Essay talk:The Death Knell of Dualism?

The following is FairDinkum's critique copied from the Philosophical zombie talk page:
 * I read (most of) your essay. Since there is not yet a talk page for it, and I don't feel like starting one just to trash it, I'll say my piece here. As soon as you said your defense of dualism is based on Occam's Razor I knew it would go nowhere. Occam's Razor is not even a rule, it's a suggestion for where to look first for explanations of phenomena, and materialist hypothesis is always going to be preferable to non-materialist hypothesis under Occam's Razor, and the same goes for free-will; a lack of a property is always a simpler explanation than conjuring the property is. Your claim that materialists have a burden of proof (under Occam's Razor, no less) to prove the consciousness allows for free-will is false, because it presumes that free will exists, while any dualist hypothesis for the existence of free-will requires an invented force with no known properties except the ones you casually apply to it (eg that it can make free-will happen). Consciousness being an emergent property makes no such claim about free-will. If free will exists, how it can exist is beyond our ability to ascertain without inventing it. It is much more likely that free-will is an illusion that emerges from a whole lot of deterministic variables that we lack the infrastructure to track, than it is an unknown (magical) non-deterministic property that emerges from consciousness. To build modelling infrastructure capable of tracking every deterministic variable in the universe would likely require the use of more energy, material, and probably time than that available in the universe. We may be able to talk ourselves into believing in free-will because we really want to, but we cannot reason our way there. And instead of trying to, a much more interesting essay that you could write would examine why you have a need for this belief. Kudos for resisting the urge to evoke 'quantum woo', though. FairDinkum (talk) 09:36, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

More Than Magnetic Ink (talk) 03:12, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Responses to your comments follow:


 * Under the umbrella of "Occam's razor" there are a number of loosely associated concepts defined in various degrees of clarity. My essay relies on just one of those concepts, one with a reasonably precise definition: "no purported object, entity, or attribute exists unless it is essential to understanding observed reality." Therefore, any purported object or attribute must be shown to discernably impact something before its existence can be attributed any credibility. This is a hard-and-fast consequence of Occam's razor, not a mere suggestion. I don't believe the foregoing can be reasonably disputed.


 * Your comparison of the materialist and non-materialist hypotheses regarding consciousness errs in that both hypotheses assert the property of consciousness, not just the non-materialist hypothesis. The problem with the materialist hypothesis is that it cannot demonstrate the existence of material consciousness. For reasons discussed below, any model of the human mind that makes no attempt to account for consciousness or volition is a non-starter and is immediately eliminated from any further consideration, including evaluation under Occam's razor.


 * The correct statement of my claim regarding the materialists' burden follows: "Materialists assert that consciousness is an attribute of appropriately configured material objects. To defend their assertion, materialists have the burden under Occam's razor to demonstrate how their purported material consciousness could discernably impact anything." The existence of material consciousness has no credibility until this burden is met. Furthermore, this burden has nothing to do with free will, if for no other reason than material objects lack volition (§ 2).


 * Purported objects or attributes such as material consciousness do not escape Occam's razor by assertion of "emergence" as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Materialists cannot meet their burden by simply sprinkling on some "emergence" pixie dust woo.


 * These comments are a denial of free will and are non-responsive to § 5.1. To me, any denial of free will is absurd. If the impact and reality of our own consciousness and volition are not certain from our own direct perception but are instead merely an illusion, then nothing has a reality of which we can be certain. Acknowledgment of the reality of our own consciousness and volition is prerequisite to our consideration of anything, including falsifiability and the scientific method. The realities of our own consciousness and volition are axiomatic in the sense that any argument challenging their existence would be self-defeating. Whenever we are presented any argument, we first make the volitional choice to either consider the argument or not, and, if so, when we will do so. When we consider the argument, we presume that we have the requisite attributes of consciousness to understand and evaluate the argument. So we already presume the validity of our own consciousness and volition as we consider any argument. Such axiomatic status precludes our own consciousness and volition from being falsifiable. Our own consciousness and volition stand in judgment over falsifiability and the scientific method, not the other way around! Any model of the human mind that makes no attempt to account for consciousness or volition is therefore immediately eliminated from any further consideration, including evaluation under Occam's razor.


