One can reason about the nature of imaginary numbers. One can reason about "the number of angels that can dance on the point of a needle." This reasoning does not require reference to observation. Applied reasoning is reasoning applied to observation and tested by observation.

Paul

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Paul,

Haven't you read Rand's only really boring book? ITOE?

The concepts you mentioned are higher concepts. In the Objectivist theory of concepts, initial knowledge is called sensations. When integration is involved enough for entities and not just sensations to be identified (and retained in memory), mental units are formed called percepts. When percepts become integrated, they become other mental units called concepts (which are basically categories).

Integration of concepts from percepts consists of identifying distinguishing characteristics of perceptual units and eliminating the measurements. Higher concepts do something similar, except they use concepts instead of percepts, and eliminate the physical referents of the lower concepts, treating them as measurements.

That is why it seems that reasoning can occur without observation, but the truth is that observation has already occurred.

There is a part of reasoning that consists of projecting, speculating, imagining and so forth. But all of this is built on a foundation of very physical observations.

Michael

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Michael,

I did read Rand's ITOE several years ago....twice. I was impressed by it but thought that it was incomplete. I thought it was incomplete to the tune of about fifty percent of how I understood my own mental functions. There is much I have come to see in the functioning of my own processes that is not covered by ITOE. As such, I think there is much that was hidden from the focus of AR's awareness, not only in her psychology, but in her epistemology also. As I recall, she did not speak much of the role creative imagination plays in generating our intuitive perspective, nor of the role the intuitive perspective plays in expanding the scope of our perceptions from which her higher concepts developed. She did not understand the role her own fiction writing played in the development of her own expanded perceptions and her own philosophy.

Reasoning can occur by starting with created entities such as numbers. While the nature of numbers can be abstracted from concrete things by abstracting out all qualities except quantity, numbers are entities themselves not observable by the senses. Numbers are entities of the imagination. Within the realm of numbers in the imagination, the Platonic realm, we create fictional entities according to specific rules and we see these entities without the use of the senses. Our logical processes in this realm are called mathematical reasoning and are a modified version of causal reasoning. The rules and symbols of logic also exist in this Platonic realm. Logic, in general, is a modified version of the causal reasoning that operates in our imagination. Causal reasoning is the basic form of reasoning and applies causal operators as the guiding principle that integrates patterns isolated from observed phenomena using the language of experiential images. In the same way logical operators are the guiding principles that integrate linguistic symbols and mathematical operators are the guiding principles that integrate numerical symbols. Logical operators with linguistic symbols and mathematical operators with numerical symbols are a secondary programming language we use as an interface to willfully explore and control the images of our imagination for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. This is how we have taken control of the apparatus of the imagination for the purpose of understanding our existence.

As we come to identify and examine the causal operators that act as guiding principles integrating our intuitive models of existence, we can take direct control of the development of our intuition, making the these subconscious processes conscious. Ellen, Dragonfly, Jenna and others have questioned the value of AR and NB's concepts of causation. Today Ellen said, "It seems to me, too, either 'trivial' or 'empty,' depending on how it's interpreted." The importance of our concepts of causality is found in the fact that they are applied as causal operators in shaping our intuitive perspective of existence. They shape the models of existence we build, consciously or subconsciously, in our imaginations. They shape the primary lens through which we experience the world. The use of the causal principle, "what a thing is determines what it does," has a profound effect on how we construct models of the world and interpret the world. It is the single most important concept Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden identified. It shaped the rest of their worldviews.

As brilliant as I believe AR and NB's view of causality is, I believe it lacks precision and is incomplete. There are certain types of actions that, while they are not ruled out by this concept, neither are they included in the principle as a means of guidance. I want to start talking about this more. In this forum I have already noted my early definitions of identity and causality, see here.

Btw– I'm kinda strange. I didn't find ITOE boring. As with many of the discussions here, I found it sparked many tangents in my own thinking. For me, that's just plain fun!

Paul

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Michael,

Thanks for your words of support in regards to the emotional journey of someone beloved dying a slow death from a fatal disease (in this case cancer). When I wrote my post, I thought of your "Letter to Madalena," and of your having experienced and described such a journey. I almost said something about that, but then didn't since I wanted to be brief on the subject. The reality of the circumstances is long and difficult, however. Neither Larry nor I is a stranger to the process of a beloved person's dying of cancer. Both of our fathers died that way (mine in 1975, his in 1997), and a few years ago cancer claimed a treasured friend who was in the English department at the university. So we're familiar with what the process is like. But practice doesn't make it easier.

Thanks again for your sympathies.

Ellen

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On a cheerier note...

I had a major brainstorm session last night, after reading, at about midnight my time, Paul's post #129. That post finally, I think, made clear to me just what Paul is talking about with his "causal reasoning" category. I believe it's intimately related to the category which I think of as "testing." And it's over the issue of "testing" where I keep having problems with Dennett's version of "compatibilism."

I can't describe -- or even, in my own recall, recapture -- most of the details of the "brainstorm." That sort of experience is a ferment of this image, that thought, this stretch of analyzing, that click of connection popping up, all of it far, far too "non-linear" to be described in "discursive form" (see Susanne Langer). But for the sake of having a record of the occurrence -- and of at least sharing its happening with Paul and Dragonfly, exchanges with both of whom were important background to the process -- I'll list some salient features of what I was brainstorming about:

- that testing is inherently non-algorithmic because it always involves new circumstances; it's always unique to a circumstance, and there can't be an algorithm for something which is unique. There can be sub-algorithms for sub-features which are uniform; indeed there have to be uniformities of sub-features or you couldn't end up with patterned behavior. But even with the most "sphexish" of insect routines ("sphexish" from the Sphex wasp, which displays an extreme of rigid behavioral patterning),there are always features of uniqueness requiring testing in the environmental circumstance to which an organism responds.

- that science is a category of testing; science isn't just "observation combined with reasoning" unless you're including "testing" in the very meaning of "observation." (I think "testing" should be included if by "observation" you're referring to organismic observation, which requires am organismic sensory apparatus. Such a sensory apparatus does testing; the sensory organs are always moving and sampling -- or they don't register: e.g., if a stationary spot is affixed, on a floating contact-lens platform, to the eye, soon the spot isn't seen.)

