Materialism is the best explanation for reality

[Willamena]

That is the danger of understanding science from newspapers.

News today isn't actually news, so much as blogging.

 

[Willamena]

What is the issue with joey's finding the nipple? How is that a problem for materialism?.

Materialism has only one problem, and that's idealism. They both paint a picture of the world, but from contrasting perspectives. They are a problem for each other, but for no one else (like science).

 

[Bunyip]

Materialism has only one problem, and that's idealism. They both paint a picture of the world, but from contrasting perspectives. They are a problem for each other, but for no one else (like science).

How so? How is idealism in any way a 'problem' for materialism?

 

[Willamena]

How so? How is idealism in any way a 'problem' for materialism?

Perhaps materialism is only a problem for idealism. Have you thought of that? ...I thought not.

 

[Bunyip]

Perhaps materialism is only a problem for idealism. Have you thought of that? ...I thought not.

No, that was how I saw it exactly. A problem for idealism, but not materialism.

 

[Willamena]

"Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist."
Eliminative Materialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Idealism has no problem with these common sense ideas not existing--nothing truly exists in that sense, and so everything exists (existentialism).

Eliminative materialism, on the other hand, would have us claim mental states to be something other than what they might otherwise be.

 

[serp777]

They don't. Many theories in the social sciences, for example, aren't concerned with "material" phenomena and thus can be (and indeed must be) formulated independently of any assumptions about whether they are reducible to material explanations (i.e., whether or not economic booms or recessions can in principle be explained in terms of the dynamics of sub-atomic constituents). In fact, one of the most successful theories in physics (statistical mechanics) is explicitly immaterialistic in that it deals with systems that are mathematical idealizations of physical systems. Quantum mechanics, at least canonically, is even worse: a quantum system is a purely mathematical entity and quantum mechanics irreducibly statistical (the "systems" it describes aren't real but are vectors in an infinite-dimensional complex space that are "observed" by mathematical functions called Hermitian operators in order to relate particular experimental designs to measurements).

Of course, materialism is mostly a philosophical view, and we don't generally even use the term or consider the issues, as (unfortunately) too many of us have neither familiarity with nor training in philosophy or metaphysics, leaving such issues mostly to those with a scientific background but who are philosophers of science (or worse, philosophers without scientific backgrounds). For example:
"materialism is waning in a number of significant respects—one of which is the ever-growing number of major philosophers who reject materialism or at least have strong sympathies with anti-materialist views. It is of course commonly thought that over the course of the last sixty or so years materialism achieved hegemony in academic philosophy, and this is no doubt right by certain measures—for example, in absolute number of self-identified materialist philosophers of mind or in absolute number of books and journal articles defending materialism. It is therefore surprising that an examination of the major philosophers active in this period reveals that a majority, or something approaching a majority, either rejected materialism or had serious and specific doubts about its ultimate viability. The following is just a partial sampling of these philosophers, more or less in order of birth.
Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, Nelson Goodman, Paul Grice, Stuart Hampshire, Roderick Chisholm, Benson Mates, Peter Strawson, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Jerrold Katz, Alvin Plantinga, Charles Parsons, Jaegwon Kim, George Myro, Thomas Nagel, Robert Adams, Hugh Mellor, Saul Kripke, Eli Hirsch, Ernest Sosa, Stephen Schiffer, Bas van Fraassen, John McDowell, Peter Unger, Derek Parfit, Crispin Wright, Laurence BonJour, Michael Jubien, Nancy Cartwright, Bob Hale, Kit Fine, Tyler Burge, Terence Horgan, Colin McGinn, Robert Brandom, Nathan Salmon, Joseph Levine, Timothy Williamson, Mark Johnston, Paul Boghossian, Stephen Yablo, Joseph Almog, Keith DeRose, Tim Crane, John Hawthorne, Richard Heck, David Chalmers."

from the editors' introduction to Coons, R. C., & Bealer, G. (Eds.) (2010). The Waning of Materialism. Oxford University Press.


True. For example, about the closest we can get in the sciences to “proof” is found in Bell’s inequality, which “proves” that if we find particular correlations between space-like separated measurements of systems than the only explanation is nonlocality. This, of course, isn’t true: one can abandon realism instead, but as that would be an abandonment of an assumption to all scientific theories very few opt for this (none that I know of are physicists). The problem is that nonlocality entails some "cause" behind the dynamics of systems that isn't "materialistic". Newtonian gravitation was nonlocal, but at least it was "something" (i.e., it was an effect which was so constant in its influence on mechanics that all motion could be explained in terms of this force as a singular effect). Nonlocality isn't a force, but a surprising and seemingly paradoxical feature of the universe that has no singular generalization the way Newtonian gravitation did. It can't be used to explain the dynamics of systems (Bell's inequality, for example, was derived from the mathematics of quantum mechanics, and first violated some 20 years later by Aspect et al.). It isn't even clear how to approach describing it (nonlocality is sometimes considered to be superluminal effects/processes, instead of effects/processes that occur in "no-time"). But there is no "material" explanation for it, and indeed it violates classical causation.




