Re: Making your mind up

On 2024-04-12 6:56 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Thu, 11 Apr 2024 21:32:18 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
 

On 2024-04-11 2:42 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:19:45 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
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On 2024-04-10 4:09 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Tue, 9 Apr 2024 11:28:11 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:

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[snip for focus]
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Yep. It's just the spectre (ha) of the supernatural that seems to
inevitably arise when 'free will' is invoked that bothers me.

>
What bothers me is when people dismiss things out of hand just because
they might have even a hint of the supernatural.
>

Hint? Is is supernatural

>
Funny how in the whole discussion about free will and determinism, you
are the only one to raise the supernatural.
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see just below
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and that bothers me because it invalidates much
of what we believe we know about the universe.

>
I think at this stage, you have a broad idea of my beliefs but just to
summarise them - I'm a religious believer (Catholic), I'm a dualist
inclined towards panpsychism and I believe there is such a thing as
free will. I don't reject any scientific knowledge or *evidence-based*
conclusions, finding my beliefs readily compatible with them. What in
my beliefs invalidates much of what we know about the universe?
>

>

It's the 'dualism' bit. Perhaps I misunderstand, but It seems to me that
dualism requires the existence of some non-material entity that can
cause material changes in defiance of physical laws.

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What physical laws are being defied?

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Non-random physical activity without the required energy supply.

 I see two problems with that statement. First of all, I'm not at all
sure what you mean by it; if my dualist consciousness makes me decide
to go for a walk, the physical effort involved in that comes from my
body, not from my consciousness - perhaps you can give a specific of
what you mean.

If you had said, in that statement just above, 'if my consciousness makes me decide to go for a walk, the physical effort involved in that comes from my body, not from my consciousness' then we would be in complete agreement. The "makes me" bit is consistent with determinism and the electrochemical conditions and energy flows are consistent with and sufficient for the changes associated with the decision being made. IIUC, dualism posits the existence of an entity separate from but intimately associated with the brain than can non-randomly channel the brain's activity. This should require the application of some sort of energy to the brain. Since there is neither evidence or necessity for this in the observed brain activity I think it counts as supernatural.

 Secondly, even if some unidentified energy supply is necessary, I
can't understand why you see that as a problem; 50 years ago we knew
nothing about the existence of dark energy, but now we know a lot
about it. Why do you rule out other forces or supplies of energy that
we don't know anything about?

My argument is not that it *is* necessary but that it is not observably necessary but would have to exist under dualism. Dark energy is presumed to exist because something like it is required to account for observed conditions.

 

>

That meets my
definition of supernatural.

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The general definition of 'the supernatural' is "caused by forces that
cannot be explained by science" (adj) or "things that cannot be
explained by science" (noun)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/supernatural
>

I'm happy with that definition as long as it is taken quite strictly, ie
"cannot be explained by science" and not 'is not presently completely
explicable by science'.

 I have no problem with that provided the qualifier is not just an
attempt to create unjustified wriggle room. (See my comments below
about the lack of progress in neurological explanations).
 

>

As discussed just a couple of months ago, science, at least at this
point in time, cannot explain consciousness of which decision-making
is a subset.

>
Except that there are scientists working on the problem and believe they
have some promising ideas (there is a short discussion in last months
Scientific American on AI)

 They have been promising for rather a long time. As I pointed out to
you two months ago, in Matthew Cobb's book "The Idea of the Brain", he
refers back to a meeting of 20 scientists in Quebec in1953 for a 5-day
symposium on 'Brain Mechanisms and Consciousness'. Opening the
symposium, Horace "Tid" Winchell Magoun, regarded as one of the
fathers of neuroscience, warned his colleagues of 'the head-shaking
sympathy with which future investigators will probably look back upon
the groping efforts of the mid-twentieth century, for there is every
indication that the neural basis of consciousness is a problem that
will not be solved quickly'. Cobb observes that "Tid would probably
have been amused to learn that nearly seventy years later the neural
basis of consciousness is still not understood, nor, the optimism of
Science magazine notwithstanding, is there any sign of an answer on
the horizon."
 Has there been some major development since that book was published of
which I am not aware?

