This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
That was an excellent opportunity for you to respond with the actual evidence you claim to have “plenty” of instead of your banal scripture. It’s almost as though you don’t have any.
Please try again and this time actually describe whatever evidence you think you have for the existence of anything immaterial.
prove it or retract it
prove it or retract it
peace
Love and decisions are behaviors of physical brains. What evidence do you have that anything immaterial is involved?
That’s pretty much what I was going to reply as well.
Then you shouldn’t be making claims that require support. If you’re not willing to provide that support, there is literally no reason to take your position seriously.
You’re exhibiting a common woo peddler behavior — refuse to answer questions about your specific claims and try to distract from that refusal by asking questions of your interlocutor. It’s transparent evasion.
That being said, I see no reason why the placebo effect cannot be explained as a behavior of a physical brain. We’ve evolved to be somewhat social animals and getting any attention to our problems can improve our outlook. Where do you see any evidence for something immaterial in the placebo effect?
Sigh.
From your own quote, note the words “…to dismiss something on the basis that it hasn’t been proven beyond all doubt is also fallacious reasoning.”
See how nuanced the entire quote is. That’s why I say your ideas about burden of proof are foolishness in every way. And to analyze fallacies is far over your head.
Moreover, your quote does not apply to the claims that I personally make. I do not disagree about the correct application of burden of proof. I disagree with your incorrect application of it. I explained how your application is incorrect, namely that you have preconceived notions that make meeting the demanded burden of proof impossible. You had nothing to reply to this. So there.
Norms of rational discussion are definitional, not claims about reality.
Now, where is your evidence for the existence of anything immaterial?
Indeed. However, thus far there has been no evidence whatsoever presented to support the claim that something immaterial exists.
What if it so happens that evidence for the immaterial is immaterial (e.g. logical, not archeological or otherwise physical)? Ever thought of that? Of course not. So stew there in your own preconceived notions.
Is someone being bullied here? Is it something that needs admin attention?
Is Patrick’s evidence for the material material? It’s largely based on appearances, isn’t it? Is there any non-immaterial evidence for the material world that he can produce?
Absolutely. Look a little more closely.
Are they now? I take it your basis for that is that if one removes the brain, one removes the love and decision making abilities. But the conclusion is fallacious. If we remove the air we also remove the love and decision making abilities.
Please provide actual evidence for the claim that love and decisions are behaviors, or retract it.
He’s too busy with his bullying and pointless guanoing activities to have time to stew. Bureaucrats must earn their keep–even ones with Napoleanic complexes. (And, btw, is such stewing material?)
And what’s your evidence that “love and decisions are behaviors of physical brains”?
norms of rational discussion are immaterial
mic drop
peace
Which are?
Well, I might have an opinion that is certainly open to challenge, correction, refutation or not worth bothering with.
All very fine but where’s the substance. I’ve simply made a very modest claim. I suggest we can make a separation between stuff that shows some evidence of its existence and anything else.
Well, no. The process that occurs when we imagine stuff is real, detecable and possibly quantifiable (in energy consumption terms, at least) whereas what we imagine, the subject of our conjecture, is not necessarily real.
My previous remark should make it clear I’m not saying that.
Yes, if you mean “imagining”, the process of imagining, thinking, is a physical process. But no, if you are reifying imagination as a real product of the process of imagining.
It seems you have misunderstood me. Hopefully now all is clear.
I’m not personally a fan of Patrick’s approach. He often demands evidence where that makes no sense. He would do better to ask for clarifications or for detailed examples.
I guess we all learn by experience what works best in trying to communicate our ideas and in trying to understand others’ ideas.
I wasn’t, in this case, referring to anything other than whether “the immaterial realm” is a coherent concept or a figment of the imagination. I get the impression Patrick and myself take a similar view on it.
“…not necessarily real”, whereas your earlier claim was “…immaterial “things” in my view are anything that exists only in the particular or collective imagination.” Now it turns out some things in imagination are real – and let’s recall that you earlier equated “real” and “material”, so you are saying some things in imagination are material.