 * Regarding volition and consciousness, the essay makes the case that no entity can possess one without the other but does not characterize either as emergent. I don't believe either is emergent.


 * So you concede that we do in fact perceive ourselves to have free will, but you believe that perception is an illusion. Regarding how or why such an illusion happens or what purpose it might serve, all you offer is yet another reference to "emergence." It seems that vague references to emergence are materialists' go-to strategy for evading explanation of the inexplicable. To me, it’s just pixie dust woo.


 * Only materialists need this excuse. Dualists don't have this problem, because they trust their own direct perception of their own volition and consciousness as unimpeachable evidence of their certain reality. (As Descartes put it, "I think therefore I am.") It amazes me that materialists would rather trust vaguely defined "emerge[nce] from a whole lot of deterministic variables that we lack the infrastructure to track!"


 * From § 8: "Despite desperate attempts to find politically more palatable explanations, the best explanation for wave function collapse remains that it is the result of non-material consciousness interacting with the material world." No woo, just another problem for materialists. More Than Magnetic Ink (talk) 08:04, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Fairdinkum's Response
'''"My essay relies on just one of those concepts (of Occam's Razor), one with a reasonably precise definition: "no purported object, entity, or attribute exists unless it is essential to understanding observed reality... I don't believe the foregoing can be reasonably disputed."'''

That's a fair definition, I have no dispute with it, but it obviously raises these questions: What is essential to understanding observed reality? And what makes something essential to understanding observed reality? And would this Razor even be applicable if the alleged phenomenon we're talking about can't be observed at all?

"Your comparison of the materialist and non-materialist hypotheses regarding consciousness errs in that both hypotheses assert the property of consciousness, not just the non-materialist hypothesis."

You're not even addressing the portion you quoted, but aS I said, the materialist hypothesis is that consciousness is an emergent property from the action of material. Where did I err in saying that?  "The problem with the materialist hypothesis is that it cannot demonstrate the existence of material consciousness. "

What part of 'emergent property' are you not getting? Perhaps a metaphor will help. When you play a video game, the game is 'fun'. Where is the funness? Is it in the program? Is it in the hardware? No, the fun is an emergent property from playing the game. We can talk about states that emerge from material without having to say they are material or have no direct connection to material. In fact, that's what we HAVE to do, if we want to talk about it. Consciousness only exists as a word to describe a phenomenon we want to refer to using that word.

"The correct statement of my claim regarding the materialists' burden follows: "Materialists assert that consciousness is an attribute of appropriately configured material objects."

Well if you know what materialists claim regarding consciousness, why did you drag me through the previous two paragraphs?? Tedium is not an argument.

"To defend their assertion, materialists have the burden under Occam's razor to demonstrate how their purported material consciousness could discernably impact anything. The existence of material consciousness has no credibility until this burden is met. "

Why would only materialists have such a burden? If you claim only materialists have this burden, you are also claiming non-materialist conceptions of consciousness either don't have this burden or have met its requirements. What is the property that demonstarates that non-materialist consciousness 'impacts anything'? I hope you're not trying to suggest that Occam's Razor allows you to hand-wave to conjure up any property because, according to you it, "is essential to understanding observed reality." That would not be Occam's Razor, that would be shoehorning or special pleading. Where are the observations Occam's Razor requires?

"Purported objects or attributes such as material consciousness do not escape Occam's razor by assertion of "emergence" as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Materialists cannot meet their burden by simply sprinkling on some "emergence" pixie dust woo."

