/sci/ - Science & Math

no that is a pseud statement. it ignores emergent properties and the problem of qualia.path from chem to feeling isnt straight.

>>11608992
In some sense yea. But the qualia is transcendental.
Just a quick reminder that materialism is falsified pseudoscience and materialist/physicalist ontologies belong on >>>/x/

I love frogs

>>11608992
Qualia being caused by chemical reactions in your brain doesn't mean they are ontologically the same thing.

Why would you trust your chemicals to be chemicals?

>Qualia
>>>/x/

>>11609006
get the fuck off the science board

>>11609004
I want to read this but I'm worried I don't have the background yet. Is there anything I should learn before starting it?

>>11609041
Zombie pls go

>>11608992
OP, no they are not. Precisely the feeling that you have now, that maybe your feelings are not just chemical reactions, is not such a feeling that is really just a chemical reaction. It is a true feeling. Make self-inspection, and you will see it.

>>11609079
Uh his other books are more accessible and will be helpful once you try to tackle the big boy. If you read Modes of Thought and Science and the Modern World you should be able to see what he is doing in P&R. Lectures on youtube and Steven Shaviro's blog are also good resources.

>>11609079
Probably need some background in Kant, Aristotle and Bergson to get into Process Theory.

>>11609079
Oh he also loved Wordsworth and Shelley so maybe reading those poets alongside him would be a good experience. Wordsworth's poems in particular were like his Bible.

>>11608992
They are that but are not entirely that

>>11609090
Yeah knowing about them would be helpful as well. Spinoza and Leibniz as too. I would say don't get too caught up on prerequisites though.

>>11609054
Go to >>>/x/ if you're going to assert falsified ontological materialism/physicalism.
It is pseudo science trash and does not belong here.

electronic movies, music and mangas are just bunch of silicone gates interacting with each other, yes

>>11609054
yeah this anon is right here. no one really touts reductive materialism anymore other than freshmen and edgy teens that don't know any better. it was done away with in the early 20th century.
>>11609104
>>11609006

>>11608992
Gregg Braden- Feeling Is Vibration
https://videos.utahgunexchange.com/watch/gregg-braden-feeling-is-vibration_3rDXxQX4OkejxFP.html

>>11609090
Brief redpill on the relevance of Aristotle to a modern? I haven't figured out what's behind the "start with the Greeks" meme beyond historical interest. I didn't get much out of Plato in college, but I admittedly was putting in minimal effort at the time.

>>11609006
Qualia is literally a made up word for something that doesn't exist.

>>11609117
In reality all smart people are materialists. Proof of this lies in the fact that minds are ultimately evolved from a soup of organics.

>>11609142
all words are made up moron

>>11609142
1) All words are made up, and "qualia" in particular has been around for a while
2) Zombies PLEASE go. Although admittedly there is something entertaining in seeing someone whose mind is so galactic that it's learned to deny its own existence.

>>11609151
Ok, but qualia is literally schizo talk

>>11609149
In reality you are an idiot literally every genius that ever existed knew about God and the occult sciences because they knew how to prove it because they had a proper education not the bank funded brainwashing you had. Making such a moronic comment shows just how stupid and clueless you are and they you don't do any research before blurting out retarded shit that is demonstrably wrong and easily proven wrong with minimal effort. Don't ever post on this board again

>>11609161
Not science nor math.

Schizo talk belongs to /x/

>>11609165
wherever you came from go back, you are way too stupid to be on a science forum and you need to be 18 to post here

>>11609149
Anon I said reductive materialism. Saying all your feelings are just chemical reactions is reductive materialism. The materialism of today is a lot wonkier.

>>11609174
Not science nor math.

Go to /x/

>>11609184
who the fuck told you retards determine what gets posted on this board? Take your retarded ass to lgbt you stupid fucking faggot rofl

>science board has subhumans who believe in ghosts and spirits and gods and wizards
Let’s not delete the /pol/ board and not permaban the people from there. What could go wrong?

>>11609192
>And this is the part when it starts throwing its own shit to all visitors

>>11609199
seethe more pseud, this is out of your range stay in the sandbox with the kiddies when grown folks are talking about real science big brain stuff

>>11609166
The only reason a genius has ever believed in gods is because of social pressure and brainwashing. Notice how in the modern world where evil institutions like the Catholic Church no longer rule everything, scientists and intellectuals are atheists in far greater percentages of the population than normal.

>>11609149
In reality is exactly the opposite.
Almost every single great scientist and mathematician has been an idealist who unlocks the secrets of reality and then shit for brain midwit materialists have attempted to drag the corpse of physicalism back into the picture after the fact.
From Planck the Newtown to Maxwell to vonNeumann to Einstein to Euler to Gauss to every single one.

>>11609224
>Genius giving a shit about social pressure

Imagine actually believing this

>>11609231
If you’re not a physicalist you are quite literally retarded. How are you even testing for “things” that aren’t physical? Almost by definition, you are trying to claim your feelings are reality. “I want this to be true, so it is.” You’re so unintelligent that I can tell you’re from pol.

>>11609234
So what’s the explanation for why scientists stopped being religious when religion stopped (relatively speaking) being pushed on everyone all the time?

>>11609241
If you are not an idealist you are a moron, coping with the fact that materialism has been falsified.
I am not from pol, in fact I'm Jewish lmao

>>11609247
how has materialism been falsified?

>>11609243
The explanation is that they are not great scientists and they they have not done anything equal to the great men mentioned in my post.
Ironically the great scientists of the modern world, Witten and Susskind etc, are idealists and not materialists.
You're a coping goy

>>11609102
>>11609079
Oh I forgot Hume. Whitehead is responding to Locke and Hume in that book. But yeah I think prerequisite reading can be overrated and can bog you down just know the general things about them.

