MATERALISTS BTFO

[Anonymous No.18039185]

>Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. (…) What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.

how can they ever recover from this?

[Anonymous No.18039238]

materialists will not care about any arguments because the arguments will be countered by realizing their own physical existence, rendering any anti-materialism notion as wrong

[Anonymous No.18039241]

>>18039238
Mary's room argument doesn't reject that there are material things, it is an argument that non material things also exist.

[Anonymous No.18039354]

>>18039185
Dennett:
>The Cartesian Theater may be a comforting image because it preserves the reality/appearance distinction at the heart of human subjectivity, but as well as being scientifically unmotivated, this is metaphysically dubious, because it creates the bizarre category of the objectively subjective—the way things actually, objectively seem to you even if they don’t seem to seem that way to you! (Smullyan, 1981) Some thinkers have their faces set so hard against “verificationism” and “operationalism” that they want to deny it even in the one arena where it makes manifest good sense: the realm of subjectivity. What Clifford Stoll calls the astronomer’s rule of thumb is a sardonic commentary on the vagaries of memory and the standards of scientific evidence, but it becomes the literal truth when applied to what gets “written” in memory. We might classify the Multiple Drafts model, then, as first-person operationalism, for it brusquely denies the possibility in principle of consciousness of a stimulus in the absence of the subject’s belief in that consciousness.
Dennett according to /lit/:
>UR NOT CONSHOOOS

[Anonymous No.18039434]

>>18039185
Yes, physicalism is absurd at best. See:
https://youtu.be/NVOi8cvEl5Y
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#CasAgaPhyIQuaCon
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/05/mind-body-problem-roundup.html

>>18039354
See:
https://youtu.be/lAB21FAXCDE from 01:12:30
https://www.amazon.fr/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/one-long-circular-argument/

[Anonymous No.18039443]

>>18039185
>>18039434
+ https://youtu.be/w6GmCyKylTw

[Anonymous No.18039792]

>>18039434
>See:
>a bunch of completely irrelevant shit
Why don't you think about the point I'm trying to make before you throw links at me?

[Anonymous No.18039885]

>>18039354
Btfo by subjective idealism

[Anonymous No.18040063]

>>18039792
>>a bunch of completely irrelevant shit
retard

[Anonymous No.18040090]

>novel sensory input carries new information

How does this refute physicalism?

[Anonymous No.18040114]

>>18040090
Yeah, this. It seems like the point being made is that language cannot provide specific sensory information, it can only provide descriptions of said sense data (but not that data itself).

[Anonymous No.18040119]

>>18040090
omg do we have to spell it out for you npc retards?

if physicalism is true, completely knowing on a theoretical level the physical basis of sight should automatically entail knowing what the subjective experience of a color is like even if you have never witnessed that color in person yourself

[Anonymous No.18040152]

>>18040119
>physical basis
Except that's wrong. You only know it on an intellectual basis. Language and theoretical memory do not equal actual physical (subjective) perception. This is like saying I should know what "bicycle" physically refers to just by hearing the word. Obviously the word imparts no actual knowledge of how it appears to the eyes (unless I recall it from prior memory), or feels to the nerves when I touch it.

[Anonymous No.18040206]

>>18039185
It's simple. Unconscious information processing is digital and discrete. Conscious thought is analog and waveform.

Neural processing is binary and conformable to computational theory. Conscious thought is associated with the electromagnetic field (EG waves). Conscious perception, color sight for instance, is a form of entanglement constructive interference between the brain's EG field and electromagnetic radiation of the light bouncing off the object.

[Anonymous No.18040211]

>>18040206
Also mass-energy equivalence shows that materialism is true even though conscious awareness and perception is not based on computational rules.

[Anonymous No.18040218]

>>18039885
>subjective idealism
Btfo'd by Reid

[Anonymous No.18040227]

>>18039185
>all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes
She has no acquaintance to the event, which is, in a way, also physical information, given that having a memory of an event is a physical state.
Therefore it isn't true she had all the physical information available beforehand.

[Anonymous No.18040229]

>>18040211
Also, like wifi, waveforms are perfectly capable of encoding complex information structures such as the visual representations of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.18040232]

>>18040063
>still doesn't get it
I know that paragraph is too much for you, but don't try to correct things you don't understand (as a general rule).

