Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[TheHumanHydra]

THH, that's a reasonable summary ...

Argument for the existence of the non-physical:

If the laws of physics exist, then there exists something non-physical, as they are non-physical, they are not particles.

I realized I derped, because ipecac said the same thing right before your post. Thanks to both of you for this very interesting point. I'm looking forward to T-hawk's reply (unless I missed it!) and further debate.

[Japper007]

Lots of atheists take the latter approach, which however has a consequence: it involves assuming the real existence of such iron laws that prevent any deviation whatsoever. So the real existence of non-physical laws is required, which is a massive problem for the atheists who also believe in that only the physical exists. Indeed, it is a contradiction between two important beliefs, which means their worldview is incoherent.

This is a pretty weird statement. It is very well possible to believe in provable, observable powers like Physics and choose not to believe in an unprovable God. I mean you could even take physics itself to be some form of higher entity, heck I'll be the first to build a temple to worship them   . Praise the Sun (or rather the processes of gravity that cause gas particles to cluster and fuse) !

But I don't know why the laws of physics would care if I like to have same-gender sex [1] or whatever other supposedly "ungodly" behaviour the cult-of-the-week has decided is deemed unworthy by their Skydad this time.

[1] 

[TheHumanHydra]

You've only given reasons you don't want to believe it.  That's not at all the same thing.  I can't do anything about that except point back to the Intellectual Integrity quote about "man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true".

[...]

But more seriously, it does make Yang look like a hypocrite. If his stance really is 'life is just particle interactions no different from any other', then why is he running a government at all?

Yang's relevant quote here is "life's only purpose is life itself".  The chemical patterns of life exist to reproduce themselves.  A government is machinery towards that end.  Life can organize into higher-order patterns; it is advantageous for reproduction to develop things like economies of scale for resource production and extraction.  It's the same as how living cells create and use intermediate machinery that isn't actually cells, like blood fluids, because it's an organizational pattern that helps reproduction in a larger scale.

[...]

Back to the real world, the general answer to the question of "if materialism, why do anything?" is "follow the illusion".  I have no problem accepting that I'm a deterministic collection of particles that creates its own illusion of perceptions.  Free will in defiance of materialism is one of those perceptions.  I can seek sensations of pleasure and happiness.  That those results are just more chemical patterns in the brain does not stop my patterns from seeking them.  There is no objective meaning to anything, but that means the answer to life is to find your own subjective meaning that your perceptions create for yourself.  Here I follow Morgan, and in real life, Kurt Vonnegut as a leading thinker.  Ultimately nothing matters because it's all the heat death of the universe, but I can have what I perceive as fun along the way.

Okay. So, I owe T-hawk a response on free will. But first I want to engage on these things, because they have immediate social implications.

With apologies, T-hawk, I think Huinesoron is right. Under your pure-particle framework, it seems categorically incorrect to say that life (or anything) has any purpose. There are, in fact, no purposes, only (particle) positions, and changes in particle positions. Your framework seems to deny that there are whys, only whats and hows. So we cannot posit that life exists to reproduce itself, only observe that life does reproduce itself. Yang's (vague) goal of perpetuating life without inhibition is not more noble than any other, only a fact of his particle positions. His philosophy is not to be admired or emulated, it only is. It is not some form of mental transcendence for the more enlightened, it is only a manifestation of particle positions, no more 'legitimate' (for that is not a concept) than any other. Optimization is not a meaningful goal or value. There is only particle destiny.

We cannot laud Yang for his purity, nor pat ourselves on the back for holding to the same. We cannot decry the Spartan rovers running roughshod over his streets, nor the earthly government that bans the manipulation of unborn humans' genes -- or rather, we can do all of these things, and they are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

I think you ultimately agree with this, T-hawk, I just want it to be clear that, say, if humanity chooses to imprison anyone who ever tries to make a Genejack, there is little room for complaint. Optimization is not a goal or value (or real). Who cares?