There is no 'pixie dust woo' in emergent properties. Lets try another metaphor. You are at the beach, you build a sand castle. How can you claim you have built a castle, when all you have are lumps of sand that you claim you've arranged in some special configuration that makes them a 'castle'? The castle is an emergent property. It emerges from the sand, caused by your manipulations of the sand. An emergent property cannot exist without material to emerge from. What if you tried to build a sandcastle a long time ago, before any actual castles were built? You couldn't do it. There would be no reference point, you'd just have lumps of sand. From this we can say, as an observation, that emergent properties depend on configurations of material that we put meaning to, so that we can think and talk about them. If there is no such thing as emergent properties, then there is no such thing as sandcastles. But there are such things as sandcastles, so there are emergent properties. If consciousness does not emerge from brain matter, why do we have brain matter? Why are our heads packed with neurons? Just for decorations? How is it that we can use functional MRI to see that the activity of those neurons directly corresponds to what the person being scanned says they are thinking about? And why does physical damage to the brain impede functions of consciousness? If consciousness does not emerge from neuronal activity, why when we drink enough ethyl alcohol, our consciousness expresses itself drunkenly? And why does the consciousness disappear when we die? The evidence that consciousness is a property of a material brain is overwhelming. Guess what, these are observations, the same observations your own definition of Occam's Razor insists upon. How do we observe anything that has no connection to material? We don't, because we can't. So materialism has a monopoly on observations.

" To me, any denial of free will is absurd."

Right, as I said, your argument for this existence of free will consists of wanting free will to exist. Of course we could still claim that an emergent consciousness can have free will, we just have to move the leap of faith, sweeping it under a different rug, so to speak.

"If the impact and reality of our own consciousness and volition are not certain from our own direct perception but are instead merely an illusion, then nothing has a reality of which we can be certain. "

How would it make any difference? Whether the universe is deterministic or not, our level of certainty remains the same. If there was a diety in possession of a switch that turns free-will on and off, it could toggle that switch at random and we would experience no difference as reality jumps back and forth from free-will to no free-will.

"Acknowledgment of the reality of our own consciousness and volition is prerequisite to our consideration of anything, including falsifiability and the scientific method. "

No it isn't. If there is no free will then every scientist who has ever used the scientific method simply had no choice in the matter. We know we don't have free agency; we can't drive to the store unless we have access to a vehicle. If we don't have free agency then our free will is limited. If we know that limitations that we are aware of impede our free will, then limitations we are not aware of must impede it as well. And that's where the 'illusion' would come from, a lack of awareness of all the limitations that have interacted to channel us into doing and thinking everything we do and think.

"Whenever we are presented any argument, we first make the volitional choice to either consider the argument or not. When we consider the argument, we presume that we have the requisite attributes of consciousness to understand and evaluate the argument."

Yes, except that if there is no free will there is no actual choice.

"So we already presume the validity of our own consciousness and volition as we consider any argument."

We both presume we have consciousness, but between the two of us, only you presume volition.  "Such axiomatic status precludes our own consciousness and volition from being falsifiable"

A consciousness that emerges from brain matter is falsifiable because when we destroy the brain matter the properties of consciousness are no longer observable. Volition, on the other hand, is not falsifiable.

"Our own consciousness and volition stand in judgment over falsifiability and the scientific method, not the other way around!"

I'm not sure what you're saying there. Humans created the concepts of falsifiability and the scientific method (and Occam's Razor) as a means to avoid drawing erroneous conclusions from observations of ourselves, our environment, and the things we do to our environment.

" Any model of the human mind that makes no attempt to account for consciousness or volition is therefore immediately eliminated from any further consideration, including evaluation under Occam's razor."

Materialism accounts for consciousness, but it does not account for volition. What you've failed to establish is a means of accounting for non-materialist consciousness and volition. The only argument you've put forward is: "Because I think non-magical explanations are absurd". And as I said before, Occam's Razor is not the magic that accounts for non-materialistic consciousness or volition.

"Regarding volition and consciousness, the essay makes the case that no entity can possess one without the other but does not characterize either as emergent. I don't believe either is emergent..."

In order to claim that consciousness does not emerge from brain matter, you have to decide where it does come from, and explain why we have brains. Technically consciousness involves our entire bodies, but the only part that cannot be destroyed without destroying consciousness is the brain.

