Imagination and Causality in Quantum Physics

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] 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?

Just as with a real limb, the experience is localized where it hurts. That is where the experience is experienced irrespective of what's necessary to cause the experience.

Ellen

__

[Dragonfly]

Just as with a real limb, the experience is localized where it hurts. That is where the experience is experienced irrespective of what's necessary to cause the experience.

Then "where" refers to a non-existing place, a place that exists only in the (in this case involuntary) imagination. And where (in the physical sense) are figments of the imagination localized if not in the brain?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Who says pain is only one thing or occurs in only one place - brain or finger? Aren't both needed, plus the nervous system? In that case, doesn't the feeling of pain occur in both finger and brain?

Also, doesn't memory play a role with missing limbs? Doesn't remembered pain exist? Sure it does.

But I would love to see a person experience pain in a limb they were born missing.

Won't happen.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Just as with a real limb, the experience is localized where it hurts. That is where the experience is experienced irrespective of what's necessary to cause the experience.

Then "where" refers to a non-existing place, a place that exists only in the (in this case involuntary) imagination. And where (in the physical sense) are figments of the imagination localized if not in the brain?

Yes, "where" in that case does refer to a non-existing place, which is nevertheless where the pain is experienced as being; it is not experienced as located in the brain. I think you're confusing the cause of the experience and the experience itself -- and I expect we could go round on this ten more times, twenty more times, and still be stuck "where" we are.

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

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...

That is not the same. In your examples it is easy to separate the two physically: a man on the moon, a fish in the kitchen, a tree in the river, information by sound...So it's clear that these pairs are not identical. On the other hand you can't separate the magnetic field from the current, it is part of the phenomenon current. This is a fundamental difference with your examples. Perhaps it's easier for you to see with the example of a permanent magnet. The magnetic field of the magnet is inseparable from the magnet, a magnet without magnetic field is no magnet. So a magnet and its field are ontologically one and the same thing. That we may consider the different parts of that thing separately doesn't change that fact.

[Dragonfly]

Who says pain is only one thing or occurs in only one place - brain or finger? Aren't both needed, plus the nervous system? In that case, doesn't the feeling of pain occur in both finger and brain?

Of course both are needed, but you should distinguish between the question where the pain itself (physically the place where the physiological structure generates the feeling) occurs and the question where we experience the pain, in the sense (unfortunately the word "experience" is ambiguous here): where we think that the pain is. No one disputes that we think that the pain is in the finger, but the sensation is generated in the brain. No connection between finger and brain: no pain, but a false signal in the brain can generate pain, even if there is no finger at all.

Also, doesn't memory play a role with missing limbs? Doesn't remembered pain exist? Sure it does.

But I would love to see a person experience pain in a limb they were born missing.

Won't happen.

How do you know? It may depend on the reason that a limb is missing. I just don't know enough about the development of the nervous system at birth and of the possible mechanisms that cause a missing limb to answer that question. But you shouldn't forget one point: phantom pain does not necessarily correspond to a pain that the person perceived when he still had that limb, so the term "remembered pain" may be misleading. Feeling pain in a finger that is no longer there does not imply that this is a "memory" of a hurt finger if your arm is amputated. Missing toes may be itching, but that doesn't mean that this is memory of real itching toes. Such sensations are probably caused by certain stimulations of the nerve endings at the end of the remaining stump, which are incorrectly interpreted by the brain, just as stimulating some parts with your brain with an electrode can give rise to the perception of odors or sounds which do not exist in reality. Really, at the end it is the brain that ultimately generates all those sensations, whether it is fed with "correct" (corresponding to the real situation) or "false" signals.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Do you know of any instance of a person born without legs (or something similar) reported having experienced pain - or even itching or pleasure - in where the limbs should be?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Do you know of any instance of a person born without legs (or something similar) reported having experienced pain - or even itching or pleasure - in where the limbs should be?

I don't know of any instance of a person born without legs or something similar, so my sample size is zero and that is a bit too small to draw conclusions.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Basing solely on a sample size and excluding memory as you are doing, do you think it is entirely within the realm of possibility (and even reasonable) to suggest that pain can be thought to be felt in places where members should be where no memory of the member is possible since it was missing from birth?

Going one step further, would that apply to painful eyesight like a blinding flash for those born blind at birth?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I certainly won't rule out the possibility. Like Sherlock Holmes I'm not theorizing in the absence of data.

(and now it's bedtime for me, see you tomorrow)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

May Angels watch over you as you sleep.

Michael

[reason.on]

That is not the same. In your examples it is easy to separate the two physically: a man on the moon, a fish in the kitchen, a tree in the river, information by sound... On the other hand you can't separate the magnetic field from the current, it is part of the phenomenon current. This is a fundamental difference with your examples. Perhaps it's easier for you to see with the example of a permanent magnet. The magnetic field of the magnet is inseparable from the magnet, a magnet without magnetic field is no magnet. So a magnet and its field are ontologically one and the same thing.