So have fun along the way. Yes, this seems to be the only reasonable 'value'. Do what your brain chemistry wants. I just want to highlight this because it circles back around to the case I was trying to make at first (which I think we were actually all, tacitly or explicitly, agreed on), that humans will ultimately believe whatever satisfies them the most, usually as in, whatever lets them perform the behaviours (or hold the attitudes) that they enjoy most (or enjoy the behaviours or attitudes they already exhibit). I think this accords well with your idea of particle destiny, but I think it holds more or less true across frameworks. Your framework, notably, allows you to perform any behaviour or hold any attitude you wish, without moral constraint. There is no guilt (beyond the chemical), because you don't have agency (and morality doesn't exist as such anyway). There is no reason not to do anything other than a) lack of desire, b) inability, or c) knowledge of undesired consequences thereof.

This is largely actually a restatement of (part of) Zakharov's quote, "Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely or possible has always astounded me," though I would substitute 'regardless of'. I say this because I do not believe atheists possess the intellectual integrity they claim. They may (or may not) think more objectively, but they do not think objectively, because no one ever does. We are not logic boards, but bioneural beings subject to brain chemistry (and particle positioning). (As for the rest of the quote, mea culpa, with nuance.)

Of course, none of the foregoing is a factual criticism of your position, T-hawk (except the first full paragraph). I actually think your position is incredibly strong (or, rather, a version of your position that acknowledges higher-order phenomena as meaningfully described*). If I were an atheist, I would probably (after this thread) propound something similar. Instead, this is a call to the undecided to consider the value of the position you are advocating, and to everyone, whatever they choose to believe, to consider their cognitive/moral biases.

* And ipecac's and Bacchus's case about physical laws is a very strong riposte -- looking forward to more on this from both sides.

~

I said I owed T-hawk a reply on free will. 

I was thinking about your last point -- it's a good one! I think we need to define free will.

I have a rigorous definition in mind - which I so take for granted as obvious that I neglected to actually state it.

Assume one can have complete and exact knowledge of the state of every elementary particle in a brain and all matter and forces that it could interact with, and enough computational power to calculate the result of their chemical interactions to any arbitrary period of time.  Given that, can the computational simulation accurately project what actions that brain will take?

If you say no, then that constitutes free will, that the brain or consciousness can influence matter in a way that is not deterministically caused by the particles; that's what defines a decision.  If you say yes, then that means the particles determine everything and there is no freedom or will or decision.

I say yes, of course.  We know chemical factors influence human behavior to some degree; and the simplest Occam's-razor solution is that they influence it all the way.

Because I am a dualist, I of course say no, or that one of the 'forces that [particles] could interact with' is spiritual. This, of course, is intuition, but we already acknowledge that particle destiny is an intuition based on Occam's Razor.
I wrote this much earlier in the week but wasn't sure I liked it. It's more of a defence of (what I think is) Bacchus's vision of materialism. Bacchus has since made some similar arguments better. What I don't like is that it admits particle destiny and, I think, is contortionary. While it's probably rhetorical suicide to criticize one's own (adopted) position, please accept it in the spirit of philosophical speculation.


T-hawk, from a non-theistic perspective, I think my answer is yes* (asterisk deliberate). The asterisk is what I said in my previous post, which then loops back into your whole argument with Bacchus.
 
Chemicals and electrical impulses in the brain are the mechanism by which we make choices. As far as I understand it, your and Bacchus's debate concerns whether those choices are best described as attributable to the chemicals or to higher-order phenomenon that are expressed through chemicals (particles, etc.). I tend to think that, while you're strictly correct that everything, including processes, is reducible to particles, Bacchus is ultimately right in that this is not useful for describing causes (or matter) meaningfully and that you therefore ascribe too much philosophical/moral import to it -- but it's not my argument.
 
To relate this back to my post, yes, I think if you could pinpoint every particle and predict its interactions, you would know what every mind will choose (as does the god of my framework). But what you define as free will, the ability to make choices independently of the particle substrate of the universe, is not free will, because it requires the choices to be made randomly, that is, arbitrarily, that is, not selected for any reason, that is, not the result of volition but of impartial chance. But choice is the ability to exercise partiality.
 