>>11609247
Idealism is retarded almost no one takes it seriously today. What is the general consensus now is a very wonky form of materialism.

>>11608992
Yes. It's undeniable.

>>11608992
meaning arises from the interactions, not the chemical part itself
you can replace the chemical with other stuffs but the pattern still holds

Damn it why can't qualia be approached from a microlevel or chemistry? They are in the end just phenomena associated with certain computations between neurons, it has to have some stem that is analyzable.

>>11609420
The whole question is whether or not they truly have anything to do with neurons or if it's something we aren't yet aware of.

>>11609138
>I didn't get much out of Plato in college
Consider that western civilization has spent the interceding years digesting plato to the point that its conclusions are implicit in everything that came after.
Its not that you didn't get much out of it, you probably just picked up most of it from supplementary sources.

>>11609475
How is it even a debate. Of course it has to do with neurons.

>>11608992
no they're a magic trick a guy on a cloud is doing on you

don't be gay

>>11609224
I notice how you are a stone cold retard with such a massive ego that not only do you think you are smarter than all the greatest minds i history but also think that you can now read minds apparently does that count?

You are so retarded it is even embarrassing me

>>11609231
this that real shit nigga

>>11608992

Chemicals are just arranged molecules and atoms. And everything around us is either matter, energy, or unknown substances.

So yeah our brain us just chemicals but we can't even fathom the nature and behavior of the chemicals so don't over think it dude

>>11609241
>How are you even testing for “things” that aren’t physical?

Well smart people have this ability to understand abstract concepts even it isn't literally laid out in front of them, dumb people, such as yourself, seem to have a problem doing it.

You can prove it, it just requires that you be able to understand the information.

>>11609803
What am I looking at here anon

>>11608992
Yes, but that's not a thing to be sad about. All formalized thought would, by definition, require some causal chain of action and reaction. You can't around this, no matter what you believe. Even the delusional dualists and qualianons can't offer you a system of consciousness that isn't based on cause and effect and thus subject to the same philosophical problems that makes them reject materialism in the first place.

>>11608992

No. A great proportion of your feelings originate in your genitals and gut.

>>11610039
>You can't around this
anon i'm the edgiest no freedom pessimist you'll meet but compatibilists and even libertarians who are willing to make concessions elsewhere can around this

>>11608992
Who cares if they are?

>>11609024
Aw fuck, I was gonna bust out that meme

>>11609024
>>11610126
the meme is confused and confusing, jumping from one line of thought into another without developing any definite argument. the point about hypocrisy and circular trust in chemicals can be taken to be making multiple implied arguments. is duck's claim undermined on the basis of hypocrisy, circularity, infinite regress, self contradiction, or some other thing, and how does the argument work? is the point about knowledge then saying it's ok to start with axioms, or that it's ok to ignore the foundations of knowledge? either way it's orthogonal to duck's concerns, your theory of knowledge doesn't change the facts about chemicals. and is the last point just telling him to man up or is it some kind of appeal to pragmatism

everything about this image upsets me. there are ways of helping duck and this isn't one

>>11610109
>compatibilist
Their argument is a gigantic "cope". You absolutely cannot get around the fact that every decision is caused by something else (please do try, I'd be much more comfortable with free will existing). Whether that something else is physical or not doesn't change the outcome one iota.

Heck, I'd be pleased if someone could even give me a coherent definition of the term "free will".

>>11610318
the ability to act as an unmoved mover

>>11608992
Yeah but they are still feelings, don't let it bother you

>qualia
No science, and bad philosophy
I am done with this fucking board
Back to /his/ it is, they are not THIS fucking dumb
>>11608992
Also, yes, and your life has a really high likelihood of being meaningless. Cheers, cunt

>>11610364
cringe

>>11610364
the only board more cucked, retarded and blue pilled than /sci/ is /his/ you fucking faggot neck yourself

>>11610396
/his/ is a good board, way better than /lit/ and /sci/.

>>11610364
Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.

>>11610397
But still pretty garbage. It has come to the point that I have to go to /pol/ to entertain myself since I know no board will have productive discussion anyhow. /int/ is too braindead as well

>>11610318
i don't know if i can do justice to the compatibilist position but it's not some obviously dumb thing like "cope". setting aside moral responsibility the question of "are we free agents?" entirely rests on how you view such nebulous concepts as "agent", "self", "freedom", it's not some cut and dry thing you where the terms has a conventional meaning, it's all intuitive. the central axis of the whole debate is something like "what is it that we really care about in freedom". the compatibilist strategy is to say that what we care about is a certain freedom from psychological compulsion, and the ability to spontaneously wield the path your life takes such that you feel like the master of your own fate. this is what we really care about, and free will can only be defined rightly in those terms, since this whole free will debate pivots around happiness. or else why do people bring up facts about determinism or brain chemistry, to teach science? and why are people driven to debate it? as long as you get that thing you care about, then all the rest is just meaningless trivia, completely orthogonal to the whole concept of freedom, so the two are compatible. this is the gist of the compatibilist line of thought as i understand it.

>>11608992
>Your feelings are telling you that you should feel bad about their basic existence

peak depression my dawg

>>11608992
Those chemicals themselves are made of atoms. Those atoms made of energy. So in this sense, you are more than that. You are made of the source, the same source as that which is all around you.

>>11610444
I don’t know about atoms and shit but OP is made of faggot juice.

>>11608992
Yes, and it's your job to make the most of them.

Bump

>>11608992
What does it benefit you to know the answer? It shouldn't have any effect on your actions

Yes and no.

Those chemicals are sentient so if you do something they will manifest. Also they need to act according to universal law and have no free will. You have free will to change yourself.