Do you not recognize that you are blatantly failing to make the distinction between real and unreal? Such a person is unfit to ask evidence of immaterial from another, because in all likelihood he does not understand his own question. If given the evidence, he would not be able to evaluate and appreciate it appropriately.
Thus no, you were not making a modest claim. You were making incoherent claims.
Maybe, but your remark should also make it clear how incoherent you were and continue to be.
Of course I’ve thought of that. A logical argument would be a good start. No one has presented one yet, though.
That’s all that’s ever been observed. Several people elsewhere in this and related threads have made the usual points about conscious behaviors being impacted by physical changes (drugs, trauma, etc.) to brains, which demonstrates that material factors are involved. No one has provided any evidence whatsoever of anything immaterial even existing.
No, they are held in physical brains and documented in physical materials.
When all humans are gone and all libraries turned to dust, those norms will no longer exist.
Fair point. I do get exasperated when people smugly make claims about the equivalent of the invisible pink unicorn and take umbrage when asked to support them. I’d certainly be interested in detailed examples of anything immaterial.
That being said, evidence does matter.
Actually, the proof is embedded in the statement you are responding to. The proof is this: If you value logical proof as evidence, then you acknowledge the existence of immaterial. Namely, logic is a stock example of immaterial.
So, the way you respond conclusively proves that you have not thought your stuff through. You are still asking for the impossible, i.e. that other people would do the most basic thinking for you.
My wife is visiting a friend at the moment but I have no difficulty imagining her. I can also easily imagine a unicorn. Both images are real in the sense of existing as neuronal processes. But my wife is also real (unless she or I am a brain-in-a-vat or in somebody’s simulation etc) whereas there are and never have been unicorns in this universe.
The distinction is clear to me. I apologise for my failure to communicate. Does the “my wife vs a unicorn” help?
Idle speculation, Erik. See if you can draw me out and expose me completely!
Non-sequitur.
Maybe. Do you have a point to make? Perhaps you’d like to rebut my contention that there are real things and stuff people imagine.
I find it interesting that someone intelligent and educated like Kantian Naturalist demonstrates the ability to carry on rational, polite, mutually beneficial conversations with people who have a wide variety of backgrounds, always being willing to both explain and learn. It shows a great deal of confidence and lack of fragility in his self-esteem that unfounded arrogance, misplaced condescension, and personal insults would not.
Let’s suppose you can really do that. What’s the basis for claiming that the stuff in the first category is all material? So, for example, suppose I have an experience as of seeing a fox, or feel a pain, and, in my view, those experiences show a kind of “first-person evidence” for for their own existence. If we conclude, “Well, then, they must be material, we’d just be begging the question.”
The concept and application of logic is, as far as all observations have so far shown, dependent on physical systems such as human brains. No one has provided any evidence for an immaterial component to those.
Now, you could define “immaterial” in such a way as to include abstract concepts, but that increases the risk of equivocation if you also define gods as immaterial.
Yeah, you should take KN as an example for your own behavior, Patrick.
I also find it interesting that you, a person of lack of rationality, unable to learn, unwilling to initiate and carry on mutually beneficial conversations etc., should say all this. At least we have appreciation of KN in common.
Really!? Please provide those “observations” or documented evidence of them, or retract this apparently absurd claim. If it’s not patently absurd, it must have won a Nobel Prize for somebody. I haven’t heard about this!!!
That’s exactly my point. It’s definitional!
Alan Fox,
Well if you define “material” as “Everything that exists” and “Imaginary” as “Everything that’s not material”–you’ll get the result you want. But it’s not what anybody else means by those terms.
Thus according to you, humans invent laws of logic, instead of discovering their all-pervasiveness in life and all existence in the form of e.g. math and laws of nature.
