Just to recap, the fact that the scientific method has some real flaws, and the fact that all facts are subjectively interpreted, and the fact that on any given subject we may be ignorant of a host of related facts (this is certainly the case with brain/mind theories) precludes you from dogmatically stating that dualism is impossible. You really have no idea – just assertion

Logical constructions are fine and necssary but they are only as good as their premises. But to offer a premise one must first deal with the short comings mentioned above.

thanks again, seer

I’m sorry, but that’s simply wrong. What happens there is signal transduction, ie information processing. You dogmatically assume that information cannot be a property of physical systems. Ever heard of entropy?

No matter what I say, you presuppose your position and say “it can’t be” – so all I can say furthermore is “You’re wrong”.

Especially about this, information.

You don’t have an orange ball in your mind either – you have a representation of an orange ball. And neuronal states can very well represent things in the outside world – see the face recognition neural networks. From your position you could say that such a neural networks face recognition has a nonphysical mind as well, because there is a representation of the face present as information in the system.

It all comes down to representation and information. And contrary to what you think, signal processing and transduction (taking and input and computing an output that is not identical to the input) is information processing. Also, this is representation, since representation is the integration of information about a system in another system. All that is needed for that is systematicity and uniform causal connections.

“Of course, on most any subject, we are ignorant of facts. Since we are finite there are always facts that escape us. Where one fact can overthrow the whole system. And there are no “brute facts” out there that are not filtered through the subjective mind.”

That is largely true, but not contradictory to what I stated. If you accept that the CD player you have is a CD player, it is a fact that this is a development of quantum theory, this means that my points are valid also for you.

“1. Actually most of science at least begins with induction and repeatable conclusions. For instance water boils at about 212 degrees F at sea level. We hold this to be true because of repeated tests – but we can not know if it is true. As Hume said it is an unjustified assumption.”

This again overlooks that every observation is already theory laden, and thus there is never pure induction. The terms “Fahrenheit”, “Sea Level”, “Degrees” and “boiling” are already theory-laden.

“2.Popper also said that science never actually gets to the truth.”

Popper said that science approaches truth, and maybe even gets to it, but that we can never have the second order knowledge to know that we have it – yet he acknowledges corroboration, thus the approach of truth.

Also, Popper is a little out of date when it comes to philosophy of science (though the above still holds true)

“False theories can make true predictions”

No, they can approximate true predictions. Newton’s theory provides approximations of the actual values. So if you only measure to a certain degree of detail, it will fit, but if you go beyond that, it won’t. Therefore, it is an approximation of a better theory.

“Science does not always observe, it also measures. And measuring is key to most scientific conclusions.”

Absolutely

“Yet what we decide to use as measurment is completely arbitrary.”

The standards of measurement, like “meter”, “yard”, “second” etc are in the end arbitrary. But that doesn’t matter – I suggest you look into “theory of measurement”.

Something like meter is an arbitrary standard, but uniformly and systematically applied – it always refers to one specific length – that does obtain. Also, there is a difference between standards of measuring where the 0-point is also arbitrary, and such where it is not, such as measurements of length. These need a zero-reference and one standard unit. From there, everything else follows.

The standards are arbitrary, sometimes completely (Fahrenheit), sometimes not (length, where the 0-point is fixed for all possible standards).

And the fact that they refer to a real property that can be picked out through a uniform standard – that is how they conform to reality.

“4. One other point Mike that I think you missed: Who defines what science is? Is science simply what scientists do? “

That is the question of the demarcation criteria – which is a topic of philosophy of science.

But you’re asking a loaded question here, which I will resolve by distinguishing between the pragmatic quesiton, namely “who actually does advance the demarcation criteria”, which are philosophers of science and scientists themselves.
- and the question about justification, which I have already answered that they are arrived at through logical arguments based on pragmatic truths (methodological necessity) and based on the non-arbitrary theories of epistemology and philosophy of science, which have to be both logically valid (coherent) and consistent with the observations.

The fact is that the standards are very well justified – and that this is a thing of logical expressive power of statements and observations.

The statement “Someone who was sick bought a healing-stone and got better, and this is evidence for the healing power of stones” fails these criteria – and is a prime example on which one can show how the criteria are logical:

Several things are not mentioned which we know can affect the outcome:

1. What was the nature of the illness and what was the statistical likelyhood given the condition of the person that it would have gotten better anyway?
2. Is the person gullible and credulous (placebo-effect)
3. What were the additional factors that affected her system?
4. What precautions were taken to elimintate other possible explanations?
5. By what mechanism did the stone do this
6. How can we investigate that supposed mechanism?

The statement made was that the stone provided a sufficient cause for the remission. This is a very strong statement indeed – so you have to look for other possible sufficient causes. Also, as Steve correctly said – unless you can demonstrate that you have a model of the mechanism, the process by which the one causes the other, you are positing magic, and thus provide no explanation at all.

However, all of this is really sidetracking what we were going on about initially.