>>11608992

Yes, of course. That doesn't mean they aren't complex, mysterious, or difficult to understand or predict.

>>11609004
>>11609006
>>11609021
>>11609024
>>11609079

Try taking literally any dopamine antagonist and then tell me it doesn't alter the way you "feel." Same goes for literally any drug we've developed that has any binding action on any of the major neurochemicals, hormones and their respective transporters.

The "zombie" argument is so fucking retarded and arrogant all at once. It more or less makes the implication that materialism = determinism which is so fucking retarded I can't even imagine why anyone would think that. We literally can't even calculate the final trajectory of fucking marbles bouncing off of each other in a pen, so what the fuck makes anyone think that somehow because something is "only" matter it somehow makes it less "special" or more predictable? Do you actually not understand how much more complicated the fucking BRAIN is than a set of marbles? Seriously? Fuck the argument is so fucking dumb it hurts.

>>11613695
A working computer, given the same starting strings of numbers ("seeds") will always produce the same result based off of that combination of seeds.

Some random number generators take the time on the computer to produce a seed. But if the same RNG is given the same seed, it will give the same result.

This assumes that the computer is not broken, which introduces other variables we can't account for.

--

A random number generator with different seeds each time produces different results. If we could give it the same seed we'd get the same result. So a random number generator with different seeds is actually pseudorandom, in that no statistical test can determine the result.

--

Is this what the universe is like? It doesn't seem to be broken, so all that would matter is the seed. And like RNG, we can't determine what will happen. But if we ran the same universe from start to now, would we get the identical results or not?

Just because we can't follow the exact chain of cause and effect, like in your marble analogy, it does not mean it is not deterministic (ie same seed, same result at each stage of the process)

--

The question then becomes, if the universe is deterministic, do we have free will? depends how you define free will.

If you say, every universe starting with the same seed results in identical states at any time including time=now, then versions of the same human in different universes could only make one string of "choices", not exactly free will.

Some people say, the universe isn't deterministic, that quantum mechanics shows there is true randomness, and that multiple versions of a universe with the same seed can be different at different points in time.
Yet if our decisions are made by our brains functioning, and those functions are based on random results due to quantum functions, that doesn't seem free either. If i could only do what a truly random dice told me to do, I wouldn't consider myself to have free will.

continued

>>11613879
If determinism cant have free will
If randomism isnt free will
Then we are stuck with atleast two answers

1) There is no free will
2) there is free will and
2a) It is caused by a soul
2b) the universe isn't purely deterministic or purely probabilistic or a combination, there is some third choice we don't understand
2c) some other variant of 2a and/or 2b

>>11613889
>>11613879
take your pills

>>11608992
No, not "just" that. There are electrodynamics in play at multiple scales.

>>11609142
Hey, real quick, can you tell me what blue looks like

>>11614253
Better one is tell me which temp on the dial is where hot turns to cold. I want to see the experiment that proves what notch on the thermostat officially goes from the hot temperatures to the cold ones so we can properly divide them with a marker. We will make the cold temperatures blue ink and the hot ones red ink

>>11608992
Yours are, yes, but my feelings emanate from the pristine currents of my soul. There is no way I could make you understand what such a higher form of sensation feels like

>>11608992
Unfortunately, every last thing that you can comprehend is because of your brain and spinal column shooting around electricity and chemicals

Fortunately, its been that way your entire life and you shouldn't be worried unless you plan to understand and dedicate your life to it, or it makes you abandon useful philosophies or religions or morals.

>>11614172
the currents are generated by potassium and sodium ions

>>11614059
kys retard

you can't use "take your pills" just because someone disagrees with you

>>11614858
take your pills schizo

>>11614860
I've been diagnosed several times by professionals with OCD anxiety and depression

Never schizophrenia

So kill yourself, retard

>>11614864
then take your fucking anti-anxiety meds/ssri's jesus christ

/sci/ needs a new ban type where you get permanent ban but can reverse it by showing that you have taken your prescribed medication

>>11609087
>the feeling that you have now, that maybe your feelings are not just chemical reactions
Is this a feeling, or a thought?

>>11613695
I don't see how your rant here relates to the idea that mental states aren't physical. No one disputes that altering your brain chemistry has an effect on your mind. No one you quoted is denying the physical complexity of the brain or saying anything at all about predictability.

Here's the thing. While the brain is extremely complex, it's physical through and through, as you believe. Physics is described by math. Math consists of mathematical structures which are defined by their relations. A supposed structure with no relations to any other structure necessarily has no properties at all, it doesn't exist. But take a look inside your mind. What are the properties of the experience of seeing blue? Some of its properties are relational. There's some kind of relation here with the physical event of photons activating certain cones in your eye, but it's not the same kind we see in math and I'm not sure how to specify it. But more importantly, it has some fundamental property which isn't a relation at all. It's categorically impossible to describe what this property is, but anyone who's ever seen blue knows exactly what it is. (The argument falls apart here if you try to convince a zombie, as they have *not* had this experience.) So the experience of seeing blue is not mathematical and therefore not physical.

This is a proof that mind is not physical, it's something of a different type entirely, so it can't be hiding somewhere in the complexity of the brain.

>We’ve established that all thinking happens through neurons - a long time ago too.

This requires a "yes, and..." The "and" part is that of sensory experience of the world. Our cognition cannot be removed from its association from our bodies - not just our brains, not just our nervous systems, but the rest of our body which influences our nervous system. Our bodies in turn cannot be removed from being embodied in the world. As a result of this our cognitive activities aren't confined to the body, but are extended and in co-evolution with the environment.