Classical physics, including the "law of gravity", is wrong. It is true that our incomplete knowledge of physics hasn't provided us with an adequate replacement, as gravitation per se doesn't exist in general relativity but we have haven't been able to incorporate GR into quantum physics. However, regardless of this lack of an adequate replacement, the "law of gravity" is still just plain wrong. It is not consistent with any theory of modern physics, as it predicts that every electron in the universe would plummet into the nuclei each orbits in an instant. Thus every second atoms continue to exist provide as many counter-examples to the "law of gravity" as there are atoms in the universe.




...that I linked to a free version of a peer-reviewed paper. Would you like more? A pure assertion is making so inane and ill-informed statement about complex systems reducing to algorithms as you did (which contradicts the foundations of relational biology) without evidence (and then thinking that producing a bunch of popular science garbage or other popular, non-technical literature is somehow indicative of anything other than an ability to use internet search engines). Even those scientists in relevant fields who believe that life and evolutionary processes can be reduced to computable models (algorithms are by definition computable) are well-aware that nothing like this is remotely closer to being shown.


No, they haven't. Not in the technical sense, as we remain unable to create complete models of single cells (which, as Robert Rosen and followers argued, is impossible; they are [M,R]-systems and closed to efficient causation).


No, they aren't. Computational neuroscience (part of what I do) involves models of neurons and neuronal networks, and in fact entire software environments like NEURON exist solely for creating neural models and whole fields in HCI involve the creation of Neuromorphic systems, BCIs, etc. But all these are MODELS or involve interfaces that are neither models, nor simulations, and tell us relatively little about the brain.




“We have demonstrated, for the first time to our knowledge, that computations performed and shaped by the dynamics of charges are radically different than computations in digital computers.”
Aur, D., & Jog, M. S. (2010). Neuroelectrodynamics: Understanding the Brain Language (Biomedical and Health Research Vol. 74). IOS Press.

Louie, A. H. (2005). Any material realization of the (M, R)-systems must have noncomputable models. Journal of integrative neuroscience, 4(04), 423-436.

"while leading computationalists have shown considerable ingenuity in elaborating and defending the conception of minds as computers, they have not always been attentive to the study of thought processes themselves. Their underlying attitude has been that no theoretical alternative is possible...The essays collected here are intended to demonstrate that this attitude is no longer justified."
Fetzer, J. H. (2001). Computers and cognition: Why minds are not machines (Studies in Cognitive Systems Vol. 25). Springer.

“The brain is not a computer, nor is the world an unambiguous piece of tape defining an effective procedure and constituting “symbolic information.” Such a selectional brain system is endlessly more responsive and plastic than a coded system.”
Edelman, G. M. (1999). Building a Picture of the Brain. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 882(1), 68-89.


“no formal system is able to generate anything even remotely mind-like. The asymmetry between the brain and the computer is complete, all comparisons are flawed, and the idea of a computer-generated consciousness is nonsense.”
Torey, Z. (2009). The crucible of consciousness: An integrated theory of mind and brain. Cambridge: MIT press.


“To understand why neurons and computers are fundamentally different, we must bear in mind that modern computers are algorithmic, whereas the brain and neurons are not.”
Tse, P. (2013). The neural basis of free will: Criterial causation. Mit Press.

“The free will theorem supports a powerful challenge to the scientific credentials of determinism, by showing, on certain well-supported assumptions, that two cornerstones of contemporary science, namely (1) acceptance of the scientific method as a reliable way of finding out about the world, and (2) relativity theory’s exclusion of faster-than-light transmission of information, taken together, conflict with determinism in both its versions. Belief in determinism may thus come to be seen as notably unscientific.”
Hodgson, D. (2012). Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will (Philosophy of Mind). Oxford University Press.

“The view that the brain does not compute Turing-computable-functions is still a form of wide mechanism in Copeland’s sense, but it is more encompassing than Copeland’s, because it includes both Copeland’s hypercomputationalism and the view that mental capacities are not explained by neural computations but by neural processes that are not computational. Perhaps brains are simply not computing mechanisms but some other kinds of mechanisms. This view fits well with contemporary theoretical neuroscience, where much of the most rigorous and sophisticated work assigns no explanatory role to computation”
Piccinini, G. (2007). Computationalism, the Church–Turing thesis, and the Church–Turing fallacy. Synthese, 154(1), 97-120.

“Referring to the ‘widespread belief ... in many scientific circles ... that the brain is a computer,’ neurobiologist Gerald Edelman (2006) insists that ‘this belief is mistaken,’ for a number of reasons, principal among which are that ‘the brain does not operate by logical rules’ (p. 21). Jerome Bruner (1996), a founder of cognitive science itself, yet, coincidentally, a key figure in the emergence of narrative psychology, challenges the ability of ‘informationprocessing’ to account for ‘the messy, ambiguous, and context-sensitive processes of meaning-making’ (p. 5). Psychologist Daniel Goleman (1995), author of the popular book Emotional Intelligence, asserts that cognitive scientists have been so ‘seduced by the computer as the operative model of mind’ (pp. 40f.) that they have forgotten that, ‘in reality, the brain’s wetware is awash in a messy, pulsating puddle of neurochemicals’ (p. 40f.) which is ‘nothing like the sanitized, orderly silicon that has spawned the guiding metaphor for mind’ (pp. 40–41).”
Randall, W. L. (2007). From Computer to Compost: Rethinking Our Metaphors for Memory. Theory & psychology, 17(5), 611-633.