[Anonymous No.18040253]

>>18039885
>Btfo by subjective idealism
Might be, who the fuck knows what it is exactly that you mean by that. Do you?

[Anonymous No.18040257]

>>18039185
This is retarded. Mary knew all the physical facts that had to do with seeing colour and the brain’s response to colour, but that doesn’t mean her own first experience of colour isn’t still a novel learning experience. This is a horrid argument.

[Anonymous No.18040266]

>>18040257
That's the point you retard.

[Anonymous No.18040280]

>>18040253
Nobody tell him

[Anonymous No.18040281]

>>18040266
How is that the point? How does her having a firsthand experience disprove physicalism? It doesn’t. Youre such a melt

[Anonymous No.18040289]

>>18040281
If you need firsthand experience to understand a qualitative experience, then that proves qualia exists. Thus implying pantheism or some form of deism, and falsifying strict materialism.

[Anonymous No.18040297]

>>18040114
It's kind of ironic since physicalists assert that everything can be mathematically quanitifed but seem to forget that it can't offer a qualitative explanation

[Anonymous No.18040396]

>>18040280
>I'll refuse to elaborate to make fun of you but I totally have a very smart point that went over your head!
ok you win I guess

[Anonymous No.18040416]

>>18040396

[Anonymous No.18040447]

>>18040152
>Language and theoretical memory do not equal actual physical (subjective) perception.
you just proved how physicalism is false you dumbass
if physicalism is true, everything is physical, or at least reducible to the physical, but this experiment shows that there are things that are not physical and reducible to the physical. as you just said, no matter how complete a physical description is, it will never convey the semantics of a word (language) or the quale of an experiment

[Anonymous No.18040452]

>muh word games
midwits think this is an argument or something?

[Anonymous No.18040468]

>>18040452
the midwits are the ones who don't even understand the hard problem of consciousness

[Anonymous No.18040493]

>>18039434
>Peter Sjöstedt-H
>Bernardo Kastrup
ah yes the kook-list obsessed with mind-altering drugs and new age spirituality

[Anonymous No.18040521]

>>18039185
i'm pretty sure he's backed off of this argument

[Anonymous No.18040559]

>>18040493
your arguments convinced me

[Anonymous No.18040646]

>>18040416
she's so pretty

[Anonymous No.18040736]

>>18040229
I don't view consciousness in terms of computational processing though, because when we perceive something there is nothing to process. The electromagnetic waves from the outside world and the brain waves synchronize, and it is this coherence that constitutes perception. To see something means to be connected to it, to resonate at the same frequency.

Similarly, during sleep consciousness is offline or fragmented, because each neuron's local EG field is emitted asynchronously and therefore the respective waves engage in destructive interference and cancel each other out. Or they are scrambled and randomized as with a dream. Sensory perception allows for the coherence of the external field with the brain's field.

Ultimately this means that consciousness is indeed physical though not material, it's just based on energy rather than matter.

[Anonymous No.18040788]

>looks down at her perfect body, learns colors and sensations of divine quality

[Anonymous No.18040837]

>>18040788
>misses the point

[Anonymous No.18041316]

>>18040119
>if physicalism is true, completely knowing on a theoretical level the physical basis of sight should automatically entail knowing what the subjective experience of a color is like
physicalism doesn't entail this

[Anonymous No.18041396]

>>18040468
consciousness comes from the brain, if you lost all your memories you end up becoming a different person.

[Anonymous No.18041415]

>>18041396
>doesn't even know what consciousness is
Just shut up

[Anonymous No.18041423]

>>18041415
Ok, tell me what it is

[Anonymous No.18041427]

>>18039185
There are really two critical questions in this thought experiment. The first is what a physicalist account of knowledge looks like. The second is what it would mean to "know all physical information" about a phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.18041438]

>>18041423
What perceives the memory that changes in your example. The very fact of experience.

[Anonymous No.18041483]

>>18041438
So someone with anterograde amnesia is unconscious? They can't gain new memories they can only remember old ones are they conscious?

[Anonymous No.18041494]

>>18041483
actual NPC. jesus christ. why are americans like this?