Moreover, the world (Earth) cannot be removed from the web of mutual influences spanning the entire universe! To truly know a "thing in itself" requires knowing ALL of its relationships between it and everything else that has existed and exists, and also will exist AND will never exist, but can possibly exist (potentiality.) If one requires knowing a "thing in itself" to 100% certainty is required for knowledge at all, then one is stuck in an impossible situation: one must be omniscient to know anything at all. But if perfect knowledge of a "thing in itself" from all possible perspectives isn't required, then one merely needs to understand what they are doing (process) effectively enough to be slightly more effective than randomness, rather than to get the right answer. From this foundation of the slightest epistemological efficacy, additional efficacy in interacting with the world (for the purpose of surviving and thriving) can grow upon this.

>>11608992
Yes so you can have full control over them with enough willpower. Pussy.

>>11613889
2a and 2b reproduce the same problem. why does the soul or the weird third option act as it does to produce in people the choices they make, and not something else? because the soul or the thing has the nature that it has, etc.

this is an a priori argument that doesn't depend on facts, only on how you conceptualize things like free will or cause and effect.

>>11615279
it's entirely up in the air whether or not the quality of blueness is in principle describable.
why this makes experiences non mathematical, and why non mathematical things must be therefore non physical i don't know. your reasoning is not so obvious as to go without saying, especially considering that terms like "physical" are undefined as fuck.

>>11613889
Read the third kantian antimony faggot

>>11614253
>>11614267
This

>>11614059
How the fuck are either of those posts indicative of psychosis?

>>11608992
No, electrical signaling as well.

>>11609079
The knee jerk response of calling someone a zombie who claims qualia isn't real is a survival mechanism. The human who believes they are conscious and special individual who experiences qualia or has a soul, whatever flavor you want - is more likely to survive and prosper. The ego, experience qualia, the soul, these mechanisms are evolved systems that serve the subconscious. The consciousness does not direct the body, the body directs consciousness.

Probably.

Yes, they are. Are you an idiot?

Can someone explain to me how "mary's room" isnt the dumbest fucking thing? to summarize

>mary only knows black and white, she lives in a black and white room yet studies everything about color
>one day, a red apple appears on her computer screen
>she definitely gained something from this experience that she could never through simply reading and hearing about color

and this is supposed to somehow suggest immaterialism? Why? How is experiencing that red apple not also simply a chemical reaction? We can probably find some series of electrical impulses that would induce seeing the color red in your vision.

>>11614253
It is impossible to describe through words, just like I can't really tell you what something being sour is like

However, none of this points to immaterialism. Just because something cannot be accurately communicated between humans does not mean the thing is immaterial. This is the stupidest fucking thing to me.

>>11616922
The point of the thought experiment is to be able to explain to another person what one means by qualia/experience/experientiality/consciousness/mind/phenomenology/what-it-is-likeness/thought/sensation/being/subjectivity/spirit
because philosophers have completely and utterly FUCKED every single earthly term used to communicate about that thing and now you have to invent extra layers of autism just to prevent them from finding and raping it into eternal vagueness.

>>11616958
yeah I get all that, I just dont think the thought experiment comes even close to approaching "the immaterial"

qualia in a general sense can surely be explained by a series of chemicals and electrical signals. Actually I'm SURE it can be, we can literally induce sensory experiences through physical means

>>11616971
I don't know who's using it to imply spookyness but until we invent a method to express the quality of what it is like to experience that indescribable, only-point-at-able thing that idealists believe is all that there is to reality, we have to get creative. That's really all that's meant by the thought experiment, and even doesn't go smoothly.

>>11608992
when you piss yourself while sleeping your brain didn't get the necessary information to wake up in the form of electrical and chemical signals

>>11616990
so I imagine if we invented some device that could beam mental images to someone else's mind that every immaterialism/qualia argument would fall apart?

>>11609006
>the qualia is transcendental
define qualia and transcendental, the deliver evidence, pseud
>materialism is disproven
[citation needed], you are trying to defend concepts that are per definition unmeasurable and outside of physical reality.

>>11616996
I don't think that's likely. If you think the TV beaming images into your retina isn't real and the picture in your mind is all there is, then the device will be no different. These kinds of philosophical arguments are completely protected from the harmful influence facts.

>>11609006
>the qualia is transcendental

it literally isnt. there is a chemical/electrical pattern that exists in the brain for the smell of a rose or the color blue

>>11609024
Because that falls in line with the entirety of the observable world

>>11617021
hypothetically, if we could take a snapshot of someone's brain thinking of a blue square, then recreate that brain and its state particle by particle, we surely would have created a brain that is also thinking of a blue square. If the issue is simply communication, I dont think immaterialism has any legs left to stand on.

>>11617039
Communication is the whole problem. In fact I have no clue what you even mean by a "blue square", I'm just a poor spirit of consciousness, sitting here in my mental space, where my only access to the outside world is the constant stream of experiences I get exclusive access to from the privacy of my own home. No matter how many brains you reconstruct the only way I could be sure that we mean the same thing by "blue square" is if I could reach and pull you into my mental space and really meet you in person where we could watch blue squares together. Unfortunately we are each separated by one way mirrors, even now we have to resort to this crude "typing" method of communication instead of *really talking* as fellow mental voices.

>>11617155
yeah that all makes complete sense but once again, just because something cant be communicated yet does not mean the experience is "immaterial" whatever that even means

>>11615279
>It's categorically impossible to describe what this property is, but anyone who's ever seen blue knows exactly what it is.

>So the experience of seeing blue is not mathematical and therefore not physical.

So at first I thought what you were saying was ridiculous because even you admitted that cones and other receptors in your eyes are necessary to perceive color. But then I realized what the issue here is. You are essentially implying that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. There are objects of your and others perception that you can't explain, and you chalk it up to something that isn't there. I was going to "give you" metaphysical concepts like numbers and whatnot, but eventually we're going to figure out what physical structures are involved in the perception of them, and the hand-waving and sky-pointing will no longer be justified.