“Semantic ambiguity exists in real-world processes of life and mind...Thus, it is feasible to rationally investigate a real-world semantic process, such as the interaction between synaptic communication and NDN, by placing the process into a modeling relation with an impredicative model, such as a hyperset process, and learn novel (albeit qualitative rather than quantitative) things about the real-world process by asking questions about the model.
What is not feasible is serious investigation of such processes by algorithmic computation. Algorithms disallow internal semantics, and specifically prohibit ambiguity. In other words, in a fundamental manner, the entailment structures of algorithms differ from the entailment structures of processes of life and mind. Thus, algorithmic descriptions of such processes are superficial, capturing the incidental syntax but not the essential semantics...
No computer program, no matter how cleverly designed, has an entailment structure like a mind, or even a prion.”
Kercel, S. W. (2003, June). Softer than soft computing. In Soft Computing in Industrial Applications, 2003. SMCia/03. Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Workshop on (pp. 27-32). IEEE.

“Today’s programs—at best—solve specific problems. Where humans have broad and flexible capabilities, computers do not.
Perhaps we’ve been going about it in the wrong way. For 50 years, computer scientists have been trying to make computers intelligent while mostly ignoring the one thing that is intelligent: the human brain. Even so-called neural network programming techniques take as their starting point a highly simplistic view of how the brain operates.”
Hawkins, J. (2007). Why Can't a Computer be more Like a Brain?. Spectrum, IEEE, 44(4), 21-26.

“there is no evidence for a computer program consisting of effective procedures that would control a brain’s input, output, and behavior. Artificial intelligence doesn’t work in real brains. There is no logic and no precise clock governing the outputs of our brains no matter how regular they may appear.”
Edelman, G. M. (2006). Second nature: Brain science and human knowledge. Yale University Press.

"the brain is not a computer, yet it manipulates information...while von Neumann and others invented computers with mimicking the brain in mind (von Neumann 1958), the brain does not appear to behave as a Turing Machine "
Danchin, A. (2009). Information of the chassis and information of the program in synthetic cells. Systems and synthetic biology, 3(1-4), 125-134.

“Determinism would be the crucial issue if the early modern atomist–reductionist picture were true. That is, if the causal capacities of complex entities were nothing but the combined causal effects if the entities’ constituents, and if the most basic constituents operated according to deterministic laws, then it would indeed seem to be the case that humans could do nothing other than what their atoms, in aggregate, do…
We have argued that this picture is wrong on three counts. First, it is widely accepted that the ‘‘atoms’’ (in the philosophical sense) do not behave deterministically. Second, it is becoming more and more widely recognized that complex dynamical systems can exhibit new sorts of causal capacities not found at the level of their constituents. We have emphasized, among these, sentience, goal seeking, consciousness, acting for a reason, and self-evaluation. Third, we have argued that higher-level systems exert downward effects on their constituents via selection among possibilities generated randomly, probabilistically, or according to deterministic lower-level laws.”
Murphy, N., Brown, W.S (2007). Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will. Oxford University Press.

Let me preface this first by saying that this responswe is quite large. Now normally I wouldnt complain about the extra detail you lnclude but I have been writing all of my responses on a 100 dollar android phone so one of the things you accuse me of, like not providing enough sources, is due to the fact that it's very difficult to go and cite a bunch of sources beyond google so ive been relying on people to be able to look stuff up for themselves. As result of my phone use I'll respond to much of your arguments but you'll have to excuse me for maybe not responding to the less important ones and all of your sources and maybe some autocorrect errors.

So let me first start out by highlighting that this thread is materialism is the best explanation for reality, not the perfect explanation. Even if it was a weak position you would have tobshow how an alternative was superior or rather the best out of two crummy theories.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of what materialism is as well. You seem to think that the laws of physics that deal with probability distributions are somehow a point against materialism. Materialism as i have postulated throughout this thread is just that all the phenomena we observe can be explained by the positions and configurations of particles as well as all the force carriers and the laws that correspond to them, in other words the laws of physics which include happen to include probabilities and stastics. So your point was essentially attacking a straw man of materialism that no one believes In. It would be like saying that interference patterns in electrons and photons disprove materislism because they produce a distribution . Or it would be like saying magnetic fields disprove materislism becsuse they consist of force carriers which arent composed of matter themselves. But materialism has to obciously include the laws that material follow or else its entirely flaccid.

