You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state
As an aside,
Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought.
And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)
>>Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is
I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander.
I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to...
Then I stopped.
The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.
It starts with the protagonist looking at the stars in a similar way, and somehow finding himself leaving his body and flying out amongst the stars.
From there on the scale keeps increasing, both time and space, covering billions of years, and pretty much the scale of the universe.
He wrote an earlier book - Last and First Men - that covered 2 billion years of future developments of humanity -, and Star Maker makes Last and First Men seem limited in scope.
Freeman Dyson apparently says he got the inspiration for a Dyson Sphere from Star Maker.
I think that feeling is a major barrier we as a species need to get past, which is more of a spiritual/therapeutic issue than an intellectual one as far as I can tell. This foundation provides free 10-day silent meditation retreats where they push you to have that experience but instead of opening your eyes and "pulling the sleeping bag over your head", you embrace it and explore beyond. It changed my life. I've been to two of these things, one in CA and one in TX and if you ever have time it's worth it in every way. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just think it's relevant.
That's true, but it's easy to see why -- a "sane" person doesn't need either therapy or psychoactive drugs, so psychologists quickly lose interest in them, as either a client or a research subject. A sane person is boring.
That's why, as the years go by, more and more everyday behaviors are turned into evidence of mental illness. Are you aware that, in the most recent mental illness diagnostic guide (the DSM), scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? I wish I were making this up.
It only gets worse from here. This is why the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM as a guide to scientific research -- and not a moment too soon:
> scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis?
In the same way as sleeping is the basis for a diagnosis of illness (narcolepsy), washing your hands is the basis for a diagnosis of mental illness (OCD), etc. No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping, there's a label they can put on it. Just as sleeping is normal but falling asleep uncontrollably in the middle of the day might be narcolepsy, hand-washing is normal but washing your hands 100 times in a row might be OCD, being tired is normal but being tired all the time might be CFS, having your cells grow and multiply is normal but if they do it out of control it might be cancer, etc., etc., etc.
Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities.
> No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping [enphasis added] ...
Yes, but you see, the point of the DSM is to allow psychiatrists and psychologists to proactively label behaviors as abnormal, rather than patiently wait for people to seek out their services. If a "diagnosis" appears in the DSM, then it's official -- schoolchildren can be assigned the diagnosis without the cooperation of the child or his parents, which allows the school to demand additional funds from governments, allows parents an get Social Security payments based on the diagnosis -- basically, the floodgates open up. The child is taken out of the equation, because it's an official diagnosis -- it's in the DSM, the "Bible" of psychiatry and psychology.
If the reasoning was that it allowed people to volunteer for treatment, there would be no need for a DSM, because people who volunteer for treatment don't need a diagnosis -- their willingness to undergo treatment is more than enough justification.
The DSM's purpose is to legitimize diagnoses, make them part of the canon of recognized mental illnesses, require insurance companies to pay for treatments, require the Social Security system to pay up. Unfortunately, because of these pressures, the DSM now includes absurd things like grieving at the passing of a loved one, sibling rivalry, the inability to add a column of figures, and so forth -- obvious abuses of the imagined authority of the field of psychology.
> Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities.
True about some things, but that's not how medical diseases are defined. One either has measles, or does not have measles. One either has cancer, or does not have canter. One is either pregnant, or is not pregnant. And more importantly, in each of these cases, a doctor can go beyond observing symptoms, and measure a cause.
Not so for mental illnesses -- their diagnosis relies only on symptoms, the causes are unknown (that's the business of neuroscience, not psychology). This is obviously a basis for abuse and exploitation. The DSM covers a spectrum from very serious conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome, both of which are actually biological conditions with mental symptoms, to any number of make-believe diseases, some of which appear and disappear from the canon over time, based on public gullibility and taste, for example Asperger's and homosexuality, both of which have entered, and then left, the DSM based on public pressure and politics, not anything resembling science. The DSM only lists symptoms, not causes, not science, and that's why it's so often abused.
> ... there's a label they can put on it.
Yes, and that was a perfect way to put it. Psychology depends on labels, medicine depends on objective causes. Because psychiatry and psychology rely on the assignment of labels based on observation of symptoms, it's not science and it's not effective.
This is why the director of the NIMH has recently decided to drop support for the DSM, a decision that is not less than earthshaking in the mental health field. The director's reason? The DSM is based only on the observation of symptoms, and it lacks validity. For science, society is now moving in a completely different direction -- away from mind research, toward brain research.
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?
I don't get why people need a reason to exist. To me it's clear that there isn't a reason and we don't have any predefined purpose, yet most people create their reason. Maybe they live for their loved ones, maybe they enjoy life. And regarding death: it's scary and doesn't happen very often, so it makes sense not to think about it too much.
This is ludicrous. I have a value system. It consists of me feeling like a better person when I'm a better person. I feel no need to prove my value system as though it were a theorem - what an odd fetish. I've never understood this need.