I am happy to provide another example.

Mass and gravity. No mass, no gravity. The interaction between mass and spacetime produces gravity, and clearly mass and gravity are not identical, no more so than a boat is identical to its wake (which is the manifest relationship between the boat and the water); how could it be that any entity or thing be *identical* to the arena in which it exists? If "things" are not discrete from their backgrounds, if things are not discrete from their consequences, if X is not different from Y, then there can be no "things" at all, only the smooth, featureless singularity of the background itself.

Further, while I am not an expert in the field of physics, it is my understanding that Einstein demonstrated with his special theory of relativity that electric and magnet FIELDS are in fact two aspects of the same thing (where as they had been previously understood and studied as two related, but independent entities), however, I am not aware of any theories which propose, directly or indirectly, that a moving electric charge IN a wire (generally, I believe, conceived of as moving, charged subatomic particles) is metaphysically identical to the consequential electromagnetic field, which is distributed AROUND the wire. As Velmans points out, the two are not in the same place, therefore can not be the same thing--ontologically speaking.

That we may consider the different parts of that thing separately doesn't change that fact.

That things interact and have relationships between themselves and their backgrounds, does not necessitate that things or their relationships--which are a part of a system-whole--are metaphysically identical to one and another. For example, the smoke from a cigarrette is not the same as the cigarette itself. Further, would you suggest that red blood cells are identical with the circulatory framework? Would you suggest that the heart and the lungs are identical because their precise functions are inseparable parts of the body whole? Or that water and the human body are the same thing?

RCR

Edited September 23, 2006 by R. Christian Ross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I certainly won't rule out the possibility. Like Sherlock Holmes I'm not theorizing in the absence of data.

Sure you do. You rule out life and consciousness as a primaries.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Dragonfly,

I certainly won't rule out the possibility. Like Sherlock Holmes I'm not theorizing in the absence of data.

Sure you do. You rule out life and consciousness as a primaries.

Michael,

If a scientist can't measure it, he can't quantify it. If a scientist can't quantify it, it doesn't exist. Dragonfly does not rule out life and consciousness as primaries, his scientific lens does. It also rules out any discussion of reality beyond the quantum limit. Unfortunately, if as I suspect, the basis of life and consciousness is to be found in the dynamics of entities that underlie and cause quantum reality and are unmeasurable, then the scientific lens cannot ever discover the fundamental nature of reality. But people can. People can view the world through more than one lens. Discovering the fundamental nature of reality requires we be more than any particular lens and we be able to switch between particular lenses. Equally, the lens of philosophy was getting us nowhere until science came along to guide it. Think of it as a symbiotic relationship.

Actually, this has something to do with my thinking about no longer calling myself an Objectivist. My philosophical lens is Objectivism. But this is not my only lens. Understanding myself and my world requires I switch between lenses. My causal/intuitive lens is my primary lens. It is functionally more primary than and sees some things very differently from my Objectivist lens.

Have you ever considered trying to see the world through a scientist's lens? It doesn't require math. Just a basic philosophical understanding of applied mathematics. (See above)

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

Here is my all-time favorite David Kelley quote. It is from The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, p. 77:

An Objectivist thinker must be a thinker first, an Objectivist second.

When you say philosophically you are an Objectivist, I think that is perfectly fine. That certainly doesn't make you any less of an Objectivist, nor does saying you are an Objectivist make you any less of a thinker. (How does causality-freak sound? ) I have an interesting article coming on defining who is an Objectivist that should cause a bit of a stir.

I fully agree with your lens metaphors. Yes, I think like a scientist often. I have had a weird education. I was trained as a trombonist and classical music composer. Later I was trained as a symphony orchestra conductor. Then I was trained on-the-job in popular music production and finally motion pictures (where I did it all: act, screenwriting, editing at a time when it was sill film on moviolas, sountracks, dubbing, the whole shebang).

After a melt-down, I went into technical translations to get away from the craziness of the artistic world. I ended up translating about 35,000 pages from Portuguese to English in all kinds of subjects. As my former "lens" so to speak let me see things like telephone poles and gas ducts and electricity and things like that as elements of nature that grew like trees, I found the prospect of translating the technical specifications of laying a natural gas pipeline fascinating. I realized that if I did it wrong, I could provoke an explosion and I really enjoyed that responsibility. (I sincerely believe that one of the reasons Brazil's enormous initial problems with cell telephones was due to poor quality translations for the public privatization bids.) I did a lot of medical translation and even scientific ones. (My favorite was the effects on the hearts of pregnant rats when they ran.)

During this stint, I learned to think like a scientist and this has served me well when I have needed to discover technical things about new experiences in my life. It also provided me with a general education I would have never gotten as an artist.