Not that I am aware of, but there is no indication of any movement to abandon the search as fruitless.

 Incidentally, I said some time ago that I think that if we do
eventually get an understanding of consciousness, it is more likely to
come from work on machine learning and AI rather than neurology. I
said that some time before the recent explosion in AI applications and
that explosion reinforces my thinking.
 

And there is no indication that it violates
any physical laws. so I would call it paranormal, not supernatural.

 I've already given you the Cambridge definition of supernatural i.e
"caused by forces that
cannot be explained by science". The same dictionary defines
paranormal as "impossible to explain by known natural forces or by
science". Can you clarify what the significant difference is that
makes you prefer the latter?
 

I screwed up badly there. I came across a description similar to my beliefs and grabbed their terminology without vetting it (bias acknowledged). I should have said unknown at present (perhaps unknowable). 'Consciousness' is hard, is there a widely accepted definition? I've seen everything from 'absolute proof that we are transcendent beings' to 'named hallucination'. Both of those extremes fall into the 'unknowable bin but for different reasons. There is lots of evidence that the brain is intimately involved but I am unaware of any evidence of any other involvement.

>
  In that sense, therefore, determinism also qualifies as

the supernatural. I think your definition of the supernatural is
related to a particular association of the supernatural with religious
belief but that is down to your own personal belief

>
I'm sure you do believe that, but then I believe you had no choice but
to do so, it's just who you are. I also believe that you are wrong.
>
  and, if you want

to be consistent in your scientific arguments, you really need to
treat belief in determinism just as much based on the "supernatural"
as free will is.
>

That does not follow. I believe that I did not chose my belief, I
believe that I hold my belief because of who I am. where is the
supernatural in that?

 Can you provide a scientific explanation for your belief?
 

It's a manifestation of the electrochemical conditions of my brain. Of course the brain is far from perfect in  these matters and may be lying to me (and yours you) in spite of its best intentions (helping you survive). Are you familiar with the 'white/gold' 'blue/black' picture of a dress a few years ago? It turns out it is blue/black but the people who saw white/gold completely wrong. Their brains were quite honestly telling them an untruth. The brain's vision processing system is quite clever and quite unconscious and does a lot of unconscious processing before reporting its results to the rest of the brain. If you were a morning, outdoorsy person, your brain *assumed*, lacking conflicting information, that this was the most likely lighting and processed the actual colours in the picture to reflect that. In this case it reported blue/black (correctly). If you were a night, indoorsy person it made the colour corrections and reported white/gold (incorrectly). Even being told what the lighting conditions were did not alter that. Conscious knowledge did not override what the vision system 'knew'. Shown the actual dress they get it right. (I believe some of the white/gold group deny that they were shown the actual dress).

>
BTW, I am a bit pissed off by part of your other earlier reply and will
not be responding to it. In future, I would appreciate it if, in
responding to my points, you refrained from comparing me to some other
arsehole on the web, I am arsehole enough on my own.

 Sorry, but that sounds like a cop-out. I wasn't comparing *you* to Ron
Dean, I was comparing your *line of reasoning* to his.

Hmm. That sounds like a cop-out. Go ahead, critique the line of reasoning, I expect nothing less. But why even mention Ron Dean? one might be tempted to think you were making an invidious comparison while cloaking it in a veil of plausible deniability. You know, like _____ ______ used to do.
  Scientists are

just as prone to squeezing evidence to support their beliefs as
religious believers are and I have no hesitation in calling out either
case when I see it. I certainly don't regard you as an arsehole and
don't believe I have ever indicated that I might think so.
 BTW, I don't regard Ron Dean as an arsehole either; he has some really
strange beliefs and ideas but that doesn't make him an arsehole in my
eyes.
 

>

I can't help (ha) but feel that belief in
free will and dualism are two sides of the same coin.I'm sure you don't
*reject* scientific knowledge but I think you must be allowing some
'leeway?' to accept dualism.

>
I honestly can't think of any area of scientific knowledge where I
have to allow any such 'leeway'; can you suggest any in particular?

 Nothing to offer on this?
 

re: my comments above. You seem quite happy to accept the (possible?) existence of unnecessary and unevidenced goal directed energy affecting brain processes.

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Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)