Last time I checked, people tend to have one, irrelevant of the effort they put into building it. Is that one not enough? Why not? If you are missing one, why do you need to get one?
Death is definitely what others here are referring to as an "out of bounds error". It is simply the ultimate definition of incomprehensible.
It's like a physical computer not only losing power, not only being gone, not only nothing, but never having existed at all. In my mind (haha) death is the end of both space and time. Oblivion.
And that's pretty crazy to shove into a finite brain.
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?
If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.
> When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.
But that is just not true for a lot of us: A lot of atheists spend a disproportionate amount of time considering these types of questions.
Though for many the answers to the above is: Why should there be a purpose? I'd rather choose one for myself. Why does matter if we can die and cease to exist at any moment? If there is no after life, we'd never know. Do you fear going to bed at night, worrying you might not wake up in the morning? Why would we worry about that - if we don't wake up, so what?
Incidentally I've never met a christian who assumed I was lying when I told them I was an atheist. A lot of them have wondered how I could be, and had questions about it, and I'm sure some thought I was crazy (the feeling is mutual), but none have ever implied I wasn't telling the truth.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, "A man can withstand any how, if he has a sufficient why." People have a hard-wired need for purpose in their life. And people want to think about and consider questions that are beyond the ability of science to answer. Thinking about those questions can be a lot of fun, and that is what a lot of metaphysics and theology is.
> If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that.
By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.
The traditional view is that the miracles weren't just symbolic, but actual historic events (that had intentional symbolic meaning), and most priests would subscribe to the traditional view; so they aren't lying, just being consistent with their views.
What you are referencing is the "Liberal Christianity" of the 1800's, but it is generally an unpopular set of views. Wikipedia's page is a bit short but a useful overview of the differences:
> What you are referencing is the "Liberal Christianity" of the 1800's, but it is generally an unpopular set of views.
Unpopular in the US population, definitely. Unpopular among US priests, I wouldn't know, but I believe you. Unpopular among European priests… I would be much less confident.
I rarely talk to priests, in the US or outside (I'm Lutheran, not Catholic), so I wouldn't know. I always got the impression that most Catholics took the Gospel account pretty literally though.
Brutal honesty is not less brutal because it is honest, though. Different people prefer different amounts of brutality and honesty. In my experience, I've found that the honesty stops mattering after a while: all that I see is brutality.
When someone wouldn't change one's mind, being brutal about the truth rarely helps. But one can be gentle about it. Sometimes however, contradicting one's belief is perceived as a brutal attack no matter what. When I perceive this, I tend to give up.
The most brutal thing of all however is changing your mind. It tend to come with a terrible sense of loss, even though that grief is rarely warranted. Plus, many religious people strongly believe that religious belief is good, even when they're less sure about their accuracy. Tell them something convincing about God not existing, and they could panic. Most of the time, they will cling to their beliefs by sheer force of will.
Personally, I avoid that problem by noticing that I'm not entitled to my opinion. I'm not free to believe whatever I want. I just hope I'm strong enough to let evidence change my mind whenever it should.
I had the good fortune of once being the first atheist that one women had EVER spoken to (or at least who had admitted that to her face). The conversation started with a lot of back-and-forth that was very enlightening. By the end, things weren't so amicable, but the interim was fantastic.
I don't wish/intend to open up a can of worms, but feel it is worth relating the major point of departure in the conversation: We differed on the importance of what I guess you might call "purity of intent". That your inner thoughts/motivations for an action matter as much or more than the tangible effects of that action, even if those effects are completely indistinguishable, into perpetuity.
When you say things like "realizing how large the universe is", "how meaningless life is", do you really mean that your mental state is impacted by the answers to these questions/implications of these realisations? How does it affect you?
I ask because while the ideas are interesting to me, they have always seemed fairly irrelevant. Sure, the universe is huge, but I don't think knowing that is going to change me. The way I see it, it has no impact on the way I live my life and I can't see anything I do having an impact on that.
I mean the questions genuinely, I realise that not everyone sees things the same way.
Assuming you mean the general public, then yes, I suppose so. But the measures taken by the mind to protect itself from reality have been a central area of study for psychologists for over a hundred years.
Isn't this the purpose of positive psychology? I have a rather high quality tome, http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-C... that does its best to discuss the positive aspects of a person, trying to be a kind of mirrored version of the DSM.
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist
There is no why, there's just how.
what our purpose is
Nature doesn't have purpose, you're anthropomorphizing nature.
and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist
Yup.
we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?
I see nothing crazy about it at all. Why would we go insane for not knowing the answers to invalid questions? Asking why we exist or what our purpose is, is equivalent to asking how tall green is; while a syntactically valid sentence, it's still a non-sense question based on unfounded presumptions about the nature of the universe. Just because a question can be asked doesn't mean the question is valid or deserves an answer.