As a creator, of course, I am very familiar with the intuitive lens.

About measuring life, I would like to suggest that the insurance industry does not exactly share the reductionist's bias about not being able to measure it. insurance people measure all aspects of human life qua life they can devise because their money depends on it. I believe the subparticle approach is not too interesting to them in mapping the effects of aging on productivity or life extensions, but I do see stem cell technology being of great interest. (It will make people live longer so they can pay a lot more premiums before croaking, thus increasing profits while delaying the time when the company has to cough up.)

Wanna know what I really think? I think scientists have the same psychological need for certainty we all have. The religious person has faith God exists. Objectivists have reason-based axioms. Reductionists say the universe reduces to fundamental stuff, preferably one thing only (and they only have faith that this is the only way since they can't prove it - and I find this to be quite an ironic flip side of the faith coin). You say we gotta change our glasses all the time...

I think I like the idea of changing glasses when you need to see things differently. We all have our inner Mr. Magoo.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

How does causality-freak sound?

Michael,

Show some respect for my efforts:

Causality-Super-Freak!

Thank-you.

btw- Shauna agrees with the label.

About measuring life or consciousness: Insurance companies or psychologists measure things and actions. Whether or not those measurements are presumed to have a causal basis other than the mechanics Dragonfly talks about is a matter of interpretation. The scientific interpretation is determined by the fact that there is no separate stuff of "life" or "consciousness" that has been, or probably can be, observed and measured. The philosophical and intuitive perspectives do not require that a thing be observed or measured to be included in there interpretations. Philosophical interpretations start with inductive generalizations (axioms) about existence and follow a process of reasoning to generate an image of the specifics. Scientific interpretations start with measurements of specific phenomena and follow a process of reasoning to generate a picture of the whole system. Therefore, the scientific lens, by its nature, cannot penetrate beyond what can be observed and measured. The philosophical lens penetrates this barrier because it is acting on a process of reasoning when it reaches the point of unobservables, not on observation. Both lenses must necessarily end in conflict when the imagination is not allowed to extend the vision of science into the realm of unobservables.

Just one extra note: the causal/intuitive lens can flow equally from the whole to the parts and from the parts to the whole. It is from this lens that philosophy's axioms are first derived. And it is through this lens that sciences observations can be extended. Being able to flow both from the whole to the parts and from the parts to the whole, the causal/intuitive lens can capture the nature of causation that is operative in non-local/non-linear systems. This causes a problem for the unidirectional (reductionist) processes of science. Look at the mess that has been made of interpreting quantum fields: cats that are both alive and dead at the same time or the existence of multiple realities. Quite a choice! Philosophers laugh at such silly notions, much the way scientists laugh at philosopher's silly notions.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

I wonder about one thing in the scientific method. Where does their capacity to measure come from if not from axioms? Come to think of it, throw in their capacity to observe, too. (I do mean capacities in the reasoning sense, of course.)

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Michael,

A scientist's capacity to measure comes from the same place as a philosopher's axioms; from the causal connections and creations he has formed in his imagination which is the intuitive perspective that has been developing from birth, long before he became a scientist.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

I fully agree. In essence, though, the tools of observation and measurement of the scientist are axiomatic in nature. Reductionist scientists just don't like the idea.

Frankly, the intuitive perspective is axiomatic in nature. There is no why to the capacity itself. It just is.

The hardest problem I have encountered with people in discussing axioms is that they treat them as metaphysical properties and not as concepts of metaphysical properties. (Thinking like this is where I got my interface idea.) Axiomatic concepts are not present in the thinking of a young child, however metaphysical properties are all around him. He is merely accumulating data and developing methods at that stage. Axiomatic concepts are formed at a more advanced stage of his cognitive development (and actually, for most people, they come in a form much different than how they are given in Objectivism).

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Michael,

Sometimes I wonder if anyone gets some of the strange things I say. Ellen, Charles, Jenna, and yourself have shown me that someone does. Thanks! I need that. Doubt always sends me into reevaluation and reinvention mode. Right now I'm more interested in communication: i.e.: information processing and self-expression mode.

I hope you don't mind what I have been doing with your "interface" idea. I think it is brilliant. It caused an explosion of images and connections for me. According to my view of causality, it caused this explosion by creating a new limit to the freedoms of the processes in my imagination that brought my created images (models) closer to my simply experienced images (evidence). Your words did not transfer any energy to my mind. The energy was already there.

I am starting to think of axiomatic concepts and systems of thought as being software programs for the mind that we can either create ourselves or adopt from others. All the different religions, all the different philosophies, and science are such programs. Ideally, we shouldn't face the need to decide on which program to adopt, or whether to create our own, until we are well on the way to adulthood. In the time between birth and adulthood, the mind should be actively evaluating, inventing, reevaluating, and reinventing the intuitive operating system and the images it contains and produces.

