The scientific evidence for immaterial mind defeats materialism – claims Dr. Egnor, a neurosurgeon affiliated with the Discovery Institute… Not so quickly – says Dr. Faizal Ali, a psychiatrist affiliated with CAMH and University of Toronto, who describes himself as an anti-creationist and a militant atheist. He believes that neural networks can be responsible for the emergence of the human mind, naturally…
Let’s look at their evidence…
“I often ask people who insist their mind is immaterial to put their money where their mouths are, by scooping out their brain and pulverizing it in a food processor, then continuing our discussion with their mental faculties still intact, as they should be if they were correct. No one has ever taken me up on this.”
Dr. Egnor does the scooping of the brains often by surgically removing the great majority of the brain… If Dr. Ali’s neural networks theory is correct, how come the mind is often not effected by the majority of the neural networks missing after surgery? This evidence would seem to support Dr. Egnor’s theory that the mind is immaterial and therefore unaffected by the majority of the brain tissue missing…
However, just like Dr. Ali seems to imply, not the whole brain can be discarded. Moreover, it is a well known fact, and both neurosurgeons and psychiatrists are well aware of the fact, that even a small damage to certain parts of the brain can shut down the entire neural networks and the immaterial mind…
So, who is right? Who is wrong?
keiths,
And I have been telling you the entire time that one state can only equal one outcome if you are a materialist. So all of your nonsense of changing the choice from chocolate to pulling out your fingernails is just a silly distraction from that fact. We are not talking about the state before you think you make the choice, we are talking about the state at the moment you think you made a choice. There can only be one state.
And it’s not ‘people who are physical systems’, it’s the physical system. People can be nothing other than a physical system so that is redundant. The physical system can’t make two outcomes from one set of states. That would be such a ludicrous claim for a materialist to make, that this really would require some extraordinary evidence for which you have none.
newton,
You are clearly trying to play burden tennis. I have already explained very clearly why you will never be able to fully understand the supernatural in this lifetimes. Scream and whine all you want it won’t change that. Now, why can’t the materialist take responsibility for their claim is the question? Choice and materialism are not compatible. It just feels that way.
phoodoo,
Which is doubly wrong. First, because materialism doesn’t automatically imply determinism; and second, because a single state in a deterministic system can lead to more than one next state if the inputs differ.
That’s how conditional branching based on user input works in computer programs, for instance.
phoodoo,
This would be much easier to explain to you if you actually understood computers.
keiths,
Haha. You still think computers make decisions.
Wrong again. The input is irrelevant. There is always input. There is input from when you were five until the millisecond before you think you made a decision. It doesn’t matter. At the instant you are ready to make what you think is a choice, there can only be one outcome. You can not change that. The atoms that are you can not change that. One state=one outcome.
You better learn to come to grips with that before you start claiming computers decide.
Keiths, didn’t you actually design processors?
Phoodoo, what do you do? Test crayons to make sure they got the flavors right?
Rich,
Yes, and there was a noticeable lack of phoodoos among my colleagues. I’m sure the customers were grateful for that.
phoodoo,
Of course it matters. Try my thought experiment and you’ll see just how much it matters:
Input is not irrelevant, phoodoo.
Meanwhile, it’s amusing that you are now trying to cram the immaterial soul into a one-millisecond gap.
It gets pretty painful when those gaps shrink, doesn’t it?
Interestingly, I actually test crayons to make sure they aren’t toxic when you stuff ten of them up them up your nose and then lick the floor at chuck e. cheese.
And yes, you are welcome.
If I press t on my keybard, t appears on my screen. If I press a on my keybard, a appears on my screen. Input matters.
If I read phoodoo say that input doesn’t matter, I respond that input matters. If I read phoodoo say that evolution is false, I respond that evolution is true.
To say that input doesn’t matter is outright stupid. How can someone be that wrong?
One has merely to look at logic gate truth tables to see that input matters:
We have inputs, outputs, and the nature of AND gates. The nature of the AND gate is effectively the multiplication of the inputs (Z=XY). It will always do that, multiply them. But there are multiple possible input combinations, so there are two different outputs.