-- that there is a possibility -- and here's a shockeroo all round (to me first and foremost) -- of my ending up concluding that a form of "compatibilism" actually could work. This would be a shockeroo conclusion, since I've long thought that it EITHER has to be hard determinism OR volitionism and that no form of "compatibilism" is viable; however, "Dennett's Dangerous Idea" -- i.e., his particular way of approaching "compatibilism," combined with Dragonfly's explications and amplifications -- has raised questions which I'm still debating. I'm starting to think that maybe the Laplacian conception of determinism which provides Dennett's basic model (also Dragonfly's) might after all be "compatible" with volition as I think of that.

(The way I think of volition has important differences from Rand's idea thereof, near as one can figure out what that was from sources to which she gave her imprimatur; I think that figuring out the details of how she thought volition worked just from the very little she herself said in print on the subject can't be done.)

The Laplacian conception of determinism is most neatly to my mind expressed by Van Inwagen's way of putting it, that "there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future" (An Essay on Free Will, 1983, pg. 3, quoted by Dennett on pg. 25 of Freedom Evolves). Dragonfly has a more precise way of expressing this in terms of states and times, but it's specifically the phrasing "exactly one physically possible future" which I keep pondering.

In the course of this pondering, I keep coming back to an example which I described to Roger Bissell some months ago. The example concerns a choice point as to which of two alternate routes around the (approximate) edges of a rectangle I decide to take at a particular junction which I come to between when I leave my door headed to Bloomfield center and when I arrive at the place which would be across the diagonal of the imagined rectangle. The question I was probing with Roger is whether or not it would already be determined when I left the house which path I would take.

My view is, no, it wouldn't be, in a circumstance where I haven't yet decided when I leave the house which path to take. (Sometimes I already have decided, but for the sake of argument, we're considering a case wherein I decide according to what I assess as the relative attractiveness of the alternate paths when I arrive at the intersection from which I'll take one path or the other.)

Last night I put into words a way of expressing this which has been "on the edge" in a history of playing around with visualizing and trying to analyze this scene in terms of all the respective physical particles: Suppose that, with organismic motion as distinguished from inanimate motion, I think of the circumstance not just as the past pushing but ALSO as the future coming toward the organism -- so that there are two vectors, one might say, from two directions with the organism as the moving "point" where they meet, thus ("O" stands for "organism"):

-> O <-

Of course, where O is keeps changing, getting farther from the left side (past) and closer to the right side (future).

I started last night thinking of this as like a tunnel which is being slowly shortened, and I thought, well, maybe it's still the "past" producing a unique outcome because the "starting point" of the respective ends of the (shortening as the organism moves) tunnel would have been there at "an instant t" when the organism was at its starting point to the left. But, still, there would be a difference between the operation of the "future" side for an organism and for a rock, because for the organism the future side is assessed whereas it isn't for a rock. The assessing is inherent in the whole process for the organism.

Now I think that that latter point -- the assessing is inherent in the whole process for the organism -- is what Dennett is trying to convey with his "compatibilism" (and sometimes succeeds better to my mind at conveying than at other times). So I'm still mulling. Also over the exact details of how organismic cognition ("mental activity" for convenience, leaving aside defining "mental") is thought to relate to the particle motions of the brain and body.

Which gets me back to Paul's "causal reasoning." You see, where I think Dennett leaves out a BIG gap in his presentation is in speaking of cognitive processes as if Paul's "logical" and "mathematical" processes were the whole shebang -- and whereas those latter two processes can be loosely analogized to computer functioning (though I think that even with "logical" and "mathematical" processing, there are important differences in how an organism does them from how a computer does them), causal thinking can't accurately thus be analogized. A computer does not do the sort of processing that organisms do in their endless testing of their environments. (Thus, retying to the epistemological point I was trying to make to Dragonfly: a computer couldn't do science, which is a subcategory of testing.)

Ellen

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Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Boy, this discussion is interesting. I wish I had the time and energy to follow it more closely and participate more actively. But be that as it may....

MSK:

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

Yesterday morning due to leaving lights on overnight my car battery was completely dead. No noise when I turned the key. No radio, no dome lights, no nothing. In this state, could my car be analagous to the carcass you mention? A fully functioning car, minus the "it" stored in the battery?

Of course, the analogy breaks down in that there is no analogue of AAA that you can call to get a jump start and infuse "it" back into the carcass. (At least not yet. There are places where this is being worked on --under the assumption that the "carcass" can be preserved sufficiently without decay such that adding "it" back into it will bring it to life again with the same "identity").

But my point is -- do you think that the "it" that makes the difference between a living being and a carcass has to be something other than physical matter and/or energy , or a certain state or arrangement of physical matter and/or energy? (Of course, I use the term "energy" in a physics sense, not in a "new age" sense such as "negative energy", etc).

And I may be mistaken, but I think I pick up a hint that you think it somehow would devalue living entities, makes them less worthy of being loved and admired ("being called *merely* a result and not an entity in itself") if the "it" is "merely" the same type of physical stuff as the remaining carcass. I don't think this is any more true than that an awesome sunset ceases to be awesome once you understand all of the physics of light scattering, etc.

Just my 2-cents

MBM

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MBM,

I don't think it would be degrading at all to find out that life is purely physical. But I have yet to see a procedure established where life is created from inanimate matter.

I think that those who state as fact that life is not a separate "it" (property of some kind of unknown something, force, energy, plasma, whatever you want to call it) capable of making inanimate matter become a a unique entity are making a faith-based claim so far. They only have speculation. In the meantime, we know that when "it" goes away, "it" does not come back. Yet we can transplant kidneys and other parts between bodies without affecting the "it" at all.

I do know that chemical reactions in the brain affect the "it." God knows I used enough drugs to prove that. So I admit an essential relationship between life and physical micro level.

I also strongly hold to my size perception conclusions I wrote above. What determines the form of liquid or a rock or empty space or a star? The characteristics of a bunch of subparticles spontaneously mutated and grouped that way?

I am inclined to believe in other principles at work, depending on the size level, in addition to reductionist principles. At least I see things on a mid level that are not easily explained from the micro level.

A poster named Hong once asked me on another forum about the kingdoms of life and I had a hell of a time looking it up and studying all of a sudden. I was glad I learned something new.

Still, on all levels, I see life using inanimate matter, then going away (dying) while the inanimate matter remains. I have yet to see inanimate matter cause life to spring forth on any level. Denying that life exists as a separate "thing," even if mid-level perception is all we have right now, is irrational to me. It is denying direct perception. Rand called consciousness one of the fundamental axioms rather than trying to derive it from something else. Until more information comes in, I am comfortable with the axiom. It is a hell of a lot better than saying it doesn't really exist as we perceive it - and then call that a fact when it can't be proved.