>>11616454
>physical is undefined as fuck

Literally so blatantly untrue. If I smacked you in the face are you still going to believe that it's undefined? No- you are spoiled by a painless reality of modern comforts that let you make statements like "physical is undefined,"- when really you just lack perspective. I've never met someone who worked with their hands or was experiencing great pain that had any doubt about what physical "meant." Again, you're mistaking absence of evidence with evidence of absence. You live a painless, sheltered, "immaterial" existence, likely "in your head" most of the time, where you rarely come into contact with a noticeably physical world, and thus you reason that it must be a dubious or non-existent concept. This is flawed reasoning. Everything you perceive is due to some physical structure you are equipped as a result of billions of years of evolution.

>>11617161
Well, if the way I just described things makes complete sense then you might be a dualist, and those things that exist on "your side" of the story can properly be called immaterial, because the stuff on the "outside" world can exist without them, but your immaterial things can't exist outside of your side. You have two main categories of thing. A common problem among materialists.

>>11617188
You have not actually defined physical in the second half of your post, only suggested that being smacked in the face will help. This doesn't help the word's reputation for being notoriously undefined.

>>11616454
By physical I mean of objective shared reality, i.e. features of reality that hold true regardless of how you represent them and regardless of whether anyone is thinking about them. Everything of this nature is mathematical. It's true that this definition can be disputed, but I think it matches onto what people expect of the word. In particular, the science called "physics" can only describe objective phenomena.

>>11617188
Evidence or its absence are irrelevant to my argument. (By the way, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence from a Bayesian perspective, but it could be pretty weak evidence.) There's no possible physical evidence that you could present to me to change my mind, the only thing that could do that is an argument that my reasoning is confused. That's basically the exact point I'm making. Physical evidence lets you reason about physics, no matter how much of it you gather it can't say anything about not physics.
>you admitted that cones and other receptors in your eyes are necessary to perceive color
I didn't actually, more that that is sufficient for me to see color. I can also see color by dreaming, for instance, or by taking LSD. Of course there's probably some structure deeper in the brain that is in a similar state during any of these experiences. But the point is that the experience is not the same thing as those structures. You can perfectly catalog the neural configuration that causes you to see blue, you can give it to a colorblind version of myself and I can pore over it until I have a complete understanding of the physics of it, but you haven't told me what seeing blue is like. I can never figure it out unless I get brain surgery. But why is that necessary? I can understand the rest of physics by reading a textbook.

>>11617789
so you've defined physical simply as a (redundant) synonym for objective, meaning mind independent. i don't think this is what people expect physical to mean, as the category 'objective' includes things that aren't standardly physical. souls for example are viewed as existing objectively but not being physical(it makes no difference that souls don't exist) some people believe that mathematical objects are objective but not physical. some people believe that objects like language, or the time and date are objective but not physical. if we're going by conventional usage i don't think physical has a very definite meaning, i think for most people it doesn't have a particular definition other than "made of matter", they just mean that physical = concrete, solid, that's all.
regardless of all that i still don't know what it even means to say "Everything of this nature is mathematical". if by mathematical you mean "quantifiable" then plenty of experiences are in many respects quantifiable. if by mathematical you mean something like "perfectly describable/modelled" then you mean something idiotic that no physicist believes in.

>>11608992
You can escape to platonic world of mathematics.

Also it's chemical reaction just like a battery, you must consider battery in this estimation.

Also don't forget, that also... It's... Many simultaneus reactions at once, because otherwise you won't make one cut.

Way to know yourself is just to know, or literally dissect your behaviour.

But I recommend using english and observation to do that and some sort of periodic deduction

>>11618003
Yes, there's a lot of dispute about definitions going on. The core of my argument is that "physical", "material", "objective" are all pointers to the same type of existence. I call that type mathematical because things of this type are like math in that they are defined by relations. I think physics IS math, but our universe is only a subset of all possible math. Then I think there is a separate type of existence which minds belong to, which has properties that aren't relational. It's something that can't be rigorously defended by manipulating physics i.e. posting on 4chan, but I personally can tell it exists because I experience it.

>some people believe that mathematical objects are objective but not physical
Yeah I agree that there are some objective mathematical objects that have no place in our physics. I think they're "real" of the first type of realness I described, but not part of our universe. (I think the infinite body of all math is a multiverse, basically, and we live in a subset of it.)

>made of matter
I don't think this is correct about the common understanding. Isn't gravity physical? I'm pretty sure it's not made of matter. And what is matter anyway, if you zoom in far enough? Elementary particles have no volume, they're points in space with mathematical properties, so solidness and concreteness aren't really part of our physical reality at all.

>plenty of experiences are in many respects quantifiable
Many respects, but not all, which is the difference.

>if by mathematical you mean something like "perfectly describable/modelled" then you mean something idiotic
I do mean this, although it might be impossible for us to determine which model is correct.
>that no physicist believes in
Paper related: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646.pdf

>>11617026
Ok but that still does not explain the experience of these chemicals. There has been research done on blind and deaf people that has shown that the brain can both see and hear without the conscious awareness of sight/hearing. So there is something more to these things than just the brain's computation of them.

>>11608992
What if chemical reactions are atomic feelings though?

>>11618586
i did have some misgivings about gravity when i wrote that, but i still think this is how people use physical in common parlance. present your gravity objection to the common english speaker, still i maintain that there is no strong consensus on what physical means beyond concrete and made of worldstuff, but this is nitpicking. regarding the differences between physical objects and mental objects, in fact they two are identically quantifiable, that is, to the extent that math can describe them, there is no difference between a chair that exists outside the mind and a chair that exists in the mind, and this should come as no surprise, as they are really just one object that's been divided into two by a a dualist worldview, it's properties split between two sides like some bad divorce . the fact that the language of math doesn't perfectly describe this object is proven by the fact that it's left open for us to debate whether or not it's ultimate substance is physical or mental. your ontology doesn't prevent you from using math to the fullest extent.