"So you concede that we do in fact perceive ourselves to have free will, but you believe that perception is an illusion."

No I do not believe that perception is an illusion. I know that there is no evidence at this time that supports the existence of free will. For several decades there was thought to be evidence that supports the lack of existence of free will, but that evidence was debunked somewhat recently (the bereitschaftspotential). I never thought it was very compelling anyway. "Regarding how or why such an illusion happens or what purpose it might serve, all you offer is yet another reference to "emergence." " That's a strawman because your premise that I believe perception is an illusion is false. Conscousness is an emergent property of the brain, but volition is not. The illusion of volition would be a product of consciousness, but not an emergent property.

"It seems that vague references to emergence are materialists' go-to strategy for evading explanation of the inexplicable. To me, it’s just pixie dust woo"

OK, fair enough, I did not elaborate on what 'emergent properties' are for the sake of brevity. When I come across a term I don't understand I look it up, but whatever, I'll compensated for your sloppiness. I've now explained to you quite clearly what emergent properties are. Sand castles, remember? Made of sand, not pixie dust. You have not explained how consciousness could not be an emergent property from matter, other than vague references to Occam's Razor. Did consciousness exist before Occam's Razor was conceived? If it did, then your Occam's Razor is your pixie dust. Unless you're saying that consciousness is created by Occam's Razor, you've got nothing. If you are saying that consciousness is created by Occam's Razor then you're going to have to come up with some evidence of that which must be more compelling than those fMRI scans of people's brains when they're thinking. I'll be glad to continue this conversation after you provide that evidence.

"Only materialists need this excuse. Dualists don't have this problem, because they trust their own direct perception of their own volition and consciousness as unimpeachable evidence of their certain reality. (As Descartes put it, "I think therefore I am.") It amazes me that materialists would rather trust vaguely defined "emerge[nce] from a whole lot of deterministic variables that we lack the infrastructure to track!""

That we do not have the infrastructure to track every action in the universe to prove determinism (lack of free-will) is not 'problem' for materialists, because materialists don't claim we don't have free-will. Some believe we do, though like 'dualists', they have no explanation for how it would be possible. Descartes statement, "I think, therefore I am" was an answer to the question, "What do I know?". His consciousness is the only thing he could not doubt. This set off the Cartesian revolution in philosophy of the quest for certainty by destroying the two tenets of philosophy that were at that time left over from rhetoric: Invention and Arrangement. Descartes immediately slipped back into irrelevance by trying to be certain about duality, in order to prove god, and failed to do so (but hey, most of us never come up with any groundbreaking ideas). For the next three centuries his famous statement caused philosophy to develop into deductive logic (and yes, Occam's Razor). So, if you're sticking with Descartes, you've got consciousness and nothing else. You can't say anything about where it comes from, which is probably why you haven't. And you can't even get involved in the free-will discussion, because "I think, therefore I am" does not include, "and I have free-will, too!". The application of Occam's Razor to the Cartesian dialectic is a reminder that "I think, therefore I am" is as far as we can get with the Cartesian dialectic. Technically we can't even get there, because of solipsism, but solipsism has no practical value, because we get no gains from it like the gains we get from the dialectic. But the dialectic lead to rhetoric, which got way out of hand, until good ol' Descartes put it in its place. Before the Cartesian revolution there were entire books being written, lots of them, describing how you should gesture when you're trying to convince someone of whatever you're on about. Grand, sweeping gestures, and fingers stabbing at the air - literally, it was a world of "Tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "I think, therefore I am." put a dead stop to all that nonsense. If only Descartes had followed his own rule, instead of pretending it could verify dualism, there would not be as much confusion over what makes Descartes important, and what doesn't. On the other hand, he would've become a pariah had he not. Philosophers were expected to glorify god, their livelihood depended on it the same way alchemists were expected to make gold (and later, immortality, which for some reason wasn't seen as an affront to god). But I digress.