Humans could be like that. See chocolate, pistachio, and vanilla, act according to your nature, pick chocolate. Unless there’s some additional input that produces the vanilla choice. Maybe you look at the icecream and see the chocolate’s become mixed with pistachio which you don’t like. That’s altered input, so this time you pick vanilla. If you had not received that input about the chocolate mixed with pistachio, you would have picked chocolate. So the input, and your nature, decides your output.
It doesn’t matter with regards to the fact that one state equals one outcome!, ya flipping cheesehead.
What the fuck is “your nature” to a materialist?
But hey, as long as all things you can never choose count in fake materialist world, why not just say if you are offered chocolate and vanilla, you may have chosen a Subaru, because hey, its an alternative to keiths, even if you could never have chosen it.
Rumraket,
Maybe you and keiths can get together and start looking at your input and output tables together, so you can see that with every input, there is only one output. Why doesn’t the table show three outputs for the 0,1 input. Maybe the computer can just decide which it feels like outputting, depending on its nature? Sometimes a 0, sometimes a 1, sometimes no response, just depends…
And here we see the difference. The whole has some understanding of the parts.
Jane the neuroscientist on deciding which ice cream to have induces some brain activity as she makes her choice. But at the same time she is aware of the processes involved. She knows how her senses pick up the perceptions, and that the mental pictures of previous occurrences affect her decision. She knows that despite the sensory inputs and mental images, through an act of inner will she can resist taking any ice cream even if she craves the chocolate. She knows and understands that neurons will be firing.
On the other hand, Ernie the computer acts on given inputs with nothing further added. It knows nothing, nor does it need to know anything about its own processes.
No its because, unlike computers, we have an inner awareness. Computers are doers but we are knowing doers.
Okay, I might grant that. I’ll need to give this some more thought. I agree that a system is definitely more than the some of its parts.
How does one program a computer to be indecisive?
Yes, I agree with you Charlie. Why would maintaining a level of stability be what makes humans care and want, and computers not care? That’s not a reason at all.
Furthermore, why does John Haugeland think computers can’t care or want? Listening to Keiths and co. you would think all one would need to do it program a computer to care and it would care. What’s stopping it?
The fact is everyone knows, even those stubborn materialists, that there is and always will be a fundamental border between computers and living organisms that can never be crossed no matter how hard we try. There is no rationale for subscribing this difference down to allostasis anymore than there is a justification for subscribing it to us having fingernails and computers not.
I have never claimed that one state equals two outcomes. That’s YOUR claim. Somehow you can’t even entertain a different concept.
Look at the AND gate example. It’s how you work, the “rules” that govern your behavior. It’s a product of your genes and your experiences.
But that’s YOUR position. That some times, given the exact same situation, something else happens out of nowhere for no reason.
In making a caricature of my position, you describe your own. That, my dear, is irony.
You say here that people make choices. Previously you said:
In what way do you think a brain makes choices and in what way do you see that as different from people making choices?
You say above that the current state of person has an effect their choices. Do you agree that their current state can be altered through their will power?
We have never said otherwise. I’m glad you’re finally catching on.
No, that’s your position.
You’re treating the label indecisiveness as a thing itself that has no underlying components. Indecisiveness is a label for a more complex underlying behavior. A computer program can act in a way we would label “indecisive” for the same reasons we would label the actions of a person as “indecisive”.
Imagine a person coming to a fork in the road, then stopping and leaning left and right but doesn’t proceed down either lane. We would say from looking at this person that he appears to be indecisive about what direction to take.
Now substitute the person for a robot controlled by a computer program. It could easily manifest the same apparent behavior. This time we potentially just have a better understanding of what is causing the behavior.
I don’t know that.
At what point as we approach that border does your god put the soul in?
Also, how is it you know what you know? How is it that you know there is a supernatural component to decision making? What led you to believe that?