Besides that strawman Your point about social sciences is weak and moot so I will cover it briefly. Social sciences can be fundamentally reduced to material strutures in the brain, evolutionary adaptations, interactions between individual humans which are composed of particles, and the corresponding chemical and electrical responses that occur in a given set of circumstances behind a context of phenoytypes. Now, its complicated but doesnt require additional supernatural baggage to explain, or if it does then it requires a massive assertion on your part. the burden of proof would be on you to justify such an assertion.

Furthermore, before I get to the meat of your argument , let me say something about your paragraph about philosophy. I mean what you quote from is just one long argument from popularity essentially; that many philosophers are allegedly moving away from materialism. Even if I was the only materialist left, that wouldnt be an effective argument whatsoever. The validity of materialism does not depend on the number of philosophers moving toward it. You didnt specifically say this so dont accuse me od makong a strawman, but in case you were implying it we dont count the number of philosophers to determine which philosophical position is valid or not.

Anyways, I have many arguments to contend with your points about simulated consciousness. The first is that even if you showed that the brain couldn't be computed that still wouldnt mean materialism was insufficient. There's still no good reason to assert supernatural baggage. In theory it's not inherently impossible to construct an artificial neuron from sopistocated enough nanotechnology and advanced enough electrical engineering. This means that you could replace sections of the brain that were damaged with an implant. In fact there are implants which can help people who have suffered a stroke and they can regain some functionality.

Lets address simulated consciousness though. One major flaw of your argument is that there are multiple kinds of computers and computer architectures. EVen if its impossoible on a Turing machine there are many alternatives like quantum computers,or biological computers, or neural computers, or fiber optic computers. So the scope of your argument covers an incredibly narrow slice.

Id also like to point out that many of quotes you listed consist of many opinions, and others which reflect uncertainty. They say stuff like there is no evidence for a computer program behaving like the brain , or that it appears that the brain doesn't appear to behave as a turing machine. These certainly arent claims to certainty.

But your argument against simulated consciousness is ineffective because you need to demonstrate that the constituents of the brain could not be sufficiently emulated on a computer; that is, the laws of physics and matter. IF the fundamental constituents of the brain can be simulated then you only need to put those components together at a large enough scale to get an appropriate simulation. Surely you're not going to argue that you cant simulate the laws of of physics and molecular dynamics. Based on my chain of logic, the laws of physics are enough to simulate all the material of the brain which means theres no reason it can't simulate consciousness

I mean there are also horribly wrong claims in your post like that atoms or cells or biological systems cannot be modeled on computers . Its fail for a couple of reasons: first that you need a complete model rather than a sufficient model which simulates most or all the important functions of the cell, and why should folding@ home be completely simulatable when a cell can't be. They both rely on principles of chemistry fundamentally so you would need to show that chemical simulators were somehow not suitable to cover the chemical reactions that cells utilize.

Essentially those quotes you provide are nice statements but you make or quote a number of claims that are just plain wrong. i mean just because you can quote some reputable scientolists doesnt mean they cant be wrong. There are phds cited in the debate of Ken Ham vs bill nye that argue the earth is 5000 years old, and in science you're not supposed to accept results based purely on authority, so it would be in bad taste, for instance, to argue that I cant argue against their claims because they know better than me, which I admit is certainly possible, but not in all subjects, would be inappropriate if you were to do that.

Take a look at this pub medical article where they say its inconconclusive whether all brain functions are computable. I can even cite people like ray kurzweil, who you will most certainly reject, that the brain can be simulated.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11293958

so asserting that its impossible requires much more evidence in the form of logical proofs rather than quotes from some authorities. I actually provided logic and evidnece rather than just authority arguments and some quotes.

And you also just dismissed the blue brain project I cited as popular science, and then claimed you were an authority on neuron software as if your claim was superior to all the experts who disagree that the blue brain project wont be a biologically realistic simulation beyond simple artificial neural networks. In the wiki page I posted it confirms that I'm fact it will be a biologically realistic simulation. The statement is supported by several other sources as well. So I can cite people who say it can happen and people who say its inconclusive at least. So since you brazenly rejected my sources ill just reject your quotes as opinions, many of which reflect ambiguity and uncertainty.

Blue Brain Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

check out and read the page rather than just regurgitating the popular science fallacy.

anyways here are some examples of
chemical simulation software, which can mode, very accurately, down to the femtosecond , the reactions between multiple interacting molecules. Unless you're saying the brain is more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions, then brain can be simulated rather precisely by scaling up the chemical reaction simulations to cover all parts of a cell, and then eventually the brain assuming a fast enough computer . show how the brain is more than just chemical reactions and electrical signals.

List of chemical process simulators - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Take a look at all these chemical process simualtors and show how all of them couldnt make a biologically realistic model.

Oh and since you said atomic models were not possible, check this out.

Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested | UW Today

Many scientists and philosophers admit it's possible that our entire universe could be a simulation. So youd have to disprove this possibility as well. I mean you have this uncanny ability to make assertions about impossibility based purely on authority.
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Show me a logical proof for instance that the brain consciousness problem cannot be categorized as an np hard or np complete problem, where artificial intelligence is expected to be. I mean until you show that consciousness cannot be in one of those categories you cant just say that its impossible. I know you're going to be irritated at me for not just accepting the quotes you provided.