This is sort of like the other side of the coin of those who say God exists without proof. We perceive life. That's a pretty universal experience. So I believe that it is safe to conclude that exists.

About your car with battery thing, I see the battery being more equated to the heart than to the mind. And this whole analogy breaks down when you realize that a battery does not drive a car, yet a mind does "drive" a body.

Michael

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And science is in fact observation plus reason. Reason may be an essential part of science, but that is not the same as the fundament of knowledge (at least not as I understand those words), without observation reason is powerless.

Dragonfly,

Yes. It is observation plus a certain type of reasoning: specifically quantified reasoning. Quantified reasoning occurs when observed phenomena are converted into quantitative definitions through an act of measurement and manipulated through the use of mathematical operators such as +, -, ×, ÷, =, etc. It is quantified reasoning that distinguishes science from philosophy. Philosophy is observation plus logical reasoning.

What I have come to find very interesting is that we are able to perceive beyond the information provided directly by our senses, and we are able to apply both logical and mathematical reasoning to these enhanced observations. Whether we are talking about philosophy or science, the history of both holds many examples of the use of imagination guided by causation leading the observer to perceive models/analogies of existence that could be connected back to the evidence by reasoning and tested.

Michael Faraday used his imagination to create models/analogies of electromagnetic forces that were quantified and formalized by James Clerk Maxwell so they could be tested against the evidence and found to be elegantly correct. The imagination is what led to the creation of the aether model of existence, which was quantified and formalized, predictions were made, and the theory was tested against the evidence and found to be in error. Einstein used his imagination to create models/analogies of existence to fit the evidence, quantified and formalized his models, predictions were made, and his theory was found to fit the evidence.

What the above illustrates is how important and leading a role the imagination has in the process of science. The imagination has a similar role to a microscope. It is an instrument that extends the our perceptual field, creating models that represent existence by using our principles of identity and causality to mould images of the underlying, unobserved reality. Now, because Heisenberg pointed out that there is not only a point beyond which we do not observe but there is a point beyond which we cannot observe, we must conclude that there is no underlying reality for our imagination to penetrate. But the reason we must conclude there is no underlying reality is because our imagination was shown to be faulty with the Michelson-Morley experiment; Einstein showed that a mathematical description could reliably describe a reality the imagination "could not", and the mathematical description necessarily meets an end to its penetration at the quantum limit because there is nothing that can be observed and imagination is no longer a reliable instrument for extending our perceptual field.

Here is where philosophy needs to step in and take its rightful place next to science. It is not a competition. Both methods of reasoning are valid. That mathematics cannot describe a reality that is beyond observation is a given. If it can't be observed, it can't be measured. If it can't be measured, it can't be quantified. If it can't be quantified, it can't be mathematically described. So, if the only tool we have to generate a chain of reason is mathematics, as the strict modern physicist would claim, then knowledge is at an impasse with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. But we human beings have more tools at our disposal.

The conclusion that the quantum limit is impenetrable to our investigations is based on the belief that the Michelson-Morley experiment proved the imagination is impotent to extend our perceptions into the underlying realities of physical existence. What if the Michelson-Morley experiment proved the aether theory a failure, not because the imagination is impotent to visualize physical reality, but because the causal operators (analogous to mathematical operators) were incorrect? What if the principles of causality that shaped our models of existence were wrong, and caused our imaginings that led to the aether theory to be faulty? What if another principle of causality, another causal operator, could produce a model of the underlying physical existence that was consistent with the Michelson and Morley findings? What if this other causal operator could trace a model of an underlying physical existence described by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity? Would we not then be right to conclude that the imagination, guided by this causal operator, may penetrate the quantum limit to extend our perceptual field, thus giving us a model of the underlying reality to describe mathematically? Logic says yes, even if it means revisiting our narrow scientific notions of knowledge.

The question is: how do we determine what can be supported by the evidence?

I don't understand the "can" in this question. Observation and reason show what is supported by the evidence. Afterwards we may say that what "is" supported by the evidence "can" be supported by the evidence, but that doesn't make much sense to me.

If a picture of the underlying nature of quantum reality was created by the imagination, was mathematically described, and was perfectly consistent with the evidence, could we say the model was supported by the evidence? Or must we still say it makes no sense to even speak about there being an underlying nature of quantum reality?

Paul

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Ellen,

I was having a pretty crappy day. I read your post and it turned my day around. I don't have much time right now but I would like to at least mention a few highlights.

It is a real joy to see someone else's images so similar to mine. You said, "That post finally, I think, made clear to me just what Paul is talking about with his 'causal reasoning' category. I believe it's intimately related to the category which I think of as 'testing.'" I agree. Your "testing" sounds like a subcategory of my "causal reasoning." So is your "brainstorming." Causal reasoning is the use of causal operators, willfully or automatically, applied to directing the images in the imagination according to the associated principles of causality in the generation of an intuitive perspective of reality. Intuition is the primary interface we use as an overlay for our experience of reality that allows us to decode the meaning of our experience and control our existence. Brainstorming is where I live.

The "Non-linear" causation that you say was operating in you brainstorming is one such causal operator. Any complete definition of causation must identify and include the nature of non-linear causation because it is a key feature of mental processes like the ones you describe; it is a key feature of social dynamics; and it is a key feature of quantum fields.

"Testing" is a result of a process of flow. It is not digital. To quantify testing, to eliminate all the qualitative elements except quantity, is to reduce testing to something that it is not. Consciousness is fundamentally dynamic or kinetic. The stuff of consciousness is in perpetual motion. Its motion cannot be broken down into the actions-reactions of algorithmic processes.

Suppose that, with organismic motion as distinguished from inanimate motion, I think of the circumstance not just as the past pushing but ALSO as the future coming toward the organism -- so that there are two vectors, one might say, from two directions with the organism as the moving "point" where they meet, thus ("O" stands for "organism"):

-> O <-

I think the idea of the future coming toward the organism suggests intentionality which is a higher order that proactive behaviour. The key to understanding this is in identifying the nature of the "O". If the "O" has a driving principle of increasing integration, it will be propelled toward the future without first imagining the possibilities of that future. Its not the past that determines what the thing does. Its not the future that determines what it does. What a thing is determines what it does. The principle of action is within. The principle of action of an organism is increasing integration. The past, and any imaginings about possible futures, are just information that affects the trajectory of a proactive entity. Information does not have the energy to be a sufficient cause of actions. It simply shapes the direction of the intrinsic energy that is expressed. (Think about David Bohm's information wave affecting the direction of the particles intrinsic energy. This also points the way to non-linear causation.) Your two arrows are information vectors, not necessitation vectors. No necessitation, no determinism. Determinism is just the illusion created by focussing on inert matter when identifying our concept of causation.