Rather, free will is the aggregate of choices that are indeed made via chemical and electrical interactions in the brain, that are influenced by external stimuli that are likewise composed of infinitely subdivisible matter and energy -- but it is more meaningful to say that they are choices, not destiny, because the being does have the matter/energy potential to act in multiple ways and selects one of them. Yes, the choice is ultimately determined -- but that is what a choice is, a determination. Put otherwise, if we say that brain chemistry 'causes' choices, we are saying that we observe and understand the process by which choices are made, not that choices don't exist.
 
Think of it: you have the power to reconfigure your own particles. You know how to do this, and you know you are doing it. Maybe someone out there knows how you will do so already, but within the pool we have to play in, a world of particles, I think that is best described as choice.


There were just a couple other random observations I wanted to make. The first is that your excellent question made me realize that the other 'deciding factors' I referred to in my first post on free will -- intellectual, social, etc. -- are 1) experienced in the brain as chemicals (and electrical impulses) and 2) are thus reducible to particles (as they are or could be externally as well). Well done! The second -- and maybe someone has already said this -- is that, again, chemicals are conglomerates of particles. Per Bacchus's argument, if you speak of brain chemistry as causing behaviour, haven't you acknowledged that phenomena of a higher order than particles have causal import?

[TheHumanHydra]

Lots of atheists take the latter approach, which however has a consequence: it involves assuming the real existence of such iron laws that prevent any deviation whatsoever. So the real existence of non-physical laws is required, which is a massive problem for the atheists who also believe in that only the physical exists. Indeed, it is a contradiction between two important beliefs, which means their worldview is incoherent.

This is a pretty weird statement. It is very well possible to believe in provable, observable powers like Physics and choose not to believe in an unprovable God. I mean you could even take physics itself to be some form of higher entity, heck I'll be the first to build a temple to worship them   . Praise the Sun (or rather the processes of gravity that cause gas particles to cluster and fuse) !

But I don't know why the laws of physics would care if I like to have same-gender sex [1] or whatever other supposedly "ungodly" behaviour the cult-of-the-week has decided is deemed unworthy by their Skydad this time.

[1] 

Japper, hey, you obviously have a lot of passion behind your statements. I just wanted to step in and try to cool things down a bit, because I think this thread is really valuable as a relatively dispassionate forum for discussions on belief systems with such important practical applications. Obviously, many of the beliefs expressed in this thread threaten others' ways of thinking and living (e.g. T-hawk's threatens ipecac's and mine). But I think it's always good to evaluate ourselves and our own beliefs. In a cool moment, I think we'd all agree. 

I think Bacchus, an atheist, has already thoughtfully expressed how what ipecac is saying is indeed a problem to be worked through for the specific subset of atheists ipecac named -- so worthy of discussion even on non-theistic-atheist lines. You're completely right that belief in physical laws does not necessitate belief in the divine, though it does help those of us who wish to believe there is even more beyond the physical.

When we get to specific behaviours and lifestyles, it's hard for any of us not to get worked up, because it very really does threaten us in a way. I'd just like to say that, for all those of us -- theists and atheists -- who do believe in some kind of morality, we do exclude some types of actions. Our debate is about which ones to exclude, and why! There are definitely things I say or do you take exception to, and vice-versa -- and T-hawk and Bacchus, and T-hawk and I, and I and ipecac!

Anyway, the thing I really want to get across is that, for me anyway, my religious beliefs on sexual morality are held (as much as any flawed human can manage, I hope) without malice. For what it's worth, I support the legal protection of homosexuality (as I hope you would my religious beliefs). Furthermore, I take issue with modern sexuality generally, not only with any particular subset -- and I know that most modern people take issue with my beliefs on sexuality. We live and let live, and try to persuade when we can (I mean all of us do). I fully understand that it may be difficult to have a friendship with someone who disagrees so fundamentally (though it can happen!) -- I know I would struggle with this on certain issues (incidentally, not homosexuality -- or materialism). So, while our differences here are great, this is intended as the olive branch, in hopes the thread will stay on its even keel, and because it's right to extend anyway.