This, by the way, is what I think Ellen is referring to by "testing." Testing is the process of evaluating, inventing, reevaluating, and reinventing the intuitive operating system and the images it contains and produces. What I wrote previously was talking about this concept at a different level of abstraction. This is the base on which the other software interfaces and operates. Speaking for myself, it is also the base on which I operate.

Paul

Edited September 23, 2006 by Paul Mawdsley

[reason.on]

If a scientist can't measure it, he can't quantify it. If a scientist can't quantify it, it doesn't exist. Dragonfly does not rule out life and consciousness as primaries, his scientific lens does.

I completely agree. In fact, I was tempted to write something along these lines last night, as well.

Btw, this way of thinking about what is real is well rooted in the doctrines of behavioralism and has a name: verificationism, or scientism.

"Scientism is a belief that scientific knowledge is the foundation of all knowledge and that, consequently, scientific argument should always be weighted more heavily than other forms of knowledge, particularly those which are not yet well described or justified from within the rational framework, or whose description fails to present itself in the course of a debate against a scientific argument [such as first-person, subjective experiences like consciousness]."

Searle offers a further bit of clarity:

"Science does indeed aim at epistemic objectivity. The aim is to get a set of truths that are free of our special preferences and prejudices. But epistemic objectivity of *method* does not require ontological objectivity of *subject matter*. It is just an objective fact--in the epistemic sense--that I and people like me have pains [i.e. conscious states]. But the mode of existence of these pains is subjective--in the ontological sense. [some theorists have] a definition of science which excludes the possibility that science might investigate subjectivity, and [they] think the third-person objectivity of science forces [them] to this definition. But that is bad pun on "objectivity". The aim of science is to get a systemic account of how the world works. One part of the world consists of ontologically subjective phenomena. If we have a definition of science that forbids us from investigating that part of the world, it is the definition that has to be changed and not the world."

RCR

[Paul Mawdsley]

Christian,

Thanks for the grounding in formal and established language. I try to make up for my lack of formal study in various areas I am interested in with a whole lot of wheel reinventing. I always welcome the language of common educated usage. This is one more area in which I still have a lot of learning to do. Partly, I am trying to make up for the laziness I developed going through the educational system which arrested my formal training in my areas of interest. Branden's work helped me to snap-out of my laziness in my early twenties. Each time you put the discussion in the context of "official" language, I learn something. This is more beneficial and more cost-effective than taking any university course.

Paul

[reason.on]

This, by the way, is what I think Ellen is referring to by "testing."

I want to take a crack at further explicating ES's usage of "testing", I don't mean to be pretentious, or overly self-absorbed, and I might well be wrong, so if I end up muddying the waters, I am sorry...but attempting a "return" explication is simply a test of my own.

So...if I understand ES correctly (based upon more dialogues, of course, than what is present here)...

"Testing" is most broadly construed as the self-generated *motion* WITHIN something which is capable of conducting even the most basic forms of knowledge-seekingness, that there is--in the metaphysical sense--this motion, is in turn the foundation of all things epistemological--the means/methods to knowledge-seekingness--this motion, in turn, and consequentially, produces and influences a field of awareness AROUND the something.

Awareness (within and about something), coupled with the processes of reason (predicated on processes of concept formation) is then the foundation for all self-generated (human, at least) action within the physical world.

In other words, at the most basic level, self-generated "testing" IS volition...volition is the charge in motion, conducted by something, and with respect to some background, which produces, reflexively, a distributed field of awareness.

In turn, and in another more abstract sense, volition IS life--that is to say, the self-generated motion of "testing", of volition, is the primary characteristic of life itself; the thing which separates even single-celled organisms from grains of sand.

RCR

Edited September 23, 2006 by R. Christian Ross

[Paul Mawdsley]

Careful Christian, you are starting to sound strange indeed. I would just change the word "volition" to "proaction" and agree with everything you said. Volition has meanings to it that don't properly apply to simple organisms. There is no doubt that this discussion is the child of AR and NB's work.

Paul

[reason.on]

Careful Christian, you are starting to sound strange indeed. I would just change the word "volition" to "proaction" and agree with everything you said. Volition has meanings to it that don't properly apply to simple organisms. There is no doubt that this discussion is the child of AR and NB's work.

I'm not particularly adverse to sounding strange, especially when knowledge is on the line, but, to be clear, I was explicating (attempting, at least) ES's take on volition, which she has said many times is not the same as the Objectivist conception. It is true that the Objectivist conception of volition generally restricts itself to organisms that posses conceptual faculties, but as I understand her, Ellen does not abide by this restriction.

Hopefully, ES will be able to provide at least some feedback soon (sorry to put you on the spot, Ellen).

RCR