Because, you see, if we can only objectively measure things scientifically with instruments then there can be no subjectivity because we can't see it on any instrument! Therefore anybody who continues to insist that it does exist falls into the category of "woo woo," "magical thinking", or "superstitious". And those anti-scientific stances can only lead down the slippery slope into any of those pitfalls--or worse yet--fundamentalism (because there is just as much evidence for a mythical god as there is subjectivity... or unicorns for that matter... or spaghetti monsters...etc)! So its easy to lump all that is non-objective into the same category as unicorns since we cannot measure any of it.
/caricature
This is a fallacy of absolutistic thinking and it is rampant.
This one always stumps people. Your subjective experience is unique to yourself. Your Self (your personal subjective experience -- which is denied by the scientific materialists) exists as such. And we can logically conclude that through the following mental exercise:
In the future is a cloning device. You step in and your body and brain are cloned down to the last electron. All of your memories, scars and epigenetics are cloned here as well. Now this is key here: In all Objective sense, your clone is you. There are no distinction between you and your clone and nobody can tell who is who. You both know yourself to be you and no one would be the wiser if you went and lived in a foreign country under a different name and your clone stays back and lives your life for you. Well nobody except YOU would know. You see, to you that clone is another person that you can talk to and shake hands with. Even though a brain scan will reveal the same thought patterns between you two, you will never literally see through the clone's eyes. If the clone dies, you go on just fine, but if you die... It's over even though your perfect clone goes on. So therein lies the one distinct difference between you and your clone and that is YOUR subjective experience makes you YOU.
So the problem is is that this subjective experience has no real evidence of its existence, so it doesn't exist right? Just like fairies don't exist, right? And THAT is the absolutistic mindset of the scientific materialist.
Your Self (your personal subjective experience -- which is denied by the scientific materialists)
I dispute that claim, science does not deny subjective experience nor does materialism; you've simply misunderstood them.
So the problem is is that this subjective experience has no real evidence of its existence
False.
so it doesn't exist right? Just like fairies don't exist, right? And THAT is the absolutistic mindset of the scientific materialist.
You're confused, materialists don't deny subjective experience, they deny subjective reality and they are correct in doing so. There is an objective reality, and there is your brain's limited interpretations of that reality that create your own personal subjective experience of that reality.
Your subjective experience is not a thing (i.e. physical) that can exist or not, it's simply your limited interpretation of reality. Your subjective experience, in the real world, is just patterns of electrical signals in your brain, that's what actually exist. Your subjective experiences exist much as a thought exists, as electrical patterns in your brain.
Semantics. Definitions or not you can't get around the issue by specifying a new term "Subjective reality" You have made no distinction between the two anyways and here's why:
* ...subjective experience is not a thing (i.e. physical) that can exist or not, it's simply your limited interpretation of reality."*
So how's that different than my "subjective reality" -- that isn't really a thing either.
And to hammer the confusion further you say:
* Your subjective experience, in the real world, is just patterns of electrical signals in your brain, that's what actually exist*
So my subjective experience IS an objective phenomenon and nothing more? If its something more than what we can measure "in the real world" then what is the part that is "more"? It doesn't exist right?
I can only logically conclude that pure Subjective Experience doesn't exist! As scientific materialism has always claimed.
Definitions or not you can't get around the issue by specifying a new term "Subjective reality"
Not a new term, it's vital to understand the distinction between subjective experience and subjective reality to even make sense of a conversation like this. They are vastly different things.
So how's that different than my "subjective reality" -- that isn't really a thing either.
Subjective experiences happen in objective reality. Color and taste are entirely subjective things that don't exist in reality. However, there exists a measurable testable objective reality that exists independently of your subjective experiences.
There are also those who believe in subjective reality, i.e. they believe consciousness somehow creates reality itself and what you think affects reality itself, i.e. the book "The Secret".
So my subjective experience IS an objective phenomenon and nothing more?
Obviously, and there exists no evidence anywhere that this isn't the case. Your brain is a machine, not a magic connection between your body and some other reality where your mind resides.
If its something more than what we can measure "in the real world" then what is the part that is "more"? It doesn't exist right?
It's not something more, so talking about it's existence is moot; your subjective experience exists in the same way your memories exist, as coded patterns in your neurons. There's no such thing as "exists outside the real world" as the very definition of the word exists is have objective reality or being. To say "exists outside the real world" is an utterly meaningless statement.
I can only logically conclude that pure Subjective Experience doesn't exist! As scientific materialism has always claimed.
Scientific materialism makes no such claim. Once again, subjective experience happens, it's not a thing, it's an event in your mind. Science does not deny it. Science denies subjective reality, i.e. the notion that your impression of the world is reality and isn't just a personal delusion. The Secret is a popular book that sells the idea of subjective realities as fact, i.e. what you think affects and changes reality itself. It is of course complete and utter nonsense written to separate fools from their money.
