Quining qualia.

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Isn't it? The world is physical top to bottom including us who live in and are part of the world.

ruveyn

01001011
“So for example, even if pain in humans turns out to be c-fiber stimulation, there may be other life forms that lack c-fibers but have pains too. And even if consciousness in humans turns out to be a brain waves that occur 40 times per second, perhaps androids have consciousness even if they lack such brain waves.”
[in other words a type refers to an concept rather than a particular instance]
…
“With respect to being abstract and lacking a spatio-temporal location, types are also akin to universals”
Both above quotes from the site you provided http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/

In other words how can an EM use “types” when they lack spatio-temporal location and are abstractions. What kind of physical thing is an abstraction?
This is similar to my point about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference and http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem02.html
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“Isn't it? The world is physical top to bottom including us who live in and are part of the world.”
ruveyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massless_particle
Something exists without mass?
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_a ... 0912a.html
Infinite density?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRn_GNcglKo
Anyway, the physical is far weirder then what we think. * One can say that it resembles mind more than the Newtonian version of mass and volume.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mi ... dy_problem
* The quantum world has made it necessary to create a new logic http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ because A does not always = A!!

Last edited by wittgenstein on 20 Jun 2013, 1:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.

01001011,
How can anything that lacks awareness, thoughts, beliefs, be delusional? To be delusional one must believe something that is not true. In other words “delusional” cannot be part of an EM’s vocabulary. Unless, of course he wants to use words that he believes say nothing and therefore he is willing to speak what he himself considers gibberish.

Help me understand your position.
Consider a light switch in the "on" position. Would you say that the light switch understands that the light is on?
Suppose you are correct and concepts,theories etc do not exist. Only patterns of neurons firing exist. How can you know if the pattern that your neurons are firing in correspond to reality?

Read my definition of fiction. The whole point of type vs toke is to distinguish the fictional and ontological parts of language.


Again read my defintion of beliving in the functional sense.


There is no direct physical position between the switch and the label. So no.



1) Neurons are reality. There is no middle man to fool the demons.
2) Organisms with neurons firing according to reality have evolutionary advantage.


How can I help you if you keep misrepresenting my position with your realist glass?

An incomplete list

how are you going to take on a demon theorist* who repeatedly asserts without magic spells there cannot be truth or knowledge?

What do you mean by 'belief in concepts'. Do you consider these concepts?
1) 'King' in chess
2) vneaiova
3) vneaiova that stole Harry Potter' magic stone

Really? Let's consider the sentence 'Frodo destroys the one ring' (as in The Lord of The Rings), which we agree to be true. But according to you, Fordo refers to a concept. How can a concept destroy another concept? Your insistence of reality of fictional objects as concepts is just as absurd.

Above from page 7
“How can you know if the pattern that your neurons are firing in correspond to reality?”
ME
“1) Neurons are reality. There is no middle man to fool the demons. 2) Organisms with neurons firing according to reality have evolutionary advantage.”
01001011
That is not an answer to my question. How do YOU differentiate between eliminative materialism and existentialism?
xxx
“Read my definition of fiction. The whole point of type vs toke is to distinguish the fictional and ontological parts of language.”
01001011
But for an EM there are no fictions because they do not believe in concepts. I can believe in fictions because I believe in concepts. The concept “unicorn” is fiction because there are no unicorns. What does “fiction” mean to an eliminative materialist? Please do not try to sneak in words that EMs believe are gibberish.
xxx
“Consider a light switch in the "on" position. Would you say that the light switch understands that the light is on?”
ME
There is no direct physical position between the switch and the label. So no.
01001011
How does that differ from the nerves in our eye transporting nerve messages into the brain that make a neuron fire? If an “on” light switch does not understand that the light is on, then a neuron ( or group of neurons) firing does not understand (using your definition of “understand” not the conventional definition) what the reality is outside ( cows, trees etc.).
Actually, I am confused; the label is on the switch. Perhaps, you meant that the word “on” has no relation to the light being on? Then the neuron (or group of neurons) has no understanding either.

I am curious as to your opinion of the correspondence theory of truth. Since "theory" and "correspondence " are problematic to an EM, what is the theory of truth that you subscribe to? Coherence? But that theory of truth is also problematic for an EM.*
PS: Written messages lack voice intonation. For example, if I say,"Do you believe that there are meaningful propositions" you cannot tell if I am being sarcastic or asking a question that goes to the heart of the issue. My questions are not meant to be mean.
* Considering that you stated that an EM can call a proposition true or false implies that you believe in truth. What is your definition of truth?

Wittgenstein and Declension have the best of it. Eliminative Materialism is the very definition of self-refuting, at least in its more serious forms. As a project, taking the self out of the philosophical vernacular, it has more or less failed. Even its greatest adherents hold that it is 'a work in progress'; another way of calling it an incomplete idea. As an expression of useful skepticism, it has significant utility but taking it beyond that is silly.

I am often shocked that those who adhere to the idea see it as an exploration with a teleology. Beginning with the thought that 'folk-psychology' could be treated as a discardable assumption that could be discarded in favour of a view which removed the viewer. The attraction seems to be in the teleology, people who see the naturalisation of the mind to require the rejection of the self. In my mind, the connection between those two propositions is not obvious except to those who take the leap and join them together. Aside from that, there appears to be not much that would encourage one taking on that position.