>>11618758
on reading what i wrote i realize this topic is a huge can of worms and we're talking in such broad strokes that it's nearly impossible to communicate well. i want to condense to just one point i really wanted to make:
about physics only describing relational properties. by this i mean that the formulas in physics leave open whether or not they are describing electrons, little dancing demons, mental ideas, or whatever. the describe only relational properties, not what the *meat* of the thing is. as long as they behave according to the description of the theory, then they fit the model. this is what i meant when i said it's left open what the substance is. heraclitus can be right and the world is made out of fire, or we could all be inside God's dream, it changes nothing in physics.

the stuff about division of reality into external and internal world is really too much for me to handle in improvisational postings.

>>11615279
>There's some kind of relation here with the physical event of photons activating certain cones in your eye, but it's not the same kind we see in math and I'm not sure how to specify it.
>so it’s magic
Thanks philosocucks, very cool

>>11618843
Saying that consciousness might not be the by-product of physical matter is not saying it is magic.

>>11618886
well consciousness is the by-product of something physical and...
>>11615291

>>11618918
Wrong fucking plebs. Matter comes from mind, mind can never come from matter simple fuck

>>11618979
*punches you in the head and makes you a retard*

>>11618791
Sounds like maybe you want to end the discussion here, but I can't help but respond to this:
>the formulas in physics leave open whether or not they are describing electrons, little dancing demons, mental ideas, or whatever
To me this sounds like you are agreeing that there are modes of existence other than physical. Something could have the property of dancing demon-ness, and this property is a real things that exists, but it has no relations and so can't be a part of physics. Once you accept this type of existence, I'm not sure what the remaining obstacle is for mind to be an example of non-physical existence. Dancing demons will always be a wild speculation, but I have privileged information on the existence of minds, because I am a mind.

>>11616703
>The human who believes they are conscious
There's no physical distinction between believing something and acting as if you believe it. The only difference is a subjective mental state. If you didn't have qualia, you couldn't "believe" you have qualia because you would be...a pzombie. Pzombies don't feel anything, so they would never feel that something is true.

>>11618979
damn, /sci/ is getting based and philosophy pilled

Sure, but you're making a fallacy that being a chemical reaction is equivalent to pointlessness. After all, explosions are chemical reactions, as well.

>>11618979
>>11619128
Dude, teach me magic, too.

>>11613695
Unequivocally based.

>>11617026
You dont understand what transcendental means

>>11617789
>By physical I mean of objective shared reality
No such thing as "objective shared reality"

>>11608992
Yes your feelings, moods, whatever are basically ''chemical reactions'' but why is that a bad thing, they have to be something. It doesn't make the experience any different to you.

>>11619133
Yes but people like to think their minds, personalities are somehow separate or above the physical world.

Easily disprovable by looking at people who get brain tumors or trauma and turn into retards or change personality completely.

>>11619088
of course i don't deny consciousness - real consciousness that is not exhaustively described as a brain state - actually exists, i should have said so earlier. only i don't want to separate it from the physical world(i think it is physical), and if you do then i don't think mathematical describability is a proper basis for doing so because math is indifferent to the substance of the thing it describes. theories of electrons can apply to spirits.

>>11616922
>How is experiencing that red apple not also simply a chemical reaction? We can probably find some series of electrical impulses that would induce seeing the color red in your vision.
It suggests that no matter how much you know about the physical reality of the brain, you'll never know what the color red is until you see it. Because that information does not appear in the chemical reactions, it only appears when you subjectively experience it.

If something doesn't appear physically anywhere, but only mentally, that is an argument for calling it non-physical.

>>11616971
> can literally induce sensory experiences through physical means
That doesn't show that qualia are physical. It only shows that physical reality creates qualia somehow (a dualist view, not idealist).

>>11616996
>imagine if we invented some device that could beam mental images to someone else's mind that every immaterialism/qualia argument would fall apart?
You could be collecting physical information from a p-zombie, and then beaming it to a non zombie whose uses the physical information to create qualia. You can't tell whether you are doing this from looking at the physical data because qualia are non-physical.

>>11618746
Any link you can share to this research?

>>11616922
>Mary knows all physical facts.
>When Mary leaves the room she learns something new.
>Therefore everything is not physical.
Thats it. In a materialist world Mary should be acting exactly as she does but feel like she is under general anesthesia. When she is released she learns nothing new as red was just chemicals in her brain the entire time. However, in the real world she does learn something new that cannot be conveyed through logical explanation.
No matter how you mold blue plado you cant make yellow plado. No matter how you arrange matter you can't get consciousness.
>But once we better understand how to arrange blue plado we will be able to explain yellow plado.
>But everything other than the molded people are made out of blu plado, they can't be special.
>But the only cans on the table are for blue plado.
>Yellow plado does not actually exist, its just an illusion.

Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. Your favorite anime is also just pixels on a screen, and still you cried like little girl when it was over.

>>11618886

That is literally saying it is magic. There is not anything other than physical. Just because you don't know what physical structures are involved in the perception of a thing doesn't mean that the thing is somehow "not-physical"- if you are perceiving it, and you are physical, then IT is physical.

I think there is a very strong confusion about perception here. Perception is physical. Information comes into contact with your senses and then through very complicated processes you are able to become consciously aware of that information.