[Anonymous No.18041515]

>>18041494
if someone is awake and can't gain new memories are they conscious, if someone is awake and can't gain or remember memories are they conscious?

[Anonymous No.18041547]

>>18041494
He can't be that dumb, he's trollin

[Anonymous No.18041667]

>>18041438
chemical/physical processes in the brain. Anything saying that anything material can't produce consciousness is pure cope.

[Anonymous No.18041702]

>>18041396
>commit heinous crimes
>bump my head
>become completely innocent

[Anonymous No.18041710]

>>18040289
>If you need firsthand experience to understand a qualitative experience, then that proves qualia exists. Thus implying pantheism or some form of deism, and falsifying strict materialism.
Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.18041717]

Suppose there's a physicalist theory of knowledge T that reduces facts about human knowledge to facts about a human brain. Any change in knowledge would necessarily reduce to some change in facts about the brain.

When Mary leaves her black and white room and sees color for the first time, is there a physical difference in her brain? If so, then the theory T needs only to be constructed such that the difference in her knowledge before and after is reducible to some of these differences in physical fact. The argument can only succeed if either 1. We think there is no identifiable physical difference in Mary's brain before and after being exposed to color, or 2. we think no theory like T can exist. Number 1 is almost certainly false--by assumption her retina has never been exposed to certain wavelengths of light, and whatever downstream neural activity that exposure would activate has probably never been triggered before. But number 2 is just begging the question. The thought experiment is meant to show that physicalism is false, so taking as a premise that knowledge cannot be physical is either to deny physicalism or to be a radical skeptic about knowledge.

It might be the case that no theory like T can exist, but this argument does nothing to show why.

[Anonymous No.18041724]

>>18041702

[Anonymous No.18041739]

>>18039185
False premise.

Mary wouldn’t work if there was no one around for her to attentionwhore and say how she is an empowered woman because she has a degree or any social media for her to post her boobs or her twirking in the lab.

/thread

[Anonymous No.18041751]

>>18041702
>Find guy that committed heinous crimes
>Dude suffered severe brain injury and has no memory whatsoever
>punishing him has no use and won't truly bring justice
>Fuck it put dude in electric chair anyway because we need to punish someone
It's like punishing a dog for eating you dinner 8 hours later.

[Anonymous No.18041755]

>>18041667
nice physicalism

[Anonymous No.18041805]

>>18041751
I'll just get a moderate concussion and forget the events of that day. I expect you to defend me in court

[Anonymous No.18041828]

>>18041805
>I-Ill get a minor bump so I still remember my heinous crimes, but I expect you to defend me in court!
Loosing all your memories is not any minor injury

[Anonymous No.18041958]

>>18041828
I dont need total memory loss to achieve innocence. If identity is contingent on memory then the acts of the forgotten day cannot be attributed to "me"
If I bump my head and forget the heinous acts I committed that day, then it wasn't really "me" who commited them. If you want a working concept of self that would still retain guilt of this hypothetical actor then you have to include more than contiguity of memory in your working definition of identity.

[Anonymous No.18042040]

>>18041958
>I dont need total memory loss to achieve innocence. If identity is contingent on memory then the acts of the forgotten day cannot be attributed to "me"
>If I bump my head and forget the heinous acts I committed that day, then it wasn't really "me" who committed them. If you want a working concept of self that would still retain guilt of this hypothetical actor then you have to include more than contiguity of memory in your working definition of identity.
You still have the capability of committing heinous acts if you still have the rest of your memory, it just shows that you're capable of committing them and are a threat to society if you only don't remember the heinous acts.
A person with zero memory is essentially a new person and can be reformed.

[Anonymous No.18042054]

>>18042040
Thats all true but beside the point. The act of restraining that person then shifts from a reason other than personal guilt. The point of the thought experiment isnt to investigate social ethics but the problem of identity. If you're willing to accept that the person isn't guilty then you're consistent with your concept of identity. If you want to insist guilt then we need a different idea of identity

[Anonymous No.18042074]

>>18041717
>If so, then the theory T needs only to be constructed such that the difference in her knowledge before and after is reducible to some of these differences in physical fact.
You just added another proof against physicalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#HemDil

[Anonymous No.18042095]

>>18039443
Very good argument against physicalism. More here: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/10/oerter-and-indeterminacy-of-physical.html , http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/01/revisiting-ross-on-immateriality-of.html
Yet to be refuted.