As a bit of a tongue in cheek response, given by one of my Professors was to ask 'who is asking me to embrace EM?' Most proponents of strong interpretations of EM will admit that the answer to that question is literally, nobody. Asking someone to give up their most basic position on existence requires more than a work in progress and an incomplete descriptive language, it requires an affirmative argument that connects those two propositions together in a significantly powerful way. Otherwise EM proponents are making the argument that naturalism leads to a lack of self, because naturalism entails a lack of self and I never saw the power of that position. It is neither intuitively correct, or in my view logically evident. The biggest mistake proponents of EM make is in thinking that because their position is a one based off of a degree of skepticism with the contemporary consensus, that they therefor have a monopoly on the application of skepticism to a position.


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“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”


― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

WOW! I do not believe in synchronicity. But sometimes I wonder. I have been searching for that G.K. Chesterton quote for the last year!! !

In other words, you have no response but name calling.

How can 'Frodo destroys the one ring' be true is 'the one ring' is a concept but no concept is destroyed?


We agree what eliminative materialism is about (or we are not debating). We agree what existentialism is about. Therefore we agree eliminative materialism is different form existentialism. There is no point debating.

You are the one begging the question by assuming we distinguish concepts as we are distinguishing a dog and a cat.

It is YOU who have problem distinguishing the concept of Batman and the concept of Harry Potter - exactly how is the qualia different?


Same baseless assertion again.


You are the one using demon laden term. Since you don't believe in demon what you are uttering is nonsense gibberish. Fail.


If the label cannot even change relative to the switch how can the behavior of the light switch system change according to the label. If you are talking about the light going on/off caused by the positions of the switch then there is some minimal but insignificant understanding.

That 'concept' is best described as a proposition, the proposition can either have the property of being true or false. Given this statement:

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You accept that the proposition can have the property of being true (which is actually a significant concession from a eliminative materialist, as 'meaning' itself is a concept that strict EM positions would not necessarily embrace, since it is not evident on pure scepticism). But it can also have the property of being false. Neither being true or false revokes a proposition's status of being a proposition.

This is something that wittgenstein seems to grasp and you seem to be at pains to ignore. I have underlined the pertinent component of the quotes and have placed both in for clarity.



__________________




To you yes. But this example only gets you so far as other people, who's mental states we have no ability to verify. However, your own experience of being able to visualise a triangle should give you ample reason to doubt that position. Unless of course you want to admit that your visualising of Eliminative Materialism is also a mental fiction without any warrant.

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Finished a chapter of my thesis today, I figured I would reward myself by coming back to the board for a day or two

In what way 'the one ring' is a proposition?



Wrong. You are actually proving my point. Look back the whole thread for context. I proposed under my fictionalism that 'Frodo destroys the one ring' is a true statement (i.e. we pretend it to be meaningful and true), even both 'Frodo' and 'the one ring' don't really exist and nothing is really destroyed. On the other hand Wittgenstein opposes any form of fictionalism. According to him 'Frodo destroys the one ring' is meaningless unless there are ontological objects 'Frodo' and 'the one ring' for the statement to 'refer to'. We know the truth condition of 'X destroys Y'.

His '1-1=0' is just dodging since it is entirely another statement that does not involve the word 'destroy'.



What do you mean by 'your own experience of being able to visualise a triangle'? What do you suppose is happening?


What 'warrant' you are talking about? A super computer programmed to investigate philosophy of mind and consciousness (let's it is made by God) will conclude Eliminative materialism is true.

It is just your baseless assertion that "theory" and "correspondence " are problematic to an EM.


What do mean by 'believe in truth'? More strawman.

'Frodo destroys the one ring' is a proposition, if you don't get that, bail out now.



I have read the entire thread, he does not seem to be claiming that at all. Feel free to post a quote outlying his view otherwise.



It is a representation of the basic experience every human being has of the world in which they live. A strong eliminative materialist position, which you seem to be putting forward, needs to in some way account for this basic experience. Otherwise, their conclusion is not inductively reachable and can never be rationally believed. There are physicalist attempts to explain mental states without eliminating the mind and I would personally embrace one of those. However, eliminative materialism just slams the proposition that the physical exists and the mind cannot together, without making an affirmative argument in favour of the position.

The trick you played on poor wittgenstein here is that you have played the skeptic of his position, when he needs to be playing the skeptic of yours. EM is not the default position you are presenting it to be. In fact, on EM you need to construct an affirmative argument that consciousness (or our subjective awareness) cannot be a product of materialism. Such a position is neither intuitively obvious or logically demonstrated in your posts and as such someone is justified in not embracing it. It does not seem that you have improved all that much in your argument construction since the last time I interacted with you.



I don't find it useful to suppose a solution by projecting forward based on present evidences. However, if it concluded that materialism was correct, it would not follow from this that eliminative materialism was correct. Placed into garish computer terms, you are asking the computer to conclude that there is only hardware and software reflects no truth producing process of its own. When in reality we are dealing with two different types of information, both materialist and both necessary.

I have been talking about 'the one ring'. If you don't get that, bail out now.


Read the first and second posts of p.4.


His response



'Experience' people believe they are having.


What do you mean by 'strong' eliminative materialist? Is there 'weak' eliminative materialist?


Form a supernaturalist (Christian theist in particular)? That is funny.


Evidence please. He started the thread and did not explain his position clearly. All his trick is just question begging and personal incredibility.


And you are going downhill. You still have no point against me. All you can now do is making some patheatic cheer up for anyone debating me.


What do you expect? The computer can never measure qualia by definition. It has no qualia and is doing well understanding the universe. How can it conclude otherwise?


Again you proved my point. What is a software? A fiction no different from Roemo and Juliet (and a Windows disc is no different from a fiction book). Indeed it is possible to describe the behavior of a computer using electric currents only. If your analog works then fictionalism is the perfect theory of mind.