Since we are heading down this path, my current definition of causality is: What a thing does is determined by the informed proactions of its physical components.

Now that's going to need a lot of unpacking but you may be able to see its connection to the preceding.

Thanks for an inspiring post. I am going to think about it some more.

Paul

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- that testing is inherently non-algorithmic because it always involves new circumstances; it's always unique to a circumstance, and there can't be an algorithm for something which is unique.

Ah, but that is not true. I think that when you'r thinking of algorithms you're still too much seeing only what I'd call low-level algorithms, which are the relatively simple and rather rigid sphexish or non-creative algorithms, which may work fine if the relevant parts of the environment aren't too complex, but which fail when they're confronted with unexpected input. Simply put, such algorithms are like a list of possibilities: if A then do X, if B then do Y, etc. Such algorithms rather spell out in detail what should happen and that's fine as long as the environment behaves as the environment for which the algorithm is designed. Of course such algorithms cannot handle something unique that falls outside its program. But there are also higher-level algorithms in which the options are not limited to a finite list of simple actions. For these algorithms there is no detailed prescription for each possibility (although sub-algorithms may still do that for routine tasks, as you mention in your post), but more general rules, with feedback and trial-and-error mechanisms. Such algorithms are able to learn efficient behavior, and are therefore better equipped to deal with unexpected situations. There is no bound to the complexity of such algorithms, in a next level they may for example learn how to learn efficiently. In principle such algorithms may take off of their own accord to increasing sophistication (in fact that is what has happened in evolution in the course of billions of years). Although there will never be a guarantee that they'll always find the right solution, they may become quite efficient algorithms nevertheless, that can in many cases solve unique situations.

- that science is a category of testing; science isn't just "observation combined with reasoning" unless you're including "testing" in the very meaning of "observation."

Yes, I agree that testing is an essential part of science, I was just using a broad brush with the implication that testing itself is part of "reasoning plus observation".

In the course of this pondering, I keep coming back to an example which I described to Roger Bissell some months ago. The example concerns a choice point as to which of two alternate routes around the (approximate) edges of a rectangle I decide to take at a particular junction which I come to between when I leave my door headed to Bloomfield center and when I arrive at the place which would be across the diagonal of the imagined rectangle. The question I was probing with Roger is whether or not it would already be determined when I left the house which path I would take.

My view is, no, it wouldn't be, in a circumstance where I haven't yet decided when I leave the house which path to take.

But the fact that you haven't decided yet which path to take means only that you don't know what the outcome will be, but that doesn't imply that every next step doesn't follow from the previous one. If you look back from the moment that you've made the decision, is there any point where the current situation does not follow from the previous one? (This is of course more or less the same what you write further in your post.)

Which gets me back to Paul's "causal reasoning." You see, where I think Dennett leaves out a BIG gap in his presentation is in speaking of cognitive processes as if Paul's "logical" and "mathematical" processes were the whole shebang -- and whereas those latter two processes can be loosely analogized to computer functioning (though I think that even with "logical" and "mathematical" processing, there are important differences in how an organism does them from how a computer does them), causal thinking can't accurately thus be analogized. A computer does not do the sort of processing that organisms do in their endless testing of their environments. (Thus, retying to the epistemological point I was trying to make to Dragonfly: a computer couldn't do science, which is a subcategory of testing.)

But computers can do that, only still in a limited way, as AI still has a very long way to go. But in well specified situations computers can test the environment, find patterns, learn and draw conclusions. We humans are still needed to place those in perspective in a more comprehensive system, but the possibility to learn with all which that implies is already realized and the sky is the limit.

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I don't think it would be degrading at all to find out that life is purely physical. But I have yet to see a procedure established where life is created from inanimate matter.

That is not a good argument against the physicality of life. It took evolution billions of years to arrive at the most primitive life forms, so you can hardly expect that it is a simple matter to reproduce that process in a laboratory. There do exist theories about the process, but the difficulty is that in contrast to later life forms there is probably no fossil record, so testing those theories is very difficult. Dawkins gives short descriptions of some of these theories in his books. I have a strong suspicion that you haven't read anything by Dawkins yet. I think you should read his books as he can explain such things much better than I can.

I think that those who state as fact that life is not a separate "it" (property of some kind of unknown something, force, energy, plasma, whatever you want to call it) capable of making inanimate matter become a a unique entity are making a faith-based claim so far. They only have speculation. In the meantime, we know that when "it" goes away, "it" does not come back. Yet we can transplant kidneys and other parts between bodies without affecting the "it" at all.

It seems you have a weird notion of the scientific process. Fields like physics and biology are based on tightly integrated sets of basic principles. In research we always start from the null hypothesis that such a set of basis principles is valid, and that every new discovery or theory must be in accordance with these principles. Only as a last resort, when the evidence is overwhelming that those basic principles lead to a contradiction, they will be changed. Well, if there is anything well established in science, it is the biochemical basis of life with DNA and all that. There isn't really any mystery in what dying means, it can be completely explained. If you don't believe that, you should really study some biology and in particular molecular biology. I don't know if there are good introductory texts, perhaps Jenna could tell us (BTW, I haven't seen her for a long time now, is she still there?) Now the question how life originated from inanimate matter is not yet solved for the reasons I mentioned above. But that is a question of missing data so that it's difficult to test our theories. But merely insufficient data are no reason to assume that the theory is incorrect or incomplete, that would be idle speculation.

"Direct perception" can't tell us anything about the microbiological basis of life, therefore it's completely useless in that regard. It's only a crude first approximation, that may be good enough to survive but that can't tell us anything about the deeper levels of explanation, for which we need science with its instruments. It is always a source of frustration for scientists that the layman blithely assumes in his ignorance that the theory needs to be challenged, while he in fact doesn't realize how well established that theory is with all its implications. Cobblers should stick to their lasts!

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But my point is -- do you think that the "it" that makes the difference between a living being and a carcass has to be something other than physical matter and/or energy , or a certain state or arrangement of physical matter and/or energy? (Of course, I use the term "energy" in a physics sense, not in a "new age" sense such as "negative energy", etc).