But I do have to say that you provided the best and most sophistocated attempt out of anyone here , and you do seem well educated and intelligent. Its just unfortunately that many of your points consisted of strawmen or arguments from authority or focused mostly on sub points that werent by themselves essential to the argument that materialism was the best explanation . Finally, I'm also not going to seriously address where you rant about where I say pure assertion, investing that much time and words to make Such a big red herring doesnt advance your argument whatsoever.

Also in regards to Quantum non locality, which is actually your strongest point against materialism that I forgot to mention, I refer back to materialism being the best explanation for reality, not the perfect one. To confirm whether materialism is extremely likely You would need a theory of everything that would explain non locality. But certainly many many scientists think a theory of everything is possible so materialism is still our best bet even though it has holes like quantum non locality. But still what's the alternative, better explantion?

 

[serp777]

My understanding is simple. If our consciousness is a product of material interactions then how can we claim to be equipped for objective thought? The same is true for science itself.

If our awareness arose from some material interactions, then we are not masters of our own mind (which of course is true of most of us who actually think and act unconsciously).

On the other hand, if we have any hope of breaking free of our unconscious actions and their effects it is because our source of awareness is unborn.

Whether the source of our awareness is material or non material is actually a bad question, since these categories themselves are known in awareness only.

The consciousness is a given category. It gets validated even while we deny it. Ultimately, if some day a machine passes the Turing test, a conscious person will have to know and certify that. There is no way that we can ever deny our own awareness.

How does material defeat objective thought, what does that even mean? You seem to have some assertions about consciousness too, that it exists as this static object of maximum choice and free will. But most of the stuff we do is hardly our decision. You dont get to choose which thoughts you think, so at best you select between random thoughts our brains produce. And your thoughts determine your existence pretty much. and then consider the fact that most of what you do is involuntary. So any choice we actually have is extremely limited. And theres no reason why consciousness couldnt be just an advanced illusion resulting from self awareness and the automated systems of neural circuits in our head. We may also be composed of a timeline of different conscioisnesses too. For instance if you were created 5 seconds ago with all the memories of your previous life, then you would think you had been conscious when you actually Hadnt. So you could be a different consciousness each second. The point is that youre making claims assuming you know what cinsciousness is when no one does

 

[serp777]

Creationism has a conceptual scheme integrating fact and opinion in distinct categories. Creationism actually has argumentation going for it.

You only write arbitrary nonsense.

What arguments does creationism have? Life emerging spontaneously is a certain possibility so even if there's a God then life could still emerge by itself easily. We know there are self replicating molecules, and we know that there are something like 10 ^80 atoms over a 13.7 billion year time period so its plausible that life could emerge in a soup of chemical reactions randomly at some point. So no need for creationism when its already possible for life to emerge by itself. When you postulate a designer then who designed the designer becomes the relevant question. Creationism only adds uneccesary complexity without anymore explanatory power so by oczams razor the theory is impotent. And it's unfalsifiable so its scientifically impotent. Its a poop theory essentially and should be flushed down into the sewer

 

[serp777]

"Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist."
Eliminative Materialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Idealism has no problem with these common sense ideas not existing--nothing truly exists in that sense, and so everything exists (existentialism).

Eliminative materialism, on the other hand, would have us claim mental states to be something other than what they might otherwise be.

Common sense is frequently wrong because it assumes you know what sense is. We constantly change what common sense is in science, its called learning as lawrence krauss says. It could be said that its common sense that something cant be in two places in once, but electrons often are.

And its a fallacy to say that because you experience something it means you understand it functionally. Just because you feel anger doesnt mean you understand the limbic system. Similarly just because you experience consciousness doesnt mean you understand what consciousness is.

 

[serp777]

I should have explained, or used an explanation from a scientific/scholarly source, on the problems posed to materialism by certain theories in, and indeed approaches to, biology, particularly as I mentioned relational biology and referred to a paper by one of Rosen's students in my first response. Hopefully this is concise and comprehensive enough to do. Consider a model, simulation, or similar "realization" of a cell and the process of metabolic-repair, and let f: A→B be a function
"where f is the process that takes input A and output B...The system Rosen uses for an example is the Metabolism-Repair or [M,R] system. The process, f, in this case stands for the entire metabolism goin on in an organism...The transition, f, which is being called metabolism, is a mapping taking some set of metabolites, A, into some set of products, B. What are the members of A? Really everything in the organism has to be included in A, and there has to be an implicit agreement that at least some of the members of A can enter the organism from its environment. What are the members of B? Many, if not all, of the memebers of A since the transitions in the reduced system are all strung together in the many intricate patterns or networks that make up the organism's metabolism. It also must be true that some members of B leave the organism as products of metabolism...In the context developed so far, the mapping, f, has a very special nature. It is a functional component of the system we are developing. A functional component has many interesting attributes. First of all, it exists independent of the material parts that make it possible. Reductionism has taught us that every thing in a real system can be expressed as a collection of material parts. This is not so in the case of functional components...Fragmentability is the aspect of systems that can be reduced to their material parts leaving recognizable material entities as the result. A system is not fragmentable is reducing it to its parts destroys something essential about that system. Since the crux of understanding a complex system had to do with identifying the context dependent functional components, they are by definition, not fragmentable". (pp.103-108; emphasis added; italics in original)
Mikulecky, D. C. (2005). The Circle That Never Ends: Can Complexity be Made Simple? In D. Bonchev & D. H. Rouvray (Eds.). Complexity in Chemistry, Biology, and Ecology (Mathematical and Computational Chemistry). Springer.