If you don't find value in the precise use of words to convey very specific ideas then yea it probably seems like nonsense to you. I assure you it's not, thinking clearly, and accurately conveying those ideas requires precise use of words or the ideas cannot be shared. It is quite constructive to draw such distinctions and agree on the definition of words before accurate communication is even possible.
All good points and I don't disagree. Regardless, I was not arguing in favor of some reality without an objective correlation. I'm stating that the subjective has real distinction from the objective--which materialism at the very least doesn't acknowledge--or at least reduces to the low-level mechanics in which they are created, as you have done. But I do appreciate your engagement and i'd like to further it by asking what your take on the following scenario would be?
Say I'm being monitored by a machine that can detect my brain patterns in real time. I am asked to imagine an arbitrary object, say an apple. I close my eyes and think of the apple and all of its sensual properties etc. My neurons fire and the machine picks up all of the brain patterns that correlate with my idea of "apple". And yet nowhere will the machine detect anything remotely resembling an apple. Only I "see" the apple in my "minds eye". The subjective apple has objective correlative brain patterns indeed, but what else?
Now to follow that, you could counter with the fact that a computer's graphics processor will have all kinds of electrons flowing in certain patterns to produce an image of an apple on screen. And I don't deny that the brain is indeed a high-order computer. But the difference here is that the actual computer (of today's technology) requires an end user whereas the brain (we can only assume) has one built in more or less. There is an experiencer that has yet to be explained by any science I know of yet. Maybe you do, and I'm not going to claim that it resides independent of the brain, but I will claim that it is this very end user that creates it's own interior subjective reality.
See we all "fabricate" a worldview within our minds. We take inputs from objective reality and process them according to the picture of reality that we construct there over time. We all contain a subjective reality maintained by our hardware that is dependent upon but quite different than the hardware itself. The image of an apple "means" something and cannot be completely reduced to electrons or synapse patterns without losing the concept of "apple". It fits into this scheme that we create. This is how we "learn about our world." Some people use different means than others. Some people value The Secret. Some people value science. And so on. Materialism reduces it all to something less. To that which only can be detectable in the objective world. It loses the apple, for now it is just "brain patterns" or electrons. No, it is only in part those things, but also a part of a subjective reality that may or may not be shared by others.
The subjective apple has objective correlative brain patterns indeed, but what else?
You're imagining an apple, using stored memories to create an image in your mind. Nothing else.
There is an experiencer that has yet to be explained by any science I know of yet.
Neuroscience has pretty well established that consciousness is an illusion created by your mind as a running narrative of what your brain just did. While we don't yet know how the brain does this, experiments do show that your awareness of this actually happens after the fact as your decisions happen in you brain before you are aware you made them. It's a very cool very fancy machine, nothing more as far as we can tell.
See we all "fabricate" a worldview within our minds. We take inputs from objective reality and process them according to the picture of reality that we construct there over time. We all contain a subjective reality maintained by our hardware that is dependent upon but quite different than the hardware itself.
Correct.
The image of an apple "means" something and cannot be completely reduced to electrons or synapse patterns without losing the concept of "apple".
Sure it can, it is just patterns after all.
Materialism reduces it all to something less.
No it doesn't.
To that which only can be detectable in the objective world.
The objective world is the only world there is. Your subjective reality is an illusion in your mind, the word world does not correctly apply.
It loses the apple, for now it is just "brain patterns" or electrons.
No it doesn't, materialism doesn't deny subjective mental experiences.
No, it is only in part those things, but also a part of a subjective reality that may or may not be shared by others.
That's merely a subjective mental experience of reality, something completely accepted by materialists and science. Honestly this whole conversation leads me to believe you have misunderstood materialism, or at least the consequences of it. You keep saying things about what materialists think that are simply wrong.
The subjective apple has objective correlative brain patterns indeed, but what else?
You're imagining an apple, using stored memories to create an image in your mind. Nothing else.
What if I imagine an object that i've never seen before? No stored image there. Or just watch the ambient closed-eye-visuals that seem to run constantly in the background like a screen saver? Those and many other examples of different ways that people use their brains will require just as many rebuttles which I'm sure you'd provide but that gets us nowhere.
The image of an apple "means" something and cannot be completely reduced to electrons or synapse patterns without losing the concept of "apple".
Sure it can, it is just patterns after all.
Then why do we look at images on the computer monitor? Why not just watch the electrons flow? Why do we imagine in images at all then? Either way the tiresome point-by-point breakdowns into arguing the logical bits outside of their context very much captures symbolically the essence of what we're going on about here I think.
Reductionism. The following statements both true:
A cell is nothing more than a giant chemical reaction and can be eventually explained (with enough scientific understanding) on the molecular level.
The cell as a whole exhibits characteristics and behaviors totally different than any of its molecular counterparts.