And I may be mistaken, but I think I pick up a hint that you think it somehow would devalue living entities, makes them less worthy of being loved and admired ("being called *merely* a result and not an entity in itself") if the "it" is "merely" the same type of physical stuff as the remaining carcass. I don't think this is any more true than that an awesome sunset ceases to be awesome once you understand all of the physics of light scattering, etc.

Well said, MBM, I quite agree.

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Which gets me back to Paul's "causal reasoning." You see, where I think Dennett leaves out a BIG gap in his presentation is in speaking of cognitive processes as if Paul's "logical" and "mathematical" processes were the whole shebang -- and whereas those latter two processes can be loosely analogized to computer functioning (though I think that even with "logical" and "mathematical" processing, there are important differences in how an organism does them from how a computer does them), causal thinking can't accurately thus be analogized. A computer does not do the sort of processing that organisms do in their endless testing of their environments. (Thus, retying to the epistemological point I was trying to make to Dragonfly: a computer couldn't do science, which is a subcategory of testing.)

But computers can do that, only still in a limited way, as AI still has a very long way to go. But in well specified situations computers can test the environment, find patterns, learn and draw conclusions. We humans are still needed to place those in perspective in a more comprehensive system, but the possibility to learn with all which that implies is already realized and the sky is the limit.

I'd like to make an observation (a familiar one to some) with regard to the above quotes, and more generally against the background of this whole thread (pardon me, if I've missed something).

Leaving aside the fact that all "computation" (including algorithms) is an observer relative phenomenon, and that we can in fact describe nearly anything in nature as a "computer", given the proper variable assignments (as Searle puts it, "You could never discover computational processes in nature independently of human interpretation because any physical process you might find is computational only relative to some interpretation.")....there is another large "gap" in Dennett's (and Dragonfly's) computational/functionalist presentation of consciousness...that of "consciousness" itself, the metaphysical status of the experience of conscious states --first person, subjective experiences (pain, joy, blue, green). In Dennett's framework, such things simply don't exist, but rather simply seem to exist (casting consciousness as an illusion, metaphysically speaking).

As Dennett writes:

"Philosophers have adopted various names for the things in the beholder (or properties of the beholder) that have been supposed to provide a safe home for the colors and the rest of the properties that have been banished from the external world by the triumphs of physics: raw feels, phenomenal qualities, intrinsic properties of conscious experiences, the qualitative content of mental states, and, of course, qualia, the term I use. There are subtle differences in how these terms have been defined, but I am going to ride roughshod over them. I deny that there are any such properties. But I agree wholeheartedly that there seem to be." (Dennett, 1994, p129)

"What science has actually shown us is just that light-reflecting properties of objects ... cause creatures to go into various discriminative states ... These discriminative states of observer's brains have various primary properties (their mechanistic properties due to their connections, the excitation states of their elements, and so forth), and in virtue of these primary properties, they ... have secondary, merely dispositional properties. In human creatures with language, for instance, these discriminative states often eventually dispose the creatures to express verbal judgements alluding to the color of various things. The semantics of these statements makes it clear what colors supposedly are: reflective properties of the surfaces of objects or of transparent volumes ... And that is just what colors are in fact ... Do not our internal discriminative states also have some special intrinsic properties, the subjective, private, ineffable properties that constitute the way things look to us (sound to us, smell to us, and so forth)? No. The dispositional properties of those discriminative states already suffice to explain all the effects: the effects on both peripheral behavior (saying "Red!", stepping on the brake, and so forth) and internal behavior (judging "Red!", seeing something as red, reacting with uneasiness or displeasure if red things upset one). Any additional qualitative properties or qualia would thus have no positive role to play in any explanations, nor are they somehow vouchsafed to us directly in intuition. Qualitative properties that are intrinsically conscious are a myth, an artifact of misguided theorizing, not anything given pretheoretically." (Ibid, p130).

While the terms of reduction many vary from thinker to thinker (computational processes, neurological activity, etc), the effect of the material reduction is the same, as Nathaniel Branden writes in *The Psychology of Self-Esteem*,

"That mental processes are correlated with neural process in the brain, in no way affects the status of consciousness as a unique and irreducible primary. It is a species of what philosophers term "the reductive fallacy" to assert that mental process are "nothing but" neural processes--that, for example, the perception of an object *is* a collection of neural impulses, or that a thought *is* a certain pattern of brain activity. A perception and the neural processes that mediate it are not identical, nor are a thought and the brain activity that accompany it. Such an equation is flagrantly anti-empirical and logically absurd."--Nathaniel Branden, from *The Psychology of Self-Esteem*

And, as Max Velmans puts it to Dennett directly:

"If consciousness is quite different from what people think it is, but it does exist, then what is it that exists? Or to put it another way, if you remove the phenomena from phenomenal consciousness, in what sense is whatever remains "consciousness"?"

[snip]

"I am guessing here, but I assume that your primary motivation for your full-blooded attack on first-person phenomenal consciousness is to defend the completeness of an entirely third-person, reductionist view of the world. If facts about consciousness cannot be translated without loss into "functional zombie" facts, then an entirely third-person account of the mind (such as that provided by computational functionalism) remains incomplete.

This isn't of course the first time in the history of science when it has proved difficult to squeeze the phenomena under investigation into an existing theory or even a prevailing worldview. I accept that sometimes it just needs a bit more effort - but at other times it just can't be done. And if it can't be done, I would argue that the rational, scientific response is to expand or modify existing theory, investigative methods, and even the prevailing worldview, to accommodate the phenomena."

RCR

Edited by R. Christian Ross
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In Objectivism, at least the parts I read and studied, observation (input through the senses) is an essential part of reason.

There is no such thing as observation plus reason.

Well, if you reason about the number of angels that can dance on the point of a needle, observation is no part of that reasoning.

But, without "observation" (inconjunction, I think, with a consciously guided process of differentiation and conceptualization) you'll never know that angels, dancing, points, needles or even numbers exist (to argue about) in the first place.

RCR

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- that science is a category of testing; science isn't just "observation combined with reasoning" unless you're including "testing" in the very meaning of "observation." (I think "testing" should be included if by "observation" you're referring to organismic observation, which requires am organismic sensory apparatus. Such a sensory apparatus does testing; the sensory organs are always moving and sampling -- or they don't register: e.g., if a stationary spot is affixed, on a floating contact-lens platform, to the eye, soon the spot isn't seen.)