Sadly, I think our discussion is going nowhere. I have laid out my case and presented you with sufficient evidence for it. There is nothing more I can do. The evidence is overwhelming, and I think I have been able to lay it out sufficiently, but I’m afraid it will convince noone who is dogmatically entrenchend in the position that there “has to be” something else.

I posit identity – and where there’s identity, there can be no systematic connections, because there are no distinct, separate things. So the question “what is the connection between the thought and the neural processes – please lay that out for me” is meaningless from the position of identity. There aren’t two different things that are connected – there is one thing – the brain process, which we know as the thought.

And the more science progresses, the more we can positively identify the neural activity with the conscious activity.

So, that shall be it from me.

Bye,
-Mike

1. Yes – certain types of electro-chemical processes are information processing. Just like the electronic processes in your computer are information processing.
2. Thus, it is not the pack of neurons that are rational, it is information processing that goes on in the neural network that is rational (some parts of it, others are the emotions etc). That is to say the signal transduction.

There is no “information” in computers per say. Just a series of interconnecting ons/offs. Those ons/offs have to be interperted by a mind. Or they are use less. And for that to happen we are adding some other than simple electrical highs or lows.

3. All you are doing is stating your incredulit – saying “it can’t be so”. I’m saying precisely that first person experience is identical to the activity of the neural net. And you are wrong – it is accessible from the outside. When I know how your brain processes information, and what information it gets from the outside, then I can predict the personal experience… this is already possible to a small degree, which is quite a feat, given that our technology is still far to crude to have sufficient resolution for observing the brain to a detail finer than 1mm – which is already a pack of thousands and thousands of synapses.

See Mike, I know I see the orange ball. As a matter of fact you know that you see your orange ball.And no matter how well you understand the electro-chemical process the orange ball does not exist in that physical process. Just as the orange ball does not exist in the ons/offs of the computer. For that orange ball to be manifest from a computer you need pyhsical light and a screen. There is no pyhsical light or screen in my brain.Yet I see it. And so do you.

How does one know if the premises are true? Depends on what theory of knowledge one proposes – I know many, and not a single one that is absolutely without problems.
But I favour (as explained in a previous comment) the approach that says that the premises can be argued for and analyzed themselves – through arguments the premises of which again can be analyzed and argued for, until you arrive at the basic, foundational assumptions that are so are immediately evident
Premises that fulfill these conditions integrate coherently into the larger scheme of knowledge.

Of course, on most any subject, we are ignorant of facts. Since we are finite there are always facts that escape us. Where one fact can overthrow the whole system. And there are no “brute facts” out there that are not filtered through the subjective mind.

Actually, Popper made the point that science works mostly on deduction and falsification. Furthermore, there is no pure induction, since every observation is already theory-laden.

Also, science acknowledges its imperfection and always seeks to find flaws in its theories and interpretations – through tests. The tests are constructed to be harder and harder to pass – and while we cannot positively know that a theory who passes them is true, we can know that it is the best interpretation-schema we have for the data with incredible predictive power.

1. Actually most of science at least begins with induction and repeatable conclusions. For instance water boils at about 212 degrees F at sea level. We hold this to be true because of repeated tests – but we can not know if it is true. As Hume said it is an unjustified assumption.

2.Popper also said that science never actually gets to the truth. He quotes Einstein that he would never consider his theory true, perhaps a better approximation, but false nonetheless. Why? Because even false theories can make true predictions. Newton’s theory of gravity would be one example.

3. So false theories can make true predictions. Another problem: Science does not always observe, it also measures. And measuring is key to most scientific conclusions. Yet what we decide to use as measurment is completely arbitrary. In other words we invent things like yards, inches, degrees, etc… So how do these completely arbitrary tools comport with reality?

4. One other point Mike that I think you missed: Who defines what science is? Is science simply what scientists do?

thanks, seer

I’m sorry, but the “argument” from incredulity is not an argument at all.

_____________

How does one know if the premises are true? Depends on what theory of knowledge one proposes – I know many, and not a single one that is absolutely without problems.
But I favour (as explained in a previous comment) the approach that says that the premises can be argued for and analyzed themselves – through arguments the premises of which again can be analyzed and argued for, until you arrive at the basic, foundational assumptions that are so are immediately evident
Premises that fulfill these conditions integrate coherently into the larger scheme of knowledge.
___________________
Actually, Popper made the point that science works mostly on deduction and falsification. Furthermore, there is no pure induction, since every observation is already theory-laden.

Also, all of these do not invalidate my points that we have nothing better than science, and that when we look at the pragmatic effects – science has demonstrated that it has a degree of veracity that nothing else has. As such, whatever position you take – it can only be more subject to criticism than science in this regard.

Also, science acknowledges its imperfection and always seeks to find flaws in its theories and interpretations – through tests. The tests are constructed to be harder and harder to pass – and while we cannot positively know that a theory who passes them is true, we can know that it is the best interpretation-schema we have for the data with incredible predictive power.

Nothing but science manages this.

-Mike

See, now that’s an interesting question. I know that a conclusion is rational if
i)the conclusion follows from the premises
and
ii)the premises do not contradict other knowledge.