Odd that phoodoo cannot see that. He talks about robot arms deciding to throw the car door out the window but he cannot decide to turn into gold or start flying by the power of thought. So he’s just as locked into his available choices as any robot arm.
Does your position have an actual name phoodoo? Or is “you are wrong and I am right” about it?
But there is one behaviour that I can judge from within and that is my own. Under certain circumstances I can be indecisive. The difference between me and a computer is that I can think about the particular circumstance and then come to a decision. I have a choice of two flavours of ice cream and I like both of them. What are my options? I pick chocolate, but wait, the colour looks uninviting. I’ll go for the vanilla. But maybe the chocolate tastes better than it looks. I’ve put on a bit of weight so maybe I shouldn’t have either. Or I could make a pig of myself and have both. What if I had both but just have the same amount in total that I was going to have with just the one flavour? I tell myself to hurry up and I make a decision.
I end up getting one chocolate ice cream and giving it to the wife. My will has won the battle with my desires. My wife says, “Don’t I get a choice?” I reply, “No, we’d be here all day and I know you would end up just choosing the chocolate anyway.
I know that I can be indecisive and with effort I can change myself to be more decisive. This is not how it works with machines. They just follow what they were designed to do by their human makers.
This “fundamental border” thing just sounds like a recapitulation of élan vital. Nothing more then that.
For some reason phoodoo simply refuses to name the thing that most resembles his claim. Likely he’s still deciding if phlogiston exists or not before moving onto the invisible life essences.
Phoodoo, your ideas are from the past and that’s where they are staying.
What if they were designed to decide?
Likewise a computer can think about the particular circumstance and come to a decision.
You are exactly the same as a computer. There is no difference. You just cannot see the inner workings of yourself in the same way you can understand a computer’s inner workings.
Tell me, in the computational emulation of neurons, what is missing?
Does anyone else agree with this statement? Do computers think about circumstances? If so, what does it mean to think and is this the same as human thinking?
Does that mean I was designed by an external mind or minds? Was I programmed?
What are “circumstances”? Ephemeral information?
Where phoodoo asking me that question I would have to say yes, by his purported designer or so he thinks (I think).
But of course you were designed, it was just not by a mind. It was the environment. You ancestors imported information from the environment and it was encoded in the fact of their survival. But designed you were.
If I build a virtual organism and give it a virtual environment and power it’s brain with a supercomputer capable of emulating more neurons then the human brain possesses what is missing such that that neural network (just like us) cannot truly be said to be making decisions about it’s virtual world?
phoodoo? Does such an entity possess whatever it is you think gives you your supernatural decision making ability? How can you tell? Gut feelz?
Rumarket, you are getting more confused by the minute. Of course that is my claim. So when I said that the input is irrelevant, I am saying that it does not change the fact that one state equals one outcome. That is why it is irrelevant, get it????
But if you were paying any attention at all, and the methamphetamine swirling through your head wasn’t interfering with your output, you would have noticed that keiths claimed one state could equal two outputs, depending on the input.
Which you now seem to be both agreeing with and disagreeing with. Put the pipe down, just say no. You are babbling.
Hohhoho..perfect! Omagain to the rescue! Show Rummy how you can be just as confused as him.
*KABOOM*
I am not claiming materialism is correct if you do not have a coherent position. Just interested in how you immaterial self chooses. The same question you seem to be asking.
And I agreed and pointed out the same is obviously true of explanations which don’t require the supernatural. In the case of the later ,it does not prevent us from trying to expand our imperfect knowledge.
Just the opposite, I figured asking someone who believed in an immaterial self might be able to provide some actual information, had given it some thought. It seems your view is since we cannot know everything, we cannot know anything about my position.
Everyone should take responsibility for their claim, immaterialists and materialists. However the claim should be one they actually make, not some straw man version.
Feelings ,of course, are not always the most reliable form of knowledge. You may be right, but since we do not know or maybe even can know how the immaterial works we cannot know immaterialism is compatible either. You can assert it, but you don’t know it.
What strawman? I didn’t invent some position. The claim is that materialism can account for all our thoughts and actions. That is no strawman, that is what is claimed.