Is it the sensory apparatus that does the testing? Is it the eye that does the seeing? Or are these just instruments for gathering information for some core of consciousness to see and test?

I have understood Ellen's use of the word "testing" to be a particular type of action of this core of consciousness rather than the gross actions of the body, or even brain, of the organism. It is this core of consciousness that can focus on some particular part of the visual field to "see" a stationary spot affixed to a contact lens on the eye. It is also this core of consciousness that stops paying attention to the spot which stops the spot from being seen.

I think what Ellen means by "testing" can easily be misunderstood as something done by the material structures of the body or brain. (Here I mean material in the sense of matter, not in the broader sense of physical. Since I see matter and energy as being composed of some more fundamental physical/kinetic stuff, and see consciousness as being a flow of this fundamental stuff through structures of matter, I see the core of consciousness as being a focal point of this flow and of awareness.) Instead, I take her meaning of the word "testing" to be attached to the (non-material but physical/kinetic) flow of images in the focus of awareness of the organism. It is this flow of images in the focus of awareness that cannot be duplicated by computers and has a fundamentally non-algorithmic action. Ellen's testing is the organism's seeking to gather information about its world and determine its meaning before determining further action; the act of which affects the flow of images in the focus of awareness. The affect that given information has on the parts of this flow is experienced as being integrating, neutral, or disintegrating to the flow as a whole. The principle of increasing integration is built into the flow of awareness (I would say by electromagnetic forces). Flow experiences that are experienced as integrating are pursued, while one's that are experienced as disintegrating are avoided.

Add a couple of billion years of evolution to these organisms who's cores of awareness actively seek out experiences that increase integration and avoid experiences that decrease integration, and you have Ellen trying to choose between two paths that will take her to the opposite corner of a rectangle. Her choice will be determined by her evaluation of which will maximize her fulfilment (i.e.: integration). She will project possible images of each of the two paths and will have a response to those images based on what her flow of awareness experiences as integrating. This response would determine the course of action she would take if it were not for the fact that evolution has also given her the capacity to project this response and hold it, along with other responses, in awareness in the form of emotions connected to images of possible action plans, goals, current context, etc. Then, seeing a broad set of choices of images connected to images, with each holding a particular meaning in terms of relative fulfilment, or relative effects on her core's integration, Ellen will make a choice. This act of choice is not necessitated by the images. The images do not pass energy to Ellen's body to make it move. The images are just information (ripples) in the flow of awareness. It is the flow of awareness– i.e.: the flow of the fundamentally physical/kinetic stuff that makes up the core of awareness– that initiates the action of Ellen's body now that she has finished "testing" her alternatives.

External antecedent events and projections of possible future events cause ripples in the flow of awareness which act as information rather than necessitation. The energy for the action of consciousness comes from the proactive core of awareness rather than from external antecedent events. This is the nature of volition. Volition means the energy for the actions of consciousness exists in and is initiated from the flow of awareness. While automated programs are in place (see the function of the cerebellum) to channel incoming information automatically into complex outgoing actions without entering the flow of awareness, the actions of consciousness are not just reactions to the actions of external antecedent events.(Note: automated programs are built from the pieces of chosen actions just as the automation of riding a bike is built from the awkward, uncoordinated willed action segments that require a great deal of attention to initiate and put together for the first time.) Just as the ripple in a stream are not what has the power to carve the landscape– it is the flow of the stream, a ripple in the flow of awareness is not what has the power to set the body in motion– it is the perpetual flow of awareness itself.

Here is my little causal fiction:

Causation does not work the way we have thought it does. Antecedent events are not sufficient to cause the actions of consciousness because causation does not work by transferring energy. The energy for action is an intrinsic property of the entity that acts. This is true all the way down to fundamental particles. The actions of one entity affects the actions of another entity simply by affecting the degrees of freedom the second entity's has to express its energy. As such, an entity's actions are informed by the presence and motion of other entities. Since the energy for action is an intrinsic property of the entity that acts, and other entities only pass information regarding the degrees of freedom of the field, the entity's actions are determined by its own nature and are limited by other entities, rather than necessitated or determined by the actions of other entities. Therefore, the position and motion of other entities is not sufficient to necessitate or determine the action of the original entity. Proactive causation applies to all entities and all actions of entities but determinism is an illusion of a certain class of entities we call matter, who's component's interactions cause the properties of inertia.

Ellen, please let me know if I captured some part of what you meant by "testing."

Paul

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I'd like to toss in a few other related quotes from Max Velmans on the relationship between causality and idenity, with respect to reductive theories of consciousness ...

*The Science of Consciousness*

Edited by Max Velmans

Introduction to the Science of Consciousness:

Max Velmans

"A study of brain processing *could* only be a study of consciousness as such, if consciousness *is* just a form of brain processing (a form of philosophical reductionism). Elsewhere (Velmans, 1991a, 1991b, in press) I have argued against premature closure on this issue. It is widely recognized (even by its proponents) that philosophical reductionism gives no adequate understanding of the phenomenology of the conscious experience. It is less well understood that reductionism also obscures how consciousness as such *relates* to the processes which cause or correlate with it in the brain.

"The proximal neural causes and correlates of pain are undoubtedly located in the brain. However, in science, the causes or correlates of a given event are not ontologically identical to that event. For example, the movement of a wire through a magnetic field causes an electrical current to flow through the wire. But that does not mean that the electrical current is ontologically identical to the movement of the wire through the magnetic field. Nor, if one reverses this experiment, is it right to say that the current one passes through a wire is ontologically identical to the surrounding magnetic field produced as a result.

"The current is in the wire and the magnetic field is distributed in the space around the wire. They cannot be the same thing for the reason that they are in different places. Similarly, innervation of the appropriate pain circuitry in the brain may cause an experience of pain in the finger. These cannot be the same thing, because they are in different places.

"No, I am not being facetious. This simple example demonstrates a general principle which leads one away from both dualism and reductionism towards a 'reflexive' model of how consciousness relates to the brain and the physical world."