I hope some of this makes sense! Peace and all the best, my fellow Realmer.

[Japper007]

I didn't mean to come of as aggresive Human Hydra, if it came of that way I'm sorry. I've been following the discussion here with much interest though I didn't jump in before as it would pretty much be a useless to whatever Bachus was saying.

This statement just jumped out at me for being pretty far removed from the themes discussed and therefore coming off as a pretty weird offhand jab at atheism instead, one that wasn't really getting challenged.

[ipecac]

Nihilism, ladies and gentlemen: never a good path to go down.
...
Will you get around to addressing my refutations of your position?

If I can find something that's actually a refutation.  You're not refuting materialism, you're talking past me.  The result of nihilism or disproving Yang's own consciousness aren't counterarguments, they are exactly what the position does lead to.  Pointing out the position's own conclusions in aggressive disparaging language isn't a debate.  Nothing you've said is any argument against physical determistic materialism.  You've said why you don't like it, not why it wouldn't be true.

You've only given reasons you don't want to believe it.  That's not at all the same thing.  I can't do anything about that except point back to the Intellectual Integrity quote about "man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true".

That's bollocks. I've pointed out how you've misused Occam's Razor, meaning your argument is essentially without warrant. Also, I've pointed out how physical laws are non-physical, so your argument is disproven.

You've ignored both points.

[ipecac]

Lots of atheists take the latter approach, which however has a consequence: it involves assuming the real existence of such iron laws that prevent any deviation whatsoever. So the real existence of non-physical laws is required, which is a massive problem for the atheists who also believe in that only the physical exists. Indeed, it is a contradiction between two important beliefs, which means their worldview is incoherent.

This is a pretty weird statement. It is very well possible to believe in provable, observable powers like Physics

There was a typo. It should have been "a massive problem for atheists who also believe in that only the physical exists", in other words they don't believe that anything other or higher than particles exist.

Yes, there certainly are other types of atheists who don't have this problem.

It is very well possible to believe in provable, observable powers like Physics

What provable powers? How would you prove that laws of Physics exist? As I pointed out in an earlier post to THH, what we observe is mere regular behaviour. To make a statement that 'laws' of physics exists is to make a metaphysical statement for which the evidence is insufficient.

As an aside, I'm curious if you believe in free will

[darrelljs]

Nihilism, ladies and gentlemen: never a good path to go down.

Equating determinism with nihilism was a *choice* you made, not the bag of particles that is T-Hawk .

Darrell

[ipecac]

Nihilism, ladies and gentlemen: never a good path to go down.

Equating determinism with nihilism was a *choice* you made, not the bag of particles that is T-Hawk  .

Darrell

Making such a recognition was something I did, yes. Sadly that may be beyond the capabilities of mindless bag of cells .

[Japper007]

What provable powers? How would you prove that laws of Physics exist? 

We see them acting on stuff, what would you say gravity isn't provable? Just drop a pen from your desk. Since they are repeatable we know that a "law" exists here. A pen will always  fall towards the earth. It's like a black hole, we can't observe it directly, but we can see it pull in nearby objects, so we know it must be there.

Are you instead having a problem with the term law used here? That, just like theory, is because science uses it differently than it's colloquial use. A law in physics is not a "don't do this or there will be consequences" statement, it is rather "this phenomena observably occurs repeatably everywhere in the universe". Just like that the "Theory" used in the Theory of Evolution doesn't mean it's just some guess, it means that it is the best "guess" we have right now, untill reasonable evidence appears to say it works otherwise. Nothing in science is absolute but laws and theories are more absolute than others, if you can come up with something that disproves gravity for example, then the law changes accordingly (as happened when Einstein improved upon Newton). But why would be discussing semantics like this in the first place?  It doesn't change anything: we could call it the Thingamabob of Gravity and gravity would still exist.