[Anonymous No.18042098]

>>18042054
The point I'm trying to convey I admit I done very poorly is that basing consciousness as someone being alive is very poor. If someone is living but can't recall or gain new memories, then it's a npc with no written code. It can't learn and has nothing to forget it can't do anything and it can't survive. It only has the natural subconscious instincts that can only keep it alive for so very little long.

[Anonymous No.18042164]

>>18042095
Based Feser chad

[Anonymous No.18042211]

>>18042164
His arguments are always interesting. Very underrated philosopher.

[Anonymous No.18042229]

>>18042211
I read a few of his books and jumped straight to Gilson. I'm on my 4th Gilson book now and just got a 5th to follow. Only problem I have with scholasticism is they're direct realists. Gonna read Gilson's "Methodical Realism" to figure out if its a worthwhile epistemology. Will jump straight to Berkeley after to contrast the two

[Anonymous No.18042443]

>>18042229
You can also read "Real Essentialism" by Odenberg. I also know that Feser defends his realism in different places, like Aristotle's Revenge or his blog, for example:
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/09/aristotles-revenge-and-naive-color.html

[Anonymous No.18042451]

>>18042443
>Odenberg
Oderberg*

[Anonymous No.18042562]

>>18039185
>What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.
"There is more to have than that" is so fucking vague that it's meaningless. I can understand all the physical processes that go into someone being crushed by a giant rock, but what have I lost by not having been crushed by a giant rock myself? Sure I don't have any recorded memories of sensory input data specific to such a thing, but what do I actually lose in this? I know what pain feels like, I know what pressure feels like, I know being crushed by a rock produces sensations of pressure and pain, what am I missing? Mary knows what it feels like to have a certain wavelength of light bounce around and land in her eyes, and now she's having a different wavelength do the exact same thing.

[Anonymous No.18042570]

>>18042443
I saw Feser cite that in one of his books. I checked it out on amazon and even had it reccomended to me on here more than once. It was probably you who reccomended it before desu. It's on my list to read but I balked at the price. I'll pick it up one of these days. Maybe i'll give it a go after Methodical Realism

[Anonymous No.18042588]

>>18042562
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction

This should clear up the point of the exercise

[Anonymous No.18042589]

>>18042570
>It's on my list to read but I balked at the price.
b-ok.cc , read the digital version anon

[Anonymous No.18042599]

>>18041702
Literally yes. Just because the legal entity under your name and assigned to your body is recorded as having done something doesn't have any bearing on you, the actual consciousness. Under the argument that you're using, I could tell you that you're guilty of murder and have completely forgotten everything related to it and you have to admit that maybe you should go to jail just in case.

[Anonymous No.18042639]

>>18042229
Gilson talks about Berkeley in "Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge", pic rel

[Anonymous No.18042646]

>>18042588
Maybe I'm a brainlet, but according to this the blue color of the sky is a secondary quality, but the actual wavelength of the light itself is a primary quality. Color is just what different light wavelengths look like to humans. If you can see any light at all, you're already seeing wavelengths which your brain uses to build an image, adding color doesn't change the process at all. If the process doesn't change when you add something new, the something new is just a variation on the something previous. What am I missing?

[Anonymous No.18042650]

>>18042639
Thanks. I almost bought that book but opted for Methodical Realism instead. I'm getting paid today so maybe i'll just order a bunch of books

[Anonymous No.18042656]

>>18042650
you can find the digital versions for free on b-ok.cc anon, just sayin'
might help for the oderberg one

[Anonymous No.18042659]

>>18042656
Yeah I know but i have this autism where I really cannot read digital books. Its just me

[Anonymous No.18042691]

>>18042646
>What am I missing?
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/09/aristotles-revenge-and-naive-color.html
+
https://youtu.be/w6GmCyKylTw?t=410 until 10:23
Feser clearly explains in his books how the modern conception of matter presupposes a Cartesian dualism
+
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/01/materialism-subverts-itself.html
+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQYZ2lR2B-s

[Anonymous No.18042714]

>>18042691
bruh I've got a lot of reading to do can I get a quick rundown

[Anonymous No.18042756]