[snip]

"In sum, damage to S's finger ends up as a pain in the finger. That is why the entire process is 'reflexive'. If S pricks a finger with a pin, there is only *one* experience of pain that results--the pain that S experiences in the finger. [An observer] E has no access to S's experience, and so has no evidence that S is mistaken about where the pain is. On the contrary, E can easily confirm S's report by sticking a pin into his or her own finger. In this way, the observation that sticking a pin in a finger produces pain in the finger is intersubjective and repeatable (thereby fulfilling the basic conditions for scientific investigation of this phenomenon--see Velmans, 1993a). Given this, why do so many philosophers and scientists currently *insist* that the pain *must* be in the brain?"

RCR

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Ellen, please let me know if I captured some part of what you meant by "testing."

I think, and I offer this for the sake of clarity with respect to the arugement, that ES's discussion about "testing" is at root much the same as Nathaniel Branden's formulation of the matter...

Nathaniel Branden

*The Psychology of Self-Esteem*

"That which man does, declare the advocates of determinism, he *had* to do--that which he believes, he *had* to believe--if he focuses his mind he *had* to--if he evades the effort of focusing, he *had* to--if he is guided solely by reason, he *had* to be--if he is ruled instead by feeling or whim, he *had* to be--he *couldn't help it*.

"But if this were true, no knowledge--no *conceptual* knowledge--would be possible to man. No theory could claim greater plausibility than the other--including the theory of psychological determinism.

"Man is neither omniscient nor infallible. This means: a> that he must work to *achieve* his knowledge, and b> that the mere presence of an idea inside his mind does not prove that the idea is true; many ideas may enter a man's mind which are false. But if man believes what he *has* to believe, if he is not free to test his beliefs against reality and validate or reject them--*if the actions and content of his mind are determined by factors that may or may not have anything to do with reason, logic, and reality*--then he can never know if his conclusions are true or false.

"Knowledge consists of the correct identification of the facts of reality; and in order for man to know that the contents of his mind *do* constitute knowledge, in order for him to know that he has identified the facts of reality correctly, he requires a means of testing his conclusions. The means is the process of *reasoning*--of testing his conclusions against reality and checking for contradictions. But this validation is possible only if his *capacity* to judge is free--i.e., nonconditional (given a normal brain). If his capacity to judge is *not* free, there is no way for a man to discriminate between his believes and those of a raving

lunatic.

But then how did the advocates of determinism acquire *their* knowledge? What is its validation?"

RCR

Edited by R. Christian Ross
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Christian,

Thank you very much for these last few posts. I feel like the cavalry just arrived to ward off Dennet's Roughshod Riders.

:)

Seriously, I don't know what value reductionists get out of denying that consciousness is a primary, like a subparticle is (or at least their beloved reduction is), but I do have one attitude that I think is healthy. Many of these reductionists are brilliant at what they do and many wonderful products are the result, so I (my primary "it," of course, together with all my subparticles and structures) can certainly enjoy the benefits of their labors without having to take their metaphysics seriously. (Specifically, I mean their whole metaphysics, not the reductionist part where they shine.) And if they wish to deny their primary "it," that's no skin off my nose. It's their "it." They can do whatever they want to with it.

It seems like such denial is a psychological necessity for some of them to get going and be brilliant. Sort of like delimiting the area of inquiry, otherwise they choke up. I find that curious because I don't find a similar need inside myself to relate to this. Maybe I do, but it is very different. We all need some kind of basis for certainty in order to do a lot of hard work thinking-wise, otherwise we flounder and start daydreaming. My own basis for such certainty would be something like absolute confidence in the capacity of my mind and senses to know reality (even though I know they have moments of internal distortion through illness) - together with a "will-generated" drive that roughly translates as "I must be be true to my own observations and conclusions." Based on that, I can study and think about anything and get into a high degree of complication.

Back to consciousness being more than just brain processing. I really like Max Velmans's phrase: "... I have argued against premature closure on this issue."

"Premature closure" is exactly what the reductionist denial of "consciousness as a primary" proposes. There is no evidence whatsoever to justify this and plenty of evidence to keep it open.

(I wonder if there is some kind of fallacy called "premature reduction"... :) )

Michael

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Ellen, please let me know if I captured some part of what you meant by "testing."

I think, and I offer this for the sake of clarity with respect to the arugement, that ES's discussion about "testing" is at root much the same as Nathaniel Branden's formulation of the matter...

Christian,

I think we may be talking about the same existent using different mental operating systems to process the information contained in our experience and manipulate the images of the imagination. You and Branden are using the language of the philosophical operating system. I'm sure Dragonfly would use the language of the scientific operating system. Where Ellen and I were interacting was on the level of the intuitive/causal operating system.

To quote Ellen:

I had a major brainstorm session last night, after reading, at about midnight my time, Paul's post #129. That post finally, I think, made clear to me just what Paul is talking about with his "causal reasoning" category. I believe it's intimately related to the category which I think of as "testing." And it's over the issue of "testing" where I keep having problems with Dennett's version of "compatibilism.

[...]

Which gets me back to Paul's "causal reasoning." You see, where I think Dennett leaves out a BIG gap in his presentation is in speaking of cognitive processes as if Paul's "logical" and "mathematical" processes were the whole shebang -- and whereas those latter two processes can be loosely analogized to computer functioning (though I think that even with "logical" and "mathematical" processing, there are important differences in how an organism does them from how a computer does them), causal thinking can't accurately thus be analogized. A computer does not do the sort of processing that organisms do in their endless testing of their environments. (Thus, retying to the epistemological point I was trying to make to Dragonfly: a computer couldn't do science, which is a subcategory of testing.)

I ran into this situation before when I tried to talk about NB's concept of "social metaphysics" in a way he did not think about it. He told me to leave his concept alone. What I was doing was exploring the concept on a deeper level of imagery using intuitive/causal operators, not trying to change the concept. When it comes to what we have been discussing on this thread, it is not just the language that is different; Ellen and I are entering a whole new causal paradigm. The images we are creating do not fit easily within the categories of current paradigms. They can be easily misunderstood and brushed aside as an unimportant nuisance. I think Ellen appreciates the value of the weird things I have been talking about and the strange way in which I talk about them. They are not just the product of a random flight of fantasy. I think she has created a similar realm of strangeness in her imagination in an attempt to explore the underlying realities of the world. It is in this shared created realm of strangeness that the exchange is taking place. Anyway, we can test this hypothesis by letting Ellen speak for herself.

Paul

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I'd like to toss in a few other related quotes from Max Velmans on the relationship between causality and idenity, with respect to reductive theories of consciousness ...

[..]