Not understanding something != "not physical"

"not physical" = magical thinking = teleological thinking = non-descriptive

Just because you *want* something to be true, doesn't mean it is. Every time someone doesn't understand something they immediately fill the void with an explanation of something they want to be true, because people are for whatever reason uncomfortable with saying "I don't know."

We could be understanding the origins of consciousness by looking at it's evolution down the phylogenetic tree, but instead we have hand-waving morons that read daniel dennet and sam harris and spout the same nonsensical talking points over and over again.

>>11617789
>LSD

Is a potent serotonin agonist, which is directly involved in sensory and visual perception, and is also mildly dopaminergic which is why people tend to feel more euphoric as opposed to shrooms which do not directly act on dopamine receptors.

Again, your descriptive ignorance isn't justification for a teleological explanation.

>>11608992
No, they're chemical reactions in your glands.
That's why if you cut off your balls you personality changes.

>>11613695
>Chemicals affect mental state
>Therefore mental states are chemicals
Okay let's try this argument on literally anything else
>My foot affects footballs
>Therefore footballs are made of feet
You're so fucking retarded. Read Fodor.

>>11623193
>That is literally saying it is magic. There is not anything other than physical.
If you presuppose that everything is physical, then it's impossible for something non-physical to exist. Bravo. Alternatively, I could say that non-physical things exist (qualia) and they cannot be called magic because I define magic as something that doesn't exist.

If qualia exist, and qualia are non-physical, then something non-physical exists. It would be magical if it didn't exist, but if it does exist it's just reality.

And the argument need not be based on how I *want* the universe to be. It is just a theoretical solution to the hard problem of consciousness. I have no reason to want to believe in pansychism or whatever. It doesn't make the universe anthropocentric, or grants me eternal life, or mean that the emergence of complex consciousness can't be traced evolutionarily. It's an interesting theoretical solution to the hard problem. P.S. I'm not the guy you responded to

the feelings are chemicals, but the thoughts are something different
it should be scary how much thoughts are affected by feelings, though

>>11623193
>"not physical" = magical thinking = teleological thinking = non-descriptive
Right, we're much better served by the non-magical and descriptive
>through very complicated processes you are able to become consciously aware of that information
You have no clue how a pile of mindless particles could turn into a mind. But since we also have a limited understanding of how the particular pile of particles called a brain works on a physical level, you can point to this area of physical ignorance as the hiding place of consciousness. It's like "God of the gaps", except it's "emergence" instead of "God". One day we will perfectly explain how sense data translate to brain signals translate to informational models of the world translate to speech and assorted behavior, we'll be able to interpret the functioning of the brain on many levels of abstraction, but on that day we still have nothing to say on why an occurrence of physical information being processed into new physical forms has any experience at all. You're making a category error in thinking these questions are the same.

I think you could easily point your own psychoanalysis at yourself. (I find it rude to psychoanalyze someone as a means of a disagreeing, but you started it.) I am fully comfortable saying "I don't know" about *why* non-physical consciousness exists, I just accept that it *does*. I am prepared to accept that the cause could be fundamentally unknowable, that this might be necessarily true of anything non-physical. Meanwhile you have picked the theory that says your ignorance is temporary. The march of science will continue as always, a better physical understanding of the brain will develop, and you take comfort in the fact that one day, you believe you will no longer have to say "I don't know".

Also, teleological thinking? What does this mean? You're the one gesturing at evolution, implying "it has an adaptive purpose for organisms" is an explanation of consciousness.

>>11610192
Wow, are you like a super genius or something?

>>11623193
There is no reason to say physical has ontological priority over other things. Also this just straight up isn't true.
>the vacuum of space is real, and isn't physical
>the wave function is objectively ontologically real, and immaterial/non physical
>qualia is real, and non physical
Stop asserting that only physical exists and then using that to say that things that aren't physical must then non exist. This is pseudo science and pseudo philosophy.

>>11625152

I'm not arguing that you reject all teleological statements, i'm saying they aren't the same as descriptive and you shouldn't fill the void of your ignorance with them. qualia is wishful thinking- and you need to acknowledge it as that.

obviously teleological statements have their place in life. what the fuck do you think a goal is? what do you think desires are statement wise? Goals and desires are clearly non-descriptive, and yet they are obviously necessary. Please do not mistake me for some dawkins/harris esque moron who is stupid enough to believe that we can live life by only believing things that are "true" (descriptive statements).

>>11623240

You're fucking retarded kid. Both footballs and feet are made of chemicals. Jesus christ you're fucking stupid. Everything is made of fucking chemicals. Jesus fucking christ why am I even fucking responding to you. It's all chemicals buddy. Atoms and the energy that binds them. If you think that somehow makes it *easier* to predict future events, i.e. is somehow an argument for determinism ("ReDuCShunIzuM") then you are fucking retarded.

>fodor

Literally who? Had to google him. Wow, another run-of-the-mill bratty loud-mouthed rationalist who literally is incapable of distinguishing between statements about the past and statements about the future. These people are borderline psychotic and have absolutely no sense of time, which makes sense because it's what you would expect from a culture of people that have higher rates of traits resembling right-hemisphere brain damage. Incapable of seeing the bigger picture, difficulty in actual reasoning, myopia, overly pedantic, disingenuous, a constant aversion to duality.

>>11625178

Sorry buddy, I don't actually reject teleological statements, not overall, just in the context of speaking descriptively. If you are making a statement about the past- you are making descriptive statements. If you are making a statement about the future, you are technically making a teleological statement, but of course it can, but doesn't necessarily need to be drawn from descriptive statements. How does a loser turn his life around? He must at a certain point believe something that simply isn't true. He has to become, technically, delusional, for a short-period of time until his actions begin matching his beliefs, and then the delusion is weakened and his beliefs are strengthened. You continue this process and you have a virtuous cycle. I'm not "against" teleological statements- you might even say I think they're more important than descriptive ones, since the descriptive ones are more like tools that act in the service of the teleological ones, rather than the description guiding the goals.