'''"From § 8: "Despite desperate attempts to find politically more palatable explanations, the best explanation for wave function collapse remains that it is the result of non-material consciousness interacting with the material world." No woo, just another problem for materialists" ''' Ah, well then I take back my accolades for not evoking quantum woo. You are literally evoking 'wave function collapse' quantum woo and then claiming it's not woo. Tell me, do your fingers stab at the air when you reference 'wave function collapse'? Don't hog the jesus, tell me how the wave function collapse equals consciousness. Tell me about the observations of wave function collapse bringing about consciousness. You know, the observations Occam's Razor demands? Occam's Razor does not serve as a reason for not requiring an explanation. Got any sandcastles? Or any explanation for what those neurons are doing, with the synapses, the neurotransmitters, the action potentials triggered by the calcium ion channels?? Anything? Anything? Bueller? Even if you could come up with anything, evoking quantum woo gets you nowhere fast, because guess what? Quantum effects don't come out of the magic ether, they come straight outta M-A-T-E-R-I-A-L. Everything 'quantum' IS materialist. And why is it that you didn't mention wave function collapse in your essay, if it, and not Occam's Razor, is the foundation of your claim? Could it be because you knew RatWiki already has a scathing article on the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum collapse? I see that you've now added it as an 'addendum'. I assume I prompted you to do that by thoroughly trashing your abuse of Occam's Razor. Perhaps I should be praising you for no longer hiding behind Occam's Razor and admitting that quantum woo is what you're peddling. But now that you have come clean, it may only be a matter of time before your essay is deleted. I guess I can live with that outcome to our discussion but as I concluded in my critique in your essay, the only worthwhile investigation that can be salvaged from this garbage is why you feel it's necessary. Figure that out and you'll learn much more about yourself than you apparently ever have.
 * Folks, it appears that FairDinkum has made no serious attempt to read the essay let alone understand it. So I encourage you to do so yourself. Relevant issues raised by FairDinkum are addressed in the essay. FairDinkum's speculation regarding the Addendum is controverted by the fact that the entire essay, including the Addendum section, has not been edited since its original posting on October 16, 2022, as can be readily verified from its revision history. It's clear that FairDinkum failed to read the Addendum until drafting the closing remarks of the previous post. More Than Magnetic Ink (talk) 02:53, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * seems to resolve some of the issues of traditional dualism in that it maintains a material universe while stating that the universe has "two distinct kinds of properties: mental and physical. In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as thoughts, imagination and memories) exist in, or naturally supervene upon, certain physical substances (namely brains)." It seems to me to account for subjective qualia (and the fact we still have no clue how qualia arises) in a way that traditional mind-body dualism doesn't. Vee (talk) 09:21, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I view Property Dualism as just another material consciousness that fails to survive § 3. More Than Magnetic Ink (talk) 08:10, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The author claims that I did not partake in a 'serious' reading of the essay. Presumably a 'serious' reading would have to be one that results in agreement. But in fact, I took it too seriously by accepting the validity of part of the claim, which I should not have done. Although I rejected the conclusion that consciousness is dualistic, I mistakenly accepted the premise that the word 'consciousness' describes what the author claimed it describes. In my probably naive attempt to discuss the essay on its own terms, I failed to undermine the foundation of the argument, which is that the word 'consciousness' refers to a thing rather than what it really refers to: a description of a subjective situation. My use of the concept of 'emergent property' is easy to understand because it is a metaphorical simplification. It would be a useful simplification if it were useful to help someone understand what it refers to, but the author did not find it useful. The reason the author did not find it useful is because the author maintains a cherished belief, but I have been guilty of providing ontological support for that belief by accepting the existence of something called 'consciousness' in that context. That it is an 'emergent property' is really just an illusion. If we want to talk about consciousness as being in effect when we're not sleeping or in a coma, then we're talking about a transient condition. But if we're talking about consciousness as our perception, then we're actually talking about qualia, We only know what human qualia is like by our own subjective observations. We can't ask any non-human animal about their qualia because they can't communicate with us. But we can observe their behavior, and in doing that, we have observed that organisms with nervous systems react to stimuli, and