"The proximal neural causes and correlates of pain are undoubtedly located in the brain. However, in science, the causes or correlates of a given event are not ontologically identical to that event. For example, the movement of a wire through a magnetic field causes an electrical current to flow through the wire. But that does not mean that the electrical current is ontologically identical to the movement of the wire through the magnetic field. Nor, if one reverses this experiment, is it right to say that the current one passes through a wire is ontologically identical to the surrounding magnetic field produced as a result.

"The current is in the wire and the magnetic field is distributed in the space around the wire. They cannot be the same thing for the reason that they are in different places. Similarly, innervation of the appropriate pain circuitry in the brain may cause an experience of pain in the finger. These cannot be the same thing, because they are in different places.

Uh oh, another cobbler... I'm always wary when people start using words like "ontologically". Now what does it really mean to say that the current that passes through a wire is not ontologically identical to the surrounding magnetic field? How do you define "current"? Is it the electrons moving through the wire? But the magnetic field that accompanies the current is inexorably coupled to that current, no current without magnetic field. It is especially from an ontological viewpoint that the magnetic field is part of the current, they form one whole. For practical purposes we may divide the phenomenon "current" in a part in space that contains moving charges (the wire) and that we for convenience call the current and a part that does not (the environment), which we call the magnetic field generated by the current, but that is in fact a somewhat arbitrary division of the complete phenomenon which we associate with a current. The reason for such a division is that these different parts have different properties and can be studied separately, but ontologically seen they're one and the same phenomenon.

"In sum, damage to S's finger ends up as a pain in the finger. That is why the entire process is 'reflexive'. If S pricks a finger with a pin, there is only *one* experience of pain that results--the pain that S experiences in the finger. [An observer] E has no access to S's experience, and so has no evidence that S is mistaken about where the pain is. On the contrary, E can easily confirm S's report by sticking a pin into his or her own finger. In this way, the observation that sticking a pin in a finger produces pain in the finger is intersubjective and repeatable (thereby fulfilling the basic conditions for scientific investigation of this phenomenon--see Velmans, 1993a). Given this, why do so many philosophers and scientists currently *insist* that the pain *must* be in the brain?"

While that quite easily can be demonstrated. The pain in the finger is another example of the user illusion. The pain is real enough, but the illusion is that it is in the finger. The phenomenon pain is of course from an evolutionary point of view advantageous; it is an alarm signal that something is wrong and that we should do something about that, without the pain mechanism we wouldn't survive very long. It is of course also important to know where the cause of the pain is, so that we can attend to that part of our body. Therefore our brain is programmed to project the feeling of pain (and other feelings) onto the place where the pain is caused, in case the finger, creating the user illusion. Such projections can even extend outside of the body, for example when we drive a car, we can "feel" the road, or when we use tools or play an instrument the tactile sense often seems to be further away, in those tools or in the instrument. Of course this is an illusion, there is no feeling at the end of pair of tweezers or in the blade of a knife. It is the interpretation by the brain of the incoming signals that creates that illusion; probably our brain has evolved such strategy while it makes the interaction with the environment faster.

As the illusion is always there, it's difficult to get out of it and realize that it is an illusion. In such cases we can sometimes get more insight when the system is malfunctioning and we realize that what seems obvious to us isn't so obvious after all. In the case of the pain in the finger there are two complementary situations which deviate from the standard situation. The first is when we cut the appropriate nerve: we may hammer on our finger or stick pins into it without feeling any pain. As we don't feel any pain, we can't say that the pain is in the finger, there is no pain. No doubt many signals are generated there, but they can't cross the newly created barrier, and there is no feeling of pain. This shows that the pain must be in the brain and not in the finger, those signals in the finger in themselves do not generate pain. The second situation is in a sense the reverse of the first one, namely in the case of a phantom limb. In such a situation a person may feel pain in a finger that doesn't even exist! So where is the pain? In the brain of course, even while it tries to convince the person that it is the finger that hurts, but as the finger doesn't exist that is obviously wrong. It's a perfect example of a user illusion that for once does not correspond to a real situation and therefore shows that it is an illusion.

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I think the issue of whether the pain is IN the finger hinges on ambiguity of the word "in," as with the old saw, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, is there any sound?" Depends on what you mean by "sound." If you mean the sound waves, the physical stimulus, then yes; if you mean the experience of hearing sound, then no. Similarly, the pain is experienced as being in the finger; there's no sensation of the brain's hurting. If you're talking about what's going on neurologically, then there's a respect in which it makes sense to speak of the pain as "in" the brain, but I think that's imprecise. Precisely, the brain activity is required for the experience to occur, but where the experience itself is localized is at the place where it hurts.

I've only had time to skim a few of the posts which have appeared on this thread since my post 131. Later about those, I hope. But, Dragonfly, before this is forgotten in the shuffle, I am still curious (see my post 119) to know if the "English acquaintance" of yours from whom you heard the expression "seeing lions in the way/path" is a British English acquaintance. I have heard this expression used by Brits, but it isn't American idiom.

Ellen

___

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But the magnetic field that accompanies the current is inexorably coupled to that current, no current without magnetic field.

This seems quite obvious, but the same could be said of whole host of interrelated phenomenon, for example, I could argue that human life, so far as we know it, is inexorably coupled to the Earth, no human life without the Earth--but I would hardly suggest that the Earth and human life are ontologically (metaphysically) identical.

Further, no fish without water, no tree without soil, no information without light, and on and on...

RCR

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I think the issue of whether the pain is IN the finger hinges on ambiguity of the word "in," as with the old saw, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, is there any sound?" Depends on what you mean by "sound." If you mean the sound waves, the physical stimulus, then yes; if you mean the experience of hearing sound, then no. Similarly, the pain is experienced as being in the finger; there's no sensation of the brain's hurting. If you're talking about what's going on neurologically, then there's a respect in which it makes sense to speak of the pain as "in" the brain, but I think that's imprecise. Precisely, the brain activity is required for the experience to occur, but where the experience itself is localized is at the place where it hurts.

And where is that in the case of the man with the phantom limb?

I've only had time to skim a few of the posts which have appeared on this thread since my post 131. Later about those, I hope. But, Dragonfly, before this is forgotten in the shuffle, I am still curious (see my post 119) to know if the "English acquaintance" of yours from whom you heard the expression "seeing lions in the way/path" is a British English acquaintance. I have heard this expression used by Brits, but it isn't American idiom.

He surely is. I'm surprised to hear that it isn't obvious to Americans. Google gives for example 3,4 million hits for "English people".

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