>>18042714
Prior to descartes it was believed that matter was sustained through divine will. Post enlightennent the belief is instead that matter subsists in itself. The view developed by Descartes and then Locke says we dont perceieve anything directly, but only our ideas of such a thing. However, this perception even though indirect is still real. Since we can know what matter is in itself and we can know that matter exists in itself, we can understand reality through empirical observation alone. The means for this observation is inspired and developed by Newton and Bacon. Physical reality is made up of physical forces, and all forces can be quanitifed. So reality is just mathematical forces. Scholastics critique this by refering to the prinicple of divine conservation. Berkeley took another route. He answered Locke and said if all we perceieve is our ideas then everything must subsist in ideas. There must be a grand percevier in whom all ideas rest, being God. In his own way, Berkeley brings back an adapted form of the principle of divine conservation.

Anyway thats a really rough rundown and I need to leave asap befpre traffic gets bad. I suggest you read Feser's "Aquinas" and Gilsons "God and Philosophy"
You should also want to look more into the distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities and be familiar with Locke and Berkeleys take on them. Fesers lecture about science is pretty good, but he uses a lot of jargon

[Anonymous No.18042790]

>if it's not buddhists, it's the fucking thomists
lmao never change /lit/, quality hot takes on consciousness as always

[Anonymous No.18042850]

>>18040468
>You cannot access the subjective experience of another person
>The only evidence available on the subjective experience another person is what they tell you about it
>If a person reports a different subjective experience to yours, it is irrational to conclude that they have the same subjective experience as you
>If a person reports that consciousness does not exist, it would be irrational to conclude that they experience consciousness
>Many physicalists, such as Dennett, report that consciousness is an illusion arising from material phenomena, having no independent existence
>It would be irrational to conclude that such people have a real experience of consciousness
>Physicalists are P-Zombies

[Anonymous No.18042872]

>>18042714
the youtube link might be sufficient

>>18042850
yeah, you need to be a literal NPC to deny consciousness
litteraly the most immediate certain knowledge

[Anonymous No.18043388]

>>18042872
The biggest hurdle is in theory of mind. We are raised to believe that everyone is basically the same on the inside. Once you stop assuming and actually listen to what people tell you it becomes obvious that this is not the case.

[Anonymous No.18043488]

>>18041805
I'll take the case.
But seriously tho, that isn't completely wrong either, if you can't be said to correspond to the person having held the crime's Men's Rea, you can't have committed the crime.
And it isn't like dumb retarded defenses like blackout defense weren't used constantly (and still are).

[Anonymous No.18043509]

>>18043488
All the prosecution would have to do is link to the post in which anon stated the intention to commit heinous acts and escape blame by memory loss. This demonstrates malice aforethought, which makes him guilty.

[Anonymous No.18043538]

>>18039185
imagine being a deflationist

[Anonymous No.18043571]

>>18043509
Oh you are correct, basic memory loss of the events themselves would not be sufficient anyways.

[Anonymous No.18043626]

>>18043509
It wasnt "me" who pre meditated it though

[Anonymous No.18043677]

>>18043626
Funny story, about 23% of criminals claim partial or complete amnesia.
Anyway, what matters more actually is your own competency to stand trial. If you don't remember the crime you cannot defend yourself appropriately.

[Anonymous No.18043938]

>>18043626
This is unprovable, unless some device can be invented to read memories directly from the brain. The post, however, is documented evidence.

[Anonymous No.18044414]

>>18039185
>But she had all the physical information.

this is where it falls apart. no she didn't. and besides her neurons started changing and adapting as soon as she saw color

[Anonymous No.18044673]

>>18044414
I've got bad news for you. You're a p-zombie.

[Anonymous No.18046066]

>>18044673
>You're a p-zombie.
Calling someone a p-zombie betrays a lack of understanding of the term.

[Anonymous No.18046085]

>>18040447
>you just proved how physicalism is false you dumbass
No, I proved that language and theoretical reasoning can't be used to induce sense perception. All I proved is that reality is not based on language and that sense perception cannot be described by language.

[Anonymous No.18046087]

>>18046066
Why?

[Anonymous No.18046111]

>>18046087
>A philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
>Your post indicates that you're a p-zombie!