You say the latter above quote that the apple image can be boiled down to its electrons and it is still an apple on that level. But then you say in response to my previous quote:
It loses the apple, for now it is just "brain patterns" or electrons.
No it doesn't, materialism doesn't deny subjective mental experiences.
And then:
Neuroscience has pretty well established that consciousness is an illusion Followed by That's merely a subjective mental experience of reality, something completely accepted by materialists and science.
Then go on accuse me of misunderstanding materialism. But in fact your position changes from reductionist materialism to non-reductionist twice in one post. Which is progress in my opinion!
What if I imagine an object that i've never seen before? No stored image there. Or just watch the ambient closed-eye-visuals that seem to run constantly in the background like a screen saver?
What if what, science doesn't deny imagination.
Those and many other examples of different ways that people use their brains will require just as many rebuttles which I'm sure you'd provide but that gets us nowhere.
They don't require any rebuttals because once again, science/materialism does not deny that people have mental experiences. You seem to be trying to make a point but I can't see what it is.
Then why do we look at images on the computer monitor? Why not just watch the electrons flow? Why do we imagine in images at all then?
I see no point in this line of questioning. You can't see electrons flow, and that we use monitors to reproduce images or use imagination to create new ones in no way says anything about scientific materialism.
You say the latter above quote that the apple image can be boiled down to its electrons and it is still an apple on that level.
I said no such thing. An apple is composed of atoms and at the atomic level is not an apple, it's just atoms. An apple is a macro object, a name we assign to a particular collection of atoms. Again, still have no clue what point you're attempting to make.
But in fact your position changes from reductionist materialism to non-reductionist twice in one post.
I did no such thing.
Neuroscience has pretty well established that consciousness is an illusion Followed by That's merely a subjective mental experience of reality, something completely accepted by materialists and science.
All mental experience is an illusion, those statements are in no way contradictory nor are they flip flops between opposing world views. They are all well accepted by scientific materialists.
At this point I'm no longer convinced you have an actual point to make. You jumped into this conversation claiming the absolutist mindset of the scientific materialist was somehow flawed and haven't provided a single argument to demonstrate your point that wasn't simply a straw-man tear-down of your own misunderstanding of the scientific point of view. You seem to think scientific materialists deny mental experiences, but they don't, so the very basis of your objection is flawed.
You engaged me, not I you, so again I ask, what is your point, what are you trying to get at?
Well I provided many arguments in attempt to illustrate my points. They proceeded to get cherry-picked--which effectively removed their context. You deconstructed all of my posts in an attempt to redefine each term used. Maybe I mistook a straw man for you, but you haven't acknowledged any of my greater themes here so either you missed them or their outside of your worldview. I'm sorry if I wasted your time.
I don't think it was a waste of time, I did enjoy the conversation but I'll let it end here as it's too deeply nested and a pain to check and we aren't really getting anywhere.
A good way to "unstump" such people, is to ask, "Is there such a thing, as what it's like to be you? When Thomas Nagel used some such phrase in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", a lot of light bulbs were switched on.
Any experiencer, once his attention is properly directed, shall be certain that experience exists. Science, on the other hand, would be perfectly consistent with the non-existence of experience and experiencers.
> Any experiencer, once his attention is properly directed, shall be certain that experience exists.
Not so. You're referring to qualia, and this is a much debated and unsettled topic, but really "exists" is the wrong word to apply to it. To "exist" means to "have objective reality or being." IMHO, qualia no more exist than Superman does, it's a trick of perception created by your mind to help understand the world, a subjective experience of imagination.
To put a software metaphor on it, qualia are no different than your web browser, it runs on the computer, but no examination of the computer itself will find what you think of as the web browser within it, it's just a collection of bits in memory just as qualia is a collection of patterns in the brain. What you experience (qualia or the browser) and what actually exists in the hardware are vastly different things, both are illusions created in a running system that bear no resemblance to the collections of patterns in the hardware that creates them.
However, as it's a hot topic of debate among philosopher's there's no real point in rehashing what can be easily looked up on Wikipedia to see what all the current opinions are. However, the burden of proof is on those claiming it exists, not on those who critique the idea. As no such evidence exists, then it's nothing more than a hypothesis at best; and a very old one at that.
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?
This is the human condition. I'm not sure "normal" or "crazy" are appropriate concepts to try to characterize it. It is what it is.
Many people who aren't religious know what their purpose is. What they may also be aware of, however, is that their purpose is not something given to them, it's something they have the responsibility to choose for themselves, and this is part of what it means to be human. You can't just accept what someone else tells you your purpose is, you have to choose it for yourself. This is one of the core elements of existentialist philosophy. (And there are Christian existentialists, but that's for another time. . . .)
Why would you think everyone must have the same purpose?
Even among the people who think every person's purpose is to serve God, every person has a different way of doing that. This specific way of serving God is their "purpose".