And yes, we may not know if free will is compatible with an immaterial mind, but we can say with certainty that it is not compatible with a material mind.
We cannot even know if there’s such a thing as an “immaterial” mind.
That would imply that we know everything about the “material,” and that our knowledge is unambiguous on the material precluding “free-will.” However, last time I looked, we didn’t know everything. Many phenomena and epiphenomena we’re barely starting to realize about and study. Studies on complexity, and chaos theory, etc, are far from having the maturity for getting us to understand, other than by simulation, the plethora of stuff that can happen given subtle differences in starting conditions.
That would also imply that there’s a way to distinguish “actual” “free-will” from a very very complex phenomenon, or series of phenomena, that just happens to look like that (if we’re even able to define “free-will” in concrete, clear, and testable terms).
I think this covers two important bases:
First, Our knowledge of what is meant by “material” is rather primitive. We certainly can’t draw theological conclusions about the limits of material.
Second, in order to say something about free will that isn’t bullshit, we would have to define a test that cannot be passed by a manufactured object. We could call it the Turing Test. But it needs work. Mostly it needs some anchors for the goalposts, to prevent them from wandering off.
As an example, consider computers that play chess, go or poker. All three games require choices to be made with incomplete knowledge.
The really interesting thing about these game players is not that building sized supercomputers can beat humans, but that they are improving to the point where computers sold at WalMart can beat most humans. The approach to programming has improved faster than the hardware.
What’s left to conquer are human foibles. We have some distance to go before Artificial Inanity.
Except that it is not a fact.
Elliptic curves generate two outcomes for each “state” of the input variable within the relevant range. Diffie-Hellman cryptography relies on this fact. You are using Diffie-Hellman elliptic curves every time you post a comment to this site, though you may not realise it.
Never said you did, it would also apply to a strawman of immaterialism. Whenever it makes a claim.
Libertarian free will perhaps but can a material mind choose between chocolate and vanilla, according to its human nature?
This is wrong at many levels.
Materialism is something of a phylosophy for some, and then a conclusion given what we know. The “claim” would not be that “materialism” can “account” for such and such, the claim would be that whatever exists is physical. There’s a difference between being physical and “accounting for.” The first is what we’re made of, the second is a fancy name for “explaining.” Explaining is limited by what we, humans, are able to understand. Maybe we can explain everything in terms of their physics, maybe we cannot. It all depends on the levels at which we can understand, and the depth of advancement of our knowledge.
We can conclude that as far as we know everything is physical, that still doesn’t mean that something can be “accounted for” by some philosophical background, conclusion, or foundation. It just means that as far as we know, everything is physical, and thus we should expect that our actions work due to the way the physical works. Whether we can build/find such explanations is a different issue.
Define “physical” without circularity.
Eric,
I’d say “relating to matter and/or energy.”
In any case, an immaterial soul/mind animating the body would not qualify as “physical”.
timothya,
Oh my, you are jumping off the deep end with keiths.
If you want to argue that a physical brain can give two outputs for the exact same physical state (or why stop at two for that matter), by all means please do so.
Just make sure you come up with a rationale for what determines which output you will get. Maybe you can put it all down to emergence. Or allostatsis. Or ephemerallity.
Oh really?
Is your love for your children physical?
Define “circularity” without circularity.
I sense it.
newton,
Do you? Which sense?
Reification is a massive problem in these discussions. So many things called ‘non-physical’ aren’t ‘things’ at all, but processes. They can only exist with a time dimension, and they require actual physical ‘things’ with which to work.
I would say that a real ‘thing’, a physical object, is in principle time-invariant (at non-quantum scales). They can be defined without reference to how they change over time.
So-called non-physical ‘things’ like ‘love’ are actually processes, abstractions or states of being over time. They are not constants, but rather processes that involve and require many specific interactions between physical things, not the least of which are brain cells whose activities are sensed by us as thoughts and feelings.
‘Non-physical thing’ is basically an oxymoron. There are physical things, and there are ways in which they interact.