Of course this begs the question – how does one know for sure if the premise is true. Since you agree that humans are given to rational and irrational thought, on any given point, how does one know for sure when he is being rational?

Then of course there’s the pragmatical, methodological perspective – which clearly shows that science is the single most testable, reliable and productive (for good or bad) way of investigating the world.

This is an interesting point since I would ask who defines what science is. And we know that science mostly operates on induction (deduction/falsifiability at times)and you know Hume’s point on induction – it is an unjustifiable assumption.

seer

I really think you’re making a category mistake here. A neuron can no more be rational than an atom or a stone – only certain processes with certain signals (information) can be rational. And the processes of systematic, coordinated activity of neural nets of sufficient complexity can be and is rational.

So one neuron is not rational. But a thousand are? Individually they are non-rational but collectively they become rational?

seer

You are correct, this is quite counter-intuitive, but not because of what Descartes concluded, but because of first person experience. I know I have thoughts, I know I can produce pictures in my mind, and I know neither can be seen or touched by you. And we know that an electro-chemical signal is not information per say – that process basically works on an on/off system. Electro-chemical signals do not, in themselves, “think.”

Thanks for the reply, seer

A neuronal firing patter of a certain kind in a certain context is identical to the thought.

If thoughts were merely “produced” by them, that would mean that something physical, namely information/signal processing, somehow “gives off” the information it is to something nonphysical. There is no mechanism, no process imaginable by which this should happen – and what would be the point. Neuronal firing is already information processing – some of them are conscious thoughts, some unconscious body-regulation, some are emotional responses – dependend on where the firing takes place and what form it has.

For example, the limbic system is the “center” of the primal, intuitive, emotional drives and responses – the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is responsible for logical thinking and planning, the visual cortex is where the seeing takes place etc.

Neither is something additional needed, nor can we even imagine what this would be. Conscious activity (and unconscious activity) all comes down to signal processing – and this takes place in the substrate of the neural net.

So, the activity of the brain is not produced by, but identical to the activity of the mind.

For the rest, see above: The fact that there is nothing “orange” in your brain is beside the point. The strict identity is not violated if there is nothing orange in there, all that is needed is that we find that a certain activity in a certain context corresponds to the orange-sensation, the round-sensation etc, ie to the representation of the orange ball.

Combine this with the evidence and arguments from above (and Steve’s posts), and what you get is that the logical conclusion is that the activity of the mind is identical to the activity of the brain – there is nothing “added”.

I know this is counter-intuitive, because since descartes, dualism is entrenched in our language and cultural notions, and of course the religious concept of the soul is also entrenched so that there is resistence to the idea (understandably). But substance dualism would violate the laws of physics, and property dualism is unsubstantiated and based on a category error.

The evidence is quite clearly on the side of broad functionalism (see e.g. Dennett) and identity-theory/eliminative materialism (see e.g. Paul Churchland).

-Mike

Do we agree that a firing neuron is not a thought? No matter how many neurons it may take they are by nature mere eletro-chemical events. They may produce thoughts but thoughts, like my orange ball, are someting more or added.

Now I did look up some of your references but I’m afraid that they did not help. So could you, in language that even I can understand, tell me what a thought is?

Thanks, seer

See, now that’s an interesting question. I know that a conclusion is rational if
i)the conclusion follows from the premises
and
ii)the premises do not contradict other knowledge.

Standards of evidence is another thing. Here, we tread into philosophy of science and epistemology – and it gets very technical.
A short outlay:
Direct observation – accesible to multiple subjects constitutes data. These data can be expressed in sentences. Combine several such data-sentences and you can make logical inferences – the conclusions and the data set is integrated into a framework of beliefs that themselves are supported by data. At the basis of the conceptual framework lie tacit assumptions, such as about the expressability of observation into grammatical sentences or that our senses can provide representations of reality, or that the rules of logic apply. Interestingly – even these can be investigated.

Anyway – the standards of rationality rely on the standards of logic and these basic assumptions. These are however not universally applied – but it can be pointed out if they are not.

Whether the laws of logic are “merely” the necessary laws of how the mind works or even the necessary laws of how things can be is interesting, but in the end it doesn’t matter, because even only the former were true – it would follow from this that we cannot speculate beyond the latter, so we cannot even think coherently that states of affairs could obtain which would violate the laws of logic.

Then of course there’s the pragmatical, methodological perspective – which clearly shows that science is the single most testable, reliable and productive (for good or bad) way of investigating the world. An example:
Every CD-player shows that quantum-theory cannot be that far off the mark – because LASER is a quantum-phenomenon that was predicted to be possible, and then the technology was invented based on that.

“And do you agree that a firing neuron (or neurons) that produce a thought are not rational in nature? A mere electro-chemical reaction?”

I really think you’re making a category mistake here. A neuron can no more be rational than an atom or a stone – only certain processes with certain signals (information) can be rational. And the processes of systematic, coordinated activity of neural nets of sufficient complexity can be and is rational.

-Mike