Strikes me as slightly analogous to Aristotle's claim that every person has happiness as a goal. That tells you relatively little about what each person might actually do, since what makes people happy (i.e., mostly realizing their unique individual potential, for Aristotle, "become who you are") differs from person to person.
> I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose?
Because of evolution and natural selection. Natural selection works because of diversity, not uniformity. The more diversity, the more quickly a species evolves to meet the environment's changing demands.
So, to answer your question in the most formal and scientific way, if people weren't different from each other, evolution wouldn't work.
It is true that almost no one analyzes sanity. Your comment reminds me a lot of a particular book on the topic, The Human Evasion by Celia Green. If you are not familiar with it already, you might be interested in checking it out:
Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. That is to say, the only reason you believe your mental constructs are more real than a schizophrenic's, is that there's a cultural consensus that disembodied voices aren't "real".
>Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior.
This is simply not true. A mental health diagnosis cannot be made without considering the wellbeing of the patient. In short, you can act as weirdly as you like but if you still claim to be happy and are not a danger to yourself or others, you are not insane. At least, this is how it works in europe.
If US doctors can forcibly treat someone who is happy and non-dangerous just because they fit a checklist, then yeah maybe it's time to take action.
> 've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought.
We notice it. We just move on, since we can't do much about it.
Alternatively, our acceptance of it indicates that on some level, you also are sane.
This question has been on my mind a bit this month.
The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you--you can't really use it to explain everyday occurrences or guide your actions in a meaningful way.
> The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you ...
That's in the nature of philosophical ideas -- they aren't meant to be practical or productive. Now if only all those students who sign up for philosophy courses and majors understood this, they might instead choose something useful and remunerative.
Well you can use it to get over fears and anxieties. Also to reduce stress. By seeing that is that the things causing these fears don't actually exist.
It would be better if we used philosophies as a tools rather than cling to them as a absolute truths.
As and aside, solipsism is dependent on qualia, so not True in an absolute sense.
(Not my idea. Similar things have been argued by Rorty or Wittingstein. Also by some Buddhist philosophies - eg. Madhyamaka ).
I really like this conception of brains working as internally competing and cooperating ferral units. I'll have to give it some more thought in the morning. I do have an entreaty for you though:
In this era of high throughput computing, elegant biotechnology, and the coming of the BRAIN initiative from the national level, I believe the best way to attack the problems of mind/brain right now is hard work and the scientific method. We need more data and we need to analyze it.
We're hiring developers for eyewire.org - a game to map the brain by crowd sourcing/gamifying the analysis of electron micrographs of stained retinal slices from mice. We're developing the tools to map the connectome. For real. The PI for my lab, Dr. Sebastian Seung, is mentioned in this article, and I love working with him. There are other absolutely incredible people working here too that will blow your mind.
Send an email to support at eyewire dot org if you want in or email me personally (see link in my profile) if you want more details. (I won't be able to get back to you instantly - I'm totally swamped, but if you're hired, based on my experiences so far, it'll be worth the wait).
Thanks for reading. I hope this post isn't too far out of our community norms - I don't see too many (large) job postings in the comments, but I felt like this article is the perfect place to find someone willing and able to provide much needed help (I'm the only web developer / aspiring neuroscientist there right now). :) If I'm taking up too much space, let me know and I'll condense it.
Looks like an amazing project. I think crowdsourcing is vastly underutilized for tasks like this.
May I make a suggestion re: the web site? In the home/registration page, it would be very helpful to link to some kind of description of the project, even if it's just one paragraph. Better yet, include that short description on the page itself.
As things stand now, I go to the sign-up page, but if I want to have any idea what the project involves before I sign up, I have to leave your site and go google the project (fortunately, there's an excellent Wikipedia article about the project).
Best of luck with your project and finding some good job candidates. If I were in a position to relocate, I'd apply for the job.
"You [use a highlighter and] break the whole article down into two or three or four or thirty-two sub articles that are basically ideas...and this looks like a regress, but it's only a finite regress, because you this gigantic article and you break it down into a group of simpler, more obvious points, and you keep going until you arrive at the end, and that's a great way of reading about cognitive science without wanting to stab yourself."
The strange thing to me is that our minds aren't really that great at studying and describing themselves. You'd think that a mind interested in how minds worked would happily examine itself in whatever level of detail it wanted. One could hope that someone like Dennett could just close his eyes, sit back, and directly observe the answer to all of his most pressing questions. Why doesn't that seem to be possible?
Why would it be? Evolution is mostly driven by getting enough calories and mates. If your brain needed to be twice as big and needed twice the calories to perform self introspection, for example, it would probably be selected against by evolution since the gain wouldn't be worth the cost.
It would be like running a debugger in production. Kills the performance.
That's a good point.
Further, you are unlikely to pose a serious threat hiding food (or making political moves, scheming to find the best mate or whatever) from yourself. Others do pose that threat. You can see the effects of the greater stakes by way of evolution. We can intricately reason with folk-psychology, "he believes she thought he put the food under the rock but he thinks she knows he knows she thinks he's going to hide it there, so he thinks he may get away with placing it there" but we are introspectively blind.