I simply reject the assertion that a functional component exists independently of it's material parts.

the mapping in f could not exist without atoms and molecules. Changing the atoms in members A and B alters the mapping in f. Clearly the maping depends on the chemical properties of a and b and therefore the properties of material.

just because matter has synergestic effects that result in something greater than the sum of it's parts doesnt mean the synergestic effects arent a direct result of the underlying material. Changing the matter requires an entirely different mapping of f since there are new synergestic effects

 

[serp777]

The topic is on materialism. I addressed that topic both directly and indirectly (the latter via addressing would-be evidence for the view that, whether they are or not, turn out to be wrong). I have found, though, that for you sometimes it seems "the topic at hand" tends to be "the topic as I conceptualize it and thus anything which deviates from my addressing those aspects of it that are part of my perspective are 'off-topic'". Earlier you mentioned in a response to another that nonlocality (phrased specifically in terms of paired-photons, which is a particular and the oldest demonstrations of violations to Bell's inequality) are irrelevant because you (correctly) asserted that photons can't "know' anything. But the problem posed by nonlocality to materialism is not based upon conscious agents. It is based on a violation of causality that has no material explanation, incarnation, manifestation, or realization, yet exists. In fact, problems such as this are considered by some to be so problematic as to challenge realism, which is (unlike determinism) required for materialism. See e.g.,
Busch, P., & Jaeger, G. (2010). Unsharp quantum reality. Foundations of Physics, 40(9-10), 1341-1367.
Leggett, A. J. (2008). Realism and the physical world. Reports on Progress in Physics, 71(2), 022001.
Pusey, M. F., Barrett, J., & Rudolph, T. (2012). On the reality of the quantum state. Nature Physics, 8(6), 475-478.
Tommasini, D. (2002). Reality, measurement and locality in Quantum Field Theory. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2002(07), 039.

I think again you're reflecting a naive understanding of materialism.

Quantum non locality shows that measurements made at the microscopic level defy local realism supported by classical physics. But in no way does materialism rely on determinism or classical physics. It just relies on material and the laws of physics that material follows. So it's not like materialism is disproven just because physics changes or because quantum physics defies traditional understandings of physics

Indeed you are correct tthough that conscious observers have nothing to do with it, since that is what the other poster was suggesting. The other poster was also saying that the observer effect has to do with a sentient observer in spite of the facts.

 

[Willamena]

Common sense is frequently wrong because it assumes you know what sense is.

I don't think so, and this may be a topic for a future thread. Common sense is literally "the sense of the commoner," or the person averagely engaged in life. It cannot be wrong by virtue of being something that transcends the individual, and the individual knows in what sense he means things.

We constantly change what common sense is in science, its called learning as lawrence krauss says. It could be said that its common sense that something cant be in two places in once, but electrons often are.

"Learning" may indeed be the constant change of what is common sense--learning introduces something radical, something new. That something becomes newly common.

And its a fallacy to say that because you experience something it means you understand it functionally. Just because you feel anger doesnt mean you understand the limbic system. Similarly just because you experience consciousness doesnt mean you understand what consciousness is.

It's not a fallacy, though, to say that when you experience something you understand what you experienced. You understand precisely that much. I don't know what a limbic system is, but I understand anger.

I don't know what may lie behind consciousness, but then, on the other hand, there is nothing that lies behind consciousness that I can know.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

one of the things you accuse me of, like not providing enough sources

Apparently I wasn't clear. It isn't that you don't provide enough sources. It's that your sources are worthless. Popular science is rarely of value, and at best it can serve to educate one about the actual scientific literature, not serve as an indication of the state of any field.

it's very difficult to go and cite a bunch of sources beyond google

Unless, of course, one works in the field or keeps up with it.

Even if it was a weak position you would have tobshow how an alternative was superior or rather the best out of two crummy theories.

Materialism isn't a theory. It's a philosophical/metaphysical perspective or stance. Assuming it is true, it must be, and assuming it false, there isn't any good epistemic justification for it. Assuming nothing (which is technically impossible), materialism led to one of the greatest contradictions in the history of science, the biggest ontological problem in the history of science, and a current paradox. Einstein spent much of his career trying to show that the problem was with physical theory and most famously by showing that, assuming the problem was "real", this led to clear, physical impossibilities. Then those impossibilities were empirically realized.