the ones that possess tightly bundled centralized wads of neurons, which we call 'brains', are able to remember the results of past stimuli so that they can react earlier or quicker to the stimuli than they did the first time they encountered it. We are one of those organisms, and we can call that ability to react and modify our reaction 'consciousness', but in doing so we get further away from talking about what's actually going on. Fruit-flies and spiders do the same thing, yet some of us may be more reluctant to bestow the qualia of flies and spiders with the condition of 'consciousness'. How many neurons are required for 'consciousness'? Any answers to that question would be purely arbitrary because talking about 'consciousness' in this context is a reification. It refers to a phenomenon that only exists when we talk about it, so it is not a phenomenon, it is the illusion of a phenomenon in the same way the word 'mirage' refers to something that only exists as a quirk of perception, not an actual phenomenon. We could eliminate the entire concept of 'consciousness', whatever it may be, and lose nothing in doing so - a perfect example of occam's Razor in action. FairDinkum (talk) 10:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you were kind of generous in accepting his claim "no purported object, entity, or attribute exists unless it is essential to understanding observed reality".
 * Assuming that it's not a tautology - how would someone demonstrate that this claim is correct? I can purport the existence of flying pigs, or gods but that does not mean they are essential to understanding reality.
 * Secondly, it's not a version of the razor which I am familiar with and it certainly can't be found in that wording in the two places what he links to immediately after making the claim. That wording is also not turned up by Google.
 * Finally, as you said initially, the razor is a method for formulating hypotheses - not for proving they are actually true.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 12:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Neurology
How does dualism account for the effects traumatic brain injuries have on consciousness? If consciousness was a non-material phenomenon, surely harm to the brain wouldn't unduly affect consciousness in any meaningful way. Vee (talk) 08:33, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I wasn't going to get involved, but yes, a change to the brain causes a change to the mind. Many drugs affect the brain and they effect the mind.  If the mind/consciousness/soul is non-material - how can material damage or material drugs affect it?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:31, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I don’t know that many, or even any, contemporary dualists claim to know the exact mechanism through which mind and body interact. I suspect that many would say that this is an empirical question to be settled by a more advanced science. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  15:23, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally I wouldn't need an exact mechanism - any mechanism by which the imagined non-material thing interacts with the material world would be a worthwhile start.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 15:56, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * One old idea is called the "filter theory of consciousness", which is that consciousness is large and formless and the brain filters it down into a localized human experience. Accordingly, the "human" part of human experience is all in the brain, but consciousness may otherwise go on existing in some to us unimaginable way after death. This idea is also viewed as explaining purported psi phenomena in which consciousness knows more than the brain should allow for. Idealists who think that all is "universal mind" sometimes believe this, e.g. Bernardo Kastrup, and not only dualists. Variations exist, some of which are more bare and some of which contain more elaborate New Agey ideas. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 16:09, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * This brings to mind my point above about property dualism. People imagine that the debate in the philosophy of mind is a strict binary between hard physicalism and hard dualism, there are other solutions out there that potentially accounts for qualia while not resorting to mysticisim. Vee (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I consider the brain to be merely a window through which a non-material mind interacts with the outside world and the outside world interacts with the mind. Damage to or alteration of the brain window compromises both interactions without necessarily damaging or altering the mind — directly, at least. Regarding a mechanism by which a non-material mind interacts with the material world, wave function collapse is a start, as it is best understood to be the result of non-material consciousness interacting with the material world (§ 8). Mysticism, which I view unfavorably, typically refers to certain types of religious experiences, none of which are not inherent to belief in mind-body dualism. Finally, I believe the issues discussed in § 3 - § 5.1 (excluding § 3.2) are the most fundamental, take precedence over all others, and are the appropriate focus of the reader. More Than Magnetic Ink (talk) 08:10, 23 December 2022 (UTC)