I'm not saying that we should be introspective in lieu of reproducing. It's not an all or nothing thing. BTW that same line of argument could be made against philosophy or even large portions of science, but clearly people can (and do) think about things that don't have an evolutionary advantage. But for some reason, direct knowledge (and manipulation) of our own minds is curiously out-of-reach.
Larger brain by itself is a very strong evolutionary disadvantage - it consumes a lot of calories, and in humans it hampers childbirth which in out natural state is very deadly already.
There is a strong pressure for us to have a brain that's "barely just enough" capable for the functions that increase survivability.
Abstract thinking about their environment allowed our ape ancestors to be more adaptable and plan ahead, thus increasing their chances of surviving to procreate.
I think you're getting into the mind-body problem there. The mind is not machinery, the brain is. You'll never be able to cut open someone's brain and find the content of their thoughts or experience.
We (mind/soul) are only semi-transcendent, not transcendent, so the objectivity required to do what you're describing is not directly possible.
If you'd like to read more of Dennett's (newer) understandings in a more cohesive form, check out The Intuition Pump. He talks less about his mistakes but more about how his new ideas really mesh with science and real ethics.
Nothing new in the philosophy departments: thousands of words and nothing to say at all that would be connected to reality. I heard he cites some experimental works sometimes, but his own work seems still to be in this good old tradition of medieval scholasticism of thinking very hard what "ought to be", he even personifies neurons and throws in some "emergence". Missing is only some chaos theory and Goedels theorem, but Plato is there, so maybe this makes up for it. Worst is that he will inspire hundreds of cranks to do similar attempts at "explaining how brain works" and people doing real research will receive still more letters with "revolutionary" ideas of no use.
On the topic of the brain, I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.
> I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.
The way you get data is by asking questions, and the way you get questions to ask is by following hunches. Don't be so quick to throw away the playful turning-over of ideas that necessarily precedes rigorous analysis.
I know "who he is". Do I have to agree with him because he is a professor? Every piece of his writing I saw used the most complicated language possible and the largest amount of digressions to in the end convey nothing concrete whatsoever and this is all the more true of this article. Moreover I think one can not make any serious contribution to cognitive science using the methodology he uses and that what he is doing is akin to people trying to explain "what gravity is" before Galileo came, abandoned the question, and used equations to predict effects of gravity instead. If I am wrong, I seriously would love an explanation of why do you think so.
As others have said Marvin Minsky, who I by the way respect way more than Dennett because in his prime he actually did do real research, had this idea of a "community of agents" thirty years ago or more, in fact he several time claimed that if only he would receive the money to hire programmers he would produce revolutionary AI programs in a matter of months. How this is looked upon by more mainstream scientists one can guess. To me the whole theory is as vague as saying that the brain is made up of cooperating parts. Does any of this lead to testable scientific predictions?
I admire your healthy level of skepticism. I've been intrigued by Dennett for years, but I haven't drunk his Kool-Aid.
How do you find triune brain theory? I'm finding it a very useful model. Want to know what I think many of these "brain guys" get wrong? The fact that many neural circuits include loops through the body at various distances. Doesn't it seem like many theories are actually projections of social models? (consider the shift from cleverly-connected agents to "decentralization" to competing individual neurons). There's a theory somewhere that says technocracies develop products that mimic their internal communication/social structure. I see startups go through this all the time. anyhoo...
It would have been good if you included your references instead of halfheartedly telling us the keywords why you maybe disagree. I still upped your comment, because despite your ignorance, you've developed your own views to things, which as I said, just lack the references. Have an open mind and go beyond the words, start with your own imagination. To me it sounds, as if you cannot reason Dennett, but you leave us unclear what "that" logic inaccuracy is, thus making you appear ignorant.
The missing links (please complete them, if there was more that you'd like to share):
I recently read "Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking" by Dennett (http://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/d...). I think you are not giving him enough credit. He actually spends most of the book arguing against popular ideas in philosophy that either have no support in science, or have counter-evidence in science. I found the book was written clearly, with very little philosophical jargon.
Amen. To me that article should be littered with [citation required] -- it is just full of wild assertions with no hint of reference to research. As in "Maybe a lot of the neurons in our brains are not just capable but ... motivated to be more adventurous, more exploratory or risky in the way they comport themselves... They're struggling amongst themselves with each other for influence... there's competition going on between individual neurons." Such anthropomorphizing of individual damn cells is completely unjustified without some kind of support.
Minsky talked about the 'society of mind' involving competition between many autonomous modules a very long time ago; funny that he isn't even mentioned.
The brain-as-computer analogy needs more qualification than it is usually given. When one says that, people tend to think of a computer very abstractly; as some Turing-machine like substrate on which one can run any computation. The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. The reality is probably much closer to 19th century phrenology than 50s cybernetics.