Really, from this perspective you can see why it's to the advantage of certain classes of people to encourage and emphasize description over teleology. If you are in a position of power, you want the future of a slave to be the same as their past, so if you trick them into thinking statements about the past (where they are a slave) are equivalent to statements about the future (where they might not necessarily be one) you will trap them into a cycle of reliving their past over and over again.

>>11623240

Jesus christ this guy is so fucking predictable.

>anti-holism
>asymmetric causality

These are the ideas of someone who has right-hemisphere brain damage.

>>11625366
I'm not him but I feel very confused reading this image and the rest of the wikipedia page. I can't seem to get the gist of his way of thinking. Can you help me make sense of paragraph 2:
>Fodor argued that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintained that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Furthermore, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adhered to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought.
This appears inconsistent to me. I thought that "functionalism" is generally a kind of monism where consciousness is exhaustively described by brain activity. But then I also thought that "mental representations" are generally a kind of dualism where there is a distinction between a real object and a corresponding mental object. I'm bashing my head against this article trying to figure out what "mental" means to Fodor, but I can't disambiguate it to save my fucking life.

>>11625283
Qualia is not wishful thinking. Why am I wishing for a particular explanation to be correct here? Come on bro, let's see some more of your brilliant psychoanalysis. What pathology do I have that's making me reject
>through very complicated processes you are able to become consciously aware of that information
as communicating anything at all?

>>11625657

Pathology? Hardly. Unless you expect me to pathologize human nature. Something like 98% of people will ever admit they are tricked. It's just how people are. No one wants to admit they're wrong or that they believe something based on flawed premises. People are not rational, they are rationalizing. We protect ourselves from seeing what we do as incorrect or a failure- we're both doing it- you could argue even that I'm *more* guilty of defending my viewpoint or because I see it as more threatened than your own, especially in academia.

>>11625509

It's just impression management, i.e. he's bullshitting, shmoozing, trying to make you feel like you're intelligent for reading it, even if you don't get it, trying to make you feel special and perplexed, like he's telling you something esoteric even though he isn't. Like he's your smarter friend that's letting you in on a secret. There are lots of ways to do this. Spurious references are a common one. Distract the reader by making them look up seemingly unrelated concepts/authors that lead nowhere and obfuscate the "main point" of your essay/article. He's saying a lot and saying nothing all at once. It's emotionally exhilarating but intellectually vacuous.

It's a dogwhistle for narcissists and obscurantists who take pleasure in victimizing impressionable morons, people who refer to entire books by the last name of the author instead of the title of the fucking book. It's like a ponzi scheme for the intellectually insecure. Who can out reference the other while saying less than nothing? Breadth over depth, etc.

Take for example probably any passage from his writing. I literally picked this randomly. He refers to a list of items as a "catalog"- implying he thinks it's complete. Aside from that, just actually read how trivial and show each item is:

1. concepts are word meanings
2. concepts are constituents of thought
3. concepts apply to things in the world

Concepts are "word meanings", which he leaves unquantified, all concepts? all words meanings? some concepts? some word meanings? What is a non-word meaning? He just doesn't elaborate on his ideas logically. He goes on, "they are either the/a constituents of thought", again, unquantified, and they "apply to things in the world," (also unquantified).

I mean, aside from all the statements being unquantified, even looking at this colloquially, he's not saying anything meaningful. Concepts apply to things in the world? No shit. He then goes on to reference actual great minds of history like Descartes and Frege, as if he can hold a fucking candle to descartes. Almost all of the great philosophers were also mathematicians and geometers. Even Karl Fucking Marx at least knew baby calculus, as did Hegel. This guy is clearly a hack who has no mathematical background and is just spouting unquantified words mindlessly hoping to impress the odd non-mathematically trained person.

Honestly I don't know how someone can claim to have read frege and then go on to speak about anything, especially from the viewpoint of semantics without quantifiers. It's just mind boggling how much of a hack this guy is. Just like dennet and most modern "philosophers."

Also this isn't even /sci/ lmao

Lmao this fucking guy. Who can actually read this and take it seriously?

>>11623240

Dude thank you so much for turning me onto this guy. I literally haven't laughed this hard at a clueless dilettante in a long time. Cheers m8.

>>11625798
This is quite unexpected. I don't have the confidence to criticize it but it does look weird.

>>11625798
>Something like 98% of people will ever admit they are tricked.
I don't think this is true (assuming "ever" is a typo). Lots of people change religions, or change to no religion, or switch political parties. Well over 1 in 50 in my experience. And those are significant changes with real-world consequences, much higher stakes than arguing anonymously.

>I see [my viewpoint] as more threatened than your own, especially in academia.
I have minimal experience with philosophy in academia, but this also seems untrue. Whenever I read about a theory of mind, it almost always incorporates a refutation of physicalism in particular, which suggests that physicalism is the top dog in need of refuting.

>>11625947

With all due respect, it might seem like a lot day-to-day, but 1/50 is only 2 percent of people. That's still 1/5 of the 10 percent needed to have a revolutionary impact on culture. Significant, but not necessarily effective.

And yes that was a typo thank you for not being obtuse about it or nitpicking I respect that.

>which suggests physicalism is the top dog in need of refuting

I don't agree with the notion that top dog always need to be refuted. Unconditional rebellion isn't good. Rebellion is good if the top dog is corrupt, but if your beliefs by their definitions put you at odds with reality itself, then you might be the one that is corrupt, not reality. And so goes my complaint about "mentalists," and their intellectual kin- as they seem to be rejecting reality rather than working with it.