Whereas you have no risk of self-contradiction by refusing to admit abstracts and figments of imagination as part of your world when speaking up at TSZ, while still reading fiction and screaming at nightmares in private…
Why don’t you tell us what YOU mean by the term, as you’re so certain that everything in the world is material?
Perhaps you are using the same definitions that Alan seems to admire. If so, you two are dead right!
I took KN’s point to be questioning the description as “behaviors of physical brains.” I don’t think he was questioning whether brains are involved.
To me, the behavior of physical brains is mostly described in terms of neuro-transmitters and ionizations.
I literally love the idea that love is a “brain behavior”. Logic too!
Right. That’s the customary meaning of those terms.
I appreciate your attempt to clarify yourself. The “my wife vs a unicorn” example implies that you denote externally extant as “real” and externally non-extant as “unreal”. The problem with this is obvious. Limited to only the external reality, you have nothing really relevant to say about imagination, even though you use the word a lot lately.
You say, “Both images (of my wife and of the unicorn) are real in the sense of existing as neuronal processes.” This is false. How? There sure are neuronal processes in the brain, but none of them have the form of an image of your wife or of a unicorn. In terms of mere neuronal processes from the external third-person point of view, nobody has yet been able to distinguish between imagination, memory, logical abstract reasoning, pragmatic planning etc.
In terms of neuronal processes, mental operations are all indistinguishable, no difference between a psychosis and rational thinking. But surely the difference is important, so, you are still not properly distinguishing between real and unreal, true and false.
Look, as things stand, you are not in position to determine what is idle speculation and what is not. And I doubt you have any more clue about the meaning of the word non-sequitur than of semantics, linguistics, and etymology.
You mean I haven’t rebutted you? Good grief.
That’s too strong, IMO. An identity theory wouldn’t require that that the neural processes “have the form of an image of your wife or of a unicorn.”
But, generally, I agree with your post. Patrick seems to think that the mind-body problem has been solved (I missed the ceremony, myself) and that love and logic have been shown to be “brain behaviors.” Alan is just kind of gamboling along with his fellow moderator.
Alan, you are saying there is a real process which can make unreal things?
But surely it requires being able to distinguish the one from the other as a replicable experiment, no?
Not really, having been persuaded by KN that the distinction between internal and external is somewhat arbitrary. In the real world, boundaries are somewhat fuzzy.
I don’t at all dismiss the power and beauty of human imagination. Lacking imagination, possibly the human species would not have advanced from small family groups to the societies we have today.
I’ll admit there is detail to be worked out, perhaps a fair bit of detail. How the top-down meshes into the bottom-up is far from being answered. False? That’s a premature suggestion.
Because we don’t have a full picture of how brain activity, neurons firing and so on, relates to the thinking process doesn’t mean we have to make stuff up. I can happily admit I have no idea of the details of the process of thought. I’m sure there are neuroscientists who have vastly more knowledge of the subject, but there’s no reason to reject the idea that brains think.
I can only express my own opinions. You are welcome to accept, reject or ignore them.
Not as far as I can tell, no.
No. Not sure why you think I might. Unreal things are oxymorons, aren’t they?
That’s harsh! Sure, I’m a kind of gamboling guy but they’re my own gambols.
Alan Fox,
But its you who is saying imagination is unreal. So if there is any oxymoron, how is it not that it is you making it. What do you think the process of imaging results in?
If it’s any consolation, I had thought of using “frolic” or “flounce” before settling on “gambol.”
😉
Thus there is top-down stuff. And it’s a premature suggestion on your part that bottom-up is primary.
Wouldn’t “not making stuff up” include assuming that brain activity is all there is to thought process?
And I’m sure there are psychologists who have vastly more knowledge on the subject, knowing about psychoses and mental functions long before there were brain surgeries, and remaining superior experts in this area even now when brain surgeries have been hot stuff for a century or so. Psychology implies a fundamental distinction between brain and mind.
I reject them for the reasons I have given. You are free to remain ridiculous by considering this as not a rebuttal.
I’m shameless!