One case, demonstrated by Smith & Sugar, 1975; A. Smith 1987, demonstrated that one patient with this procedure had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.
> The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions.
That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.
I believe that optimizations observed are almost purely function of brain activity. Any boosts genes provide to specific regions are quantitative not qualitative in nature.
Maybe it'd be more interesting to think of it like an FPGA that can run a Verilog JIT compiler and reprogram itself when damage occurs or new information changes priorities?
Philosophy of mind is a very interesting topic as computers become more and more 'human' like. Dug up an essay I wrote freshman year on one of his books called Consciousness Explained - funny to look back at old writings:
One bit of additional info on this topic. To understand how and why neurons are independent, you need to understand how a baby's brain grows into its body by producing an overabundance of neurons and then "pruning" the ones that aren't used. So neurons are subject to natural selection as we grow:
"...and I suspect that a more free-wheeling, anarchic organization is the secret of our greater capacities of creativity, imagination, thinking outside the box and all that, and the price we pay for it is our susceptibility to obsessions, mental illnesses, delusions and smaller problems."
Great observation! Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities? Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems. There indeed seems to be some connection between the mind's capacity to innovate and create and its capacity to suffer delusions and obsessions. Take examples of Gödel, Turing, Tesla, Hemingway, etc.
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-geniu...
>geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted
Maybe so, but don't forget, there is no "normal" human being. We create the criteria of genius, normal and mental illness all in order to fulfill our social needs. It's possible we categorize certain individuals as genius and afflicted just so we can deny them the fruits of their labor. It's possible we create the concept of normalcy just so we can leverage techniques of mass manufacturing and social control.
It's possible that innovation without being identified as a genius is a smart way to escape the disadvantages of being labelled afflicted. It's possible Dennett's newest change-of-mind is just an update to the fairy tale that tells those in charge how to handle workers for the maximum effect and least disruption.
After all, who wants anarchic disruptions in the social order? We want reliable electrical networks and food delivery, not creative, experimental protests. So instead of heeding the words directly of those with insight, appeal to their ego, call them geniuses, strip their innovations to the bare minimum and label them as crazy or problematic to keep them separated safely from others. (cough) Torvalds (cough) RMS.
Maybe so. Even though I am not aware of any studies of this kind of a link between insanity and genius, the kinds of afflictions I am talking about are not imaginary. They are real mental disorders like OCD, bipolar disorder etc.
> Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities?
In a manner of speaking. People who prefer conformity, who think everyone should be the same, can't resist labeling smart people as "afflicted". This is a practice with a long history. The most recent, wildly popular effort was called "Asperger Syndrome", one that's just now being abandoned because of the damage it caused.
To someone who thinks everyone should be the same, anything that sets one apart in a behavioral sense is a "mental abnormality". But evolution by natural selection requires diversity, so in a more basic biological sense, it's the people who want everyone to be the same that represent the abnormal state of mind.
> Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems.
The problems faced by bright people are mostly caused by their dumb neighbors' belief that everyone should be like them.
If your mind can range over a wider variety of ideas, you're more likely to discover good ones that others haven't discovered yet. You're also more likely to discover ideas that are completely batshit insane, because you've got fewer filters to prevent yourself from taking them seriously.
I was slightly confused the format of seemingly disconnected subsections, but I can't really complain because each section was quite interesting on its own.
While we are on the topic, if anyone has any great recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books, I would love to hear them.
> recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books
Nice (but opinionated and now ~50y old) overview: Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy". Long but extremely readable. Not necessarily very reliable.
Ethics specifically: Peter Singer's "Practical ethics". Note that Singer thinks that we (in the affluent West) should all be giving a lot more than most of us do to help less well-off people, and that non-human animals' welfare is much more important than most people treat it as, and he's quite persuasive. So reading his work might be bad for your financial and/or gastronomic well-being (but if so, you will consider that that's for the best).
Not all that entry-level but full of clever things and exceptionally clear (in approximately the way that maths/physics/computing people value clear thinking extra-highly): Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". Subtitle is "demystifying paradoxes from physics to ethics".
Just for fun: Quine's "Quiddities: an intermittently philosophical dictionary". Not really a dictionary, but a collection of short essays and remarks in alphabetical order of (single-word) subject. Quine was an absolutely first-rank philosopher, though he's not in particularly serious mode here.
Not at all entry-level (in terms of how hard you need to think; I don't think much expert philosophical knowledge is needed) but extraordinarily good and highly relevant to questions of ethics, though it's more about questions of personal identity: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and persons". He's more recently written a large two-volume work on ethics, which I haven't read.
Just did some background reading about that work. It does seem to be quite important, at the very least because so much has been influenced by it. Although in some other readings regarding Aristotle's political theories, I had a hard time getting past his views on slaves.
As an aside,
Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought.
And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)