I find your ideas interesting Ian (pun intended) but ultimately I think we need more information about them. Let us know when you set up your site/provide the rest of your argument.
let me clarify,
There are esentially four reasons why carteisian dualism makes no sense.
Lets start with an easy one for you where does this mysterious interaction between something that is non-physical and can therefore exert no physical force interact with the physical world?
Descarte claimed it was the pinial gland but no matter where you put this mysterious point its still physical and thus can have nothing to do with the non-physical?
So please give me an idea of where the interaction occurs?
Hi Ian, I would like to disagree with inpenitent. Without torturing mice, you can approach the problem phillosophically by the use of Scholastic/Neo-Scholastic philosophers: Aristotle originally (De Anima), and more recently (as a post-Kantian) Marechal or Rahner.
The discussions we have online seem to come down to this: If there is knowledge, there is a spiritual mind; if there is no spirit, we can only philosophise in word-games.
Good luck on the website.
Additionally Ian if you are arguing for specifically Cartesian Dualsim I can explain to you why there are no internal representations (Sense Data for Rusell or Ideas for Descartes).
exactly, it isn’t provable
-Imp
Within the brain.
You’re just repeating yourself. If you say that a non-physical self cannot initiate physical change in the world, you need to spell out the difficulty here.
Actually I am not a dualist, rather I am a subjective idealist.
Well lets hope I can fix your mistake.
Idealism is impossible because it relies on sense Data
I.e. it says that Sense Data is equal with physical objects.
Why is Sense Data Wrong?
The argument for sense data wrongs like this:
That table is square
That table appears to be rhomboid from this angle.
The table cannot both be a square and a rhomboid there fore what im seeing isnt the table but a sense data of the table. (i.e. a representation)
Seems logical?
Well lets run a parellel argument:
That is a stick insect
But it appears to be stick
What im seeing cannot possibly be a stick and a stick insect.
Therefore what Im seeing is not a stick insect but in fact a stick.
Language already has measures in place for understanding this.
i.e. That stick insect appears to be a stick
as opposed to That stick insect appears to be the apperence of the stick.
Now from here lets look at the apperance-of-the-stick which we apparently now have in our mind. How does the apperence-of-the-stick appear? well it appears to be a stick (or stick shaped, or stick coloured etc).
So therefore we have now assigned physical properties to a mental object within our mind.
This is like confusing a similie for a metaphor, just because something appears to be something else. It does not require that we change it so that it is something else.
Additionally as Wittgenstein rightly stated no object or artefact by itself fixes its own interperation, so we must already know what the object is prior to creating the sense data of it.
THerefore the sense data is uncessary and thus Ocasms Razor tells us to dismiss the extra layer.
Additionally and most profoundly token identity theory (and no I am not going to explain this, if you are interested read about it since you are interested in philosohpy and have the time to read this forum) proves there is no mind.
Okay lets turn it around how do you think something none-physical with no existence in space/time can influence things in space/time the answer is by definition they cannot interact. Its like saying parellel lines are oging to converge, they can’t they exist on seperate planes.
Please tell me how you think non-physical things can influence physical things just by saying its in the brain doesnt mean anything.
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It’s neither a scientific hypothesis or a matter of deductive logic, so it wouldn’t be. Same goes for the hypothesis that the self [b]is[/b] one and the very same thing as brain processes.
So your statement doesn’t get us very far.
Philosophers generally refer to qualia now rather than “sense data”. They want to get away from the notion that there is some thing or existent called a sense datum.
So my position is that qualia supplied by our percepual senses constitutes the external world.
I do not use those arguments you have mentioned to argue for idealism. For example it is possible to argue we directly see physical objects even though our qualia do not represent them in themselves.
Tell you what. There is a good website exploring Berkeley’s subjective idealism here easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/berkeley.htm
As far as I can tell, Impenitent is anti-reason. He doesn’t want to accept any argument based on any information. He views the use of information to produce models for the world as fallacious. Therefore, you really can’t have a discussion with him about anything.
qualia is just another word for sense data.
Just looked it up and people are using the same arguments and making the same, blatent (though easy to fall into) mistake.
Language already caters for things appearing to be other things, this is used to signify our Neutrality within the act. We need not confuse something apeparing to be X with that something producing in our mind the appearence-of-x.
No one is arguing that sometimes y appears to be x, but what we are arguing is that what we see is still y and not x.
It’s just the same argument again.
I see a man walking down the street, He looks like Geoerge Bush, he’s not Gerorge Bush, therefore what I am seeing is not the man but George Bush?
This seems to be the same argument that sense data and qualia are proproting.
Call it what you want it’s had many names (Descartes’ Thoughts, Russells’ Sense-Data, etc) , it’s still just unecessary.
The reason everyone is so tempted to fall into this trap is the post-cartesian picture of mind that society constantly pushes down our throat via psychology espcicially.
sure you can, but you can’t prove it as truth… and deductive arguments are fine…
-Imp
Was just thinking about why qualia are wrong and it came to me, your not trying to move the objects to your mind your trying to reassign their properties.
This is of course tempting because as human beings we are much more inclined to say roughness is in our mind or redness is in our mind.
But I must point out that this argument is parellel in its illogic to the previously stated one
What I am seeing is a stick insect
What I am seeing appears to be a stick
What I am seeing cannot both be a stick and a stick insect therefore it is a stick-shaped qualia
stick-shaped is just the property of being a stick, its just like squarness or redness.
So again qualia is falling into the trap of ignoring languages built in safeguards protecting our neutrality in viewing objects.
Things appear to be other things, they are not other things.
Also on a final note - Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem why bother with introducing an extra layer of qualia into the theory its just unecessary and superfolous.
Hi Ian,
I think that mind = brain + words.
Without words, there is no mind, there is just brain.
We cannot think nor describe any thoughts without words.
love and respect,
iloveu
As I said, I do not use this notion that our immediate perceptions are different from the “real world” to justify subjective idealism.
then you are in no way a idealist.
You are in fact a realist? if you are saying that your immediate perceptions are the external world?
Am i too assume you are invisioning a matrixesque style universe where all we have is things in our head?
If so please note that the matrix exists in the world and they are not being fed sense-data (qualia) but merely electrical impulses through the pipes.
Do you think we are being deceived all the time? (this by the way is a logical impossibility).
Why the complicated essay?
I think what’s in the mind is a thought. It comes from the feeling inside the heart and the analysis inside the brain, so mind/brain correlations cannot prove that the mind comes from the brain because it doesn’t! It comes from the heart and brain correlations and lives on as a thought. When we die, the physical elements go to the physical environment and the thoughts go to Higher Consciousness or God. I don’t know more.
that makes no logical sense.
Explain heart transplants? Do we start thinking other peoples ‘thoughts’?
The mind is the brain.