You seem to think that the laws of physics that deal with probability distributions are somehow a point against materialism.

No, as 1) the laws of physics include things we know are wrong and 2) the difference between statistical physics and the irreducibly statistical nature of quantum theory which is not a statistical physics. Quantum mechanics posits "physical" systems that exist only in a mathematical (infinite-dimensional) space, while quantum field theory is even worse (the equations that govern systems in quantum mechanics can't allow for relativistic effects, and the simplistic Hilbert space or functional spaces in general are inadequate). Thus the standard model of particle physics doesn't describe particles but mathematical entities called "fields", the quantum-mechanical "observable" operators are replaced by with the topologies of field theories (complete with tensors, quantum algebras, etc.), but most importantly are even more removed from a connection to anything material.

Materialism as i have postulated throughout this thread is just that all the phenomena we observe can be explained by the positions and configurations of particles as well as all the force carriers and the laws that correspond to them

There are no particles, at least according to quantum theory (including modern particle physics). It's just a misnomer.

in other words the laws of physics which include happen to include probabilities and stastics.

They describe physical reality as consisting of things like probability functions. The "laws" of modern physics don't provide us with any apparatus, linguistic or otherwise, to relate fundamental physical theories to "physical" reality.

Or it would be like saying magnetic fields disprove materislism becsuse they consist of force carriers which arent composed of matter themselves

Which was what scientists since Newton held to be true: the nonlocality of classical magnetism was not just seriously problematic for physicists and philosophers, but a primary motivation for Einstein's relativity.

But materialism has to obciously include the laws that material follow or else its entirely flaccid.

Then it's obviously flaccid, as these "laws" are not held to be true by any competent scientist. Luckily, materialism isn't so flismsy as to require a misunderstanding of modern physics be true.

Social sciences can be fundamentally reduced to material strutures in the brain

If you could tell us neuroscientists how, that would be great.

Lets address simulated consciousness though. One major flaw of your argument is that there are multiple kinds of computers and computer architectures.

Utterly irrelevant, and demonstrably so (mathematically).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think again you're reflecting a naive understanding of materialism.

Quantum non locality shows that measurements made at the microscopic level defy local realism supported by classical physics. But in no way does materialism rely on determinism or classical physics.

It requires realism. "Local realism" is just another way of saying "realism". Also, measurements are never made at the microscopic level (as problem so fundamental it's actually called the measurement problem). However, if you can't tell me how modern physics relates to the "material" other than by vague and inaccurate descriptions that anybody with access to Wikipedia could manage, then essentially your perspective is simply a collection of misunderstandings regarding the sciences, from physics to neuroscience.

It just relies on material

Which is what?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I simply reject the assertion that a functional component exists independently of it's material parts.

It doesn't need to be independent, just ontological. If a functional property/process exists (is ontological rather than some epistemic component of a model that we used for simplicity or understanding), it is not a material entity. Materialism holds that everything is reducible to the material (the way e.g., all waves were reducible to fluctuations in physical systems in classical physics). There is no room for an ontological function, yet we cannot reduce cellular processes to material parts without relying on such an entity.

the mapping in f could not exist without atoms and molecules.

The problem is that the dynamics of the atoms and molecules require the mapping to have causal efficacy or, more simply, to interact causally with the material without being material. Materialism doesn't admit such interactions.

 

[serp777]

Apparently I wasn't clear. It isn't that you don't provide enough sources. It's that your sources are worthless. Popular science is rarely of value, and at best it can serve to educate one about the actual scientific literature, not serve as an indication of the state of any field.


Unless, of course, one works in the field or keeps up with it.


Materialism isn't a theory. It's a philosophical/metaphysical perspective or stance. Assuming it is true, it must be, and assuming it false, there isn't any good epistemic justification for it. Assuming nothing (which is technically impossible), materialism led to one of the greatest contradictions in the history of science, the biggest ontological problem in the history of science, and a current paradox. Einstein spent much of his career trying to show that the problem was with physical theory and most famously by showing that, assuming the problem was "real", this led to clear, physical impossibilities. Then those impossibilities were empirically realized.


No, as 1) the laws of physics include things we know are wrong and 2) the difference between statistical physics and the irreducibly statistical nature of quantum theory which is not a statistical physics. Quantum mechanics posits "physical" systems that exist only in a mathematical (infinite-dimensional) space, while quantum field theory is even worse (the equations that govern systems in quantum mechanics can't allow for relativistic effects, and the simplistic Hilbert space or functional spaces in general are inadequate). Thus the standard model of particle physics doesn't describe particles but mathematical entities called "fields", the quantum-mechanical "observable" operators are replaced by with the topologies of field theories (complete with tensors, quantum algebras, etc.), but most importantly are even more removed from a connection to anything material.


There are no particles, at least according to quantum theory (including modern particle physics). It's just a misnomer.


They describe physical reality as consisting of things like probability functions. The "laws" of modern physics don't provide us with any apparatus, linguistic or otherwise, to relate fundamental physical theories to "physical" reality.


Which was what scientists since Newton held to be true: the nonlocality of classical magnetism was not just seriously problematic for physicists and philosophers, but a primary motivation for Einstein's relativity.


Then it's obviously flaccid, as these "laws" are not held to be true by any competent scientist. Luckily, materialism isn't so flismsy as to require a misunderstanding of modern physics be true.


If you could tell us neuroscientists how, that would be great.


Utterly irrelevant, and demonstrably so (mathematically).

first I'm still waiting for any alternative theory you could propose that would be superior.

Also, it was clear, like i said its a media fallacy, so I'll say it again since you missed it. Being allegedly popular has nothing to do with the truth of said claim, or the reliability of the source, your position is completely irrational. In addition, quoting assertions from scientists, many of which even reflected significant uncertainty in their claims, certainly does not indicate the superiority of your evidence regardless. I mean it requires significant proof to say something is impossible. Ill discuss this more at the end.

You can have philosophical theories though so materialism is a theory. A theory is just postulating a set of ideas based on some axioms, which then results in some predictions. In other words it's a system of ideas and axioms meant to explain something. There is of course a more specific scientific definition but there can be multiple definitions. I submit that theory is an appropriate enough word. Now I agree that it is not a scientific theory, rather that its an extension of science to make larger claims about things which havent been empirically demonstrated.

Next, let me address this no particles assertion. the standard model in case youre unaware, covers elementary particles including the newly discovered higgs boson. other bosons are other great examples of particles. I fail to see your difficulty with the concept of particles when youre clearly are more well versed in quantum theory than i am. The entire point of the standard model is to catalogue the large number of particles discovered in accelerators. You can look up the standard model and elementary particles if you dont accept this. Furthermore matter is just any system composed of these subatomic particles. So saying that materialism is wrong because quantum field theory says particles are composed of immaterial fields is illogical becsuse obviously the fields dont consist of that of which it is a constitient of. Materialism never depended on the position that substomic partolicles couldnt be composed of smaller constituents like fields. So all that happens is that we update definition of matter to be that which is composed of sub atomic particles of and by extension the quantum fields which result im particles. So your issue is with definitions. Do you think that we cant update the definition of matter just because we learn about new physics? No that would be fail. You haven't disproved matter you simply just updated the definition. The existence of QFT isnt against materialism since materialism just depends on the definition of matter which depends on sub atomic particles which now depends on quantum fields. You're basically playing a game of semantics which isnt a particularly strong argument. The argument of quantum non locality was a lot better.

And it's obviously not flaccid since the laws of relavity and quantum mechanics describe large portions of the universe and have been experimentally verified in many instances. They produce concrete results so even though the underlying theory is not perfect, I again say that its incomplete but the best we have, which is consistent with the thread title that materialism is the best explanation for realty, not the perfect one.



I also thought i gave a pretty good general example of how social sciences exists as a function of material; responses between neural strcutures in the brain as individuals interact, which are mediated by various chemicals and neurotransmitters in a context of a person's phenotype. The phenotype is a result of genes interacting with the environment in the production of an organism. Perhaps you can show me what the immaterial component i.


Furthermore, different computer architectures and platforms are relevent mathematically. THey dont operate on principles of a turing machine, which is the only computation system you covered. So you do have to demonstrate mathematically that some combination of a turing machine and quantum computer wouldnt be able to simulate a human brain. Are you familiar with the major differences between quantum computers and turing machines? A qubit is a super position of all possible analogue values between 0 and 1 simultaneously, making it process certain tthings much more efficiently and differently. Ill just say it is possible and say you have an uncanny ability to know things are impossible which you can't possibly know. Where is the evidence and proof?

I'm also waiting for you to show that simulations of the brain and consciousness arent either np hard or np complete problems. Np hard is where ai is postulated to exist. If it is mathematically impossible there should be a proof. But I dont understand how you can say consciousness can't be simulated when we dont even have a good understanding of What consciousness is.

Also are you a professor or researcher or something? You do seem very well educated and I'm just curious what degrees you have? It sounds like you have a degree in Neuroscience and possibly physics.

 

[Willamena]

first I'm still waiting for any alternative theory you could propose that would be superior.

Materialism isn't a theory, so there are no alternative theories.

 

[serp777]

Materialism isn't a theory, so there are no alternative theories.

When you make a claim like that perhaps you should provide some rationale or at least argue with the one I gave based on Google definitions. a general theory is just A system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the one explained

It is a philosophical theory that consist of a system of ideas including those from logic, math biology, matter, physics in order to explain the phenomena in the universe that science hasnt experimentally verified or explained

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

When you make a claim like that perhaps you should provide some rationale

In the sciences, theories serve as frameworks for the development and empirical testing of hypotheses. Materialism is a fundamental assumption about the nature of reality itself. It is a much a theory as "religion", "realism", "ontology", etc. It is completely untestable, because any test that might serve as confirmation must assume materialism to be true.