A More Localized Version of the Argument From Morality

[Mort_Alz]

No, that would be mixing up the terms. The OED has:

Supernatural = attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature, e.g. a supernatural being

Non-physical = not tangible or concrete, e.g. non-physical digital money

When you pay for something by swiping your debit card, the amount of the transfer is non-physical but not supernatural.

OK, but then your thoughts can be non-physical but not supernatural, just like that debit card transaction.

Fair enough. I guess, by that definition, I mean supernatural, then. Especially given Vera’s assertion that reductionism just flat isn’t true. Emergent phenomenon would require supernatural explanation if they cannot be explained “from below.”

Because, to explain the emergence of saltiness purely by nature, you’d have to be able to explain it by reduction. Just saying “combining sodium and chlorine naturally make salt” isn’t thorough enough. In fact, it’s not an explanation at all. The truth of reductionism is a necessary consequence of a purely naturalistic philosophy. Otherwise, you might as well say that when sodium and chlorine come together to make a molecule, saltiness appears by magic.

Agreed, an event can’t be true or false, it just happens. Only something that depicts or represents the event can be true or false. If a story describes an event faithfully, we say it’s a true story.

It wouldn’t make sense to look at Saturn’s orbit and say it’s a true or false orbit. But a statement about Saturn’s orbit could be true or false. It doesn’t make sense to say carrots are true, but it does make sense to say the statement “carrots are orange” is true.

So true/false is always a value about a proposition, and is known as a truth value. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value.

In the digital world, truth values are called bits and are represented by high/low voltage, or north/south magnetic pole, or (in DVDs) by short or long pits in the surface, etc. There are lots of ways of doing it. The video I linked says that on the optic nerve, truth values correspond to nerve pulses. I don’t know exactly how truth values are represented in the brain. I’d imagine it has to do with neuron weightings, since that’s the inspiration for what are called neuron network programs in computing.

I think, despite this, my argument still stands that thoughts have properties which their associated electrochemical brain events don’t have, since truth or falsehood in electromagnetism is substantially different from what it is to thoughts despite using the same words. It can’t really be said that they have truth or falsehood in the same way that thoughts have it.

 

[Mort_Alz]

Consciousness is NOT matter, it is an activity of the matter (brain). Besides, a logical contradiction would assert that something is both true and false at the same time in the same context.

Ok. Then just change the words a little. Brain activity is made up of unconscious events since electrochemical reactions are unconscious. It still produces a contradiction to say “that reaction is unconscious” (which it is) and to say at the same time that it is conscious.

Also, I was unaware that we were talking about different contexts…

We do not try to reduce the movement of the stock market to the electro-chemical motion of the electrons in the brain… even though without the motion of the electrons there would be no live humans, there would be no society, and there would be no “stock market”.

But you have to be able to explain it in those lower terms if a naturalistic philosophy is to hold. At least theoretically. But you are saying it is even theoretically impossible to do that.

 

[Mort_Alz]

Wetness is a property of water which arises from the fact that molecule of water has special configuration and water is kept in specific external state. In the same manner the consciousness can arises from specific process inside brain.

This appears to me to be a fancy way of saying a whole lot of nothing substantial. Perhaps I just missed it. Anyone else understand this?

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

But you have to be able to explain it in those lower terms if a naturalistic philosophy is to hold. At least theoretically. But you are saying it is even theoretically impossible to do that.

No, there is no such requirement. Not even theoretically. There is no way to reduce the properties of a “house” to the properties of the “bricks”. There is no way to reduce a picture to the paint blobs that make up the picture. But that does not mean that to explain the properties of the house (or a picture) we need a “supernatural” agent. The whole is NOT necessarily the sum of the parts (though in certain cases it might be).

 

[inocente]

Fair enough. I guess, by that definition, I mean supernatural, then. Especially given Vera’s assertion that reductionism just flat isn’t true. Emergent phenomenon would require supernatural explanation if they cannot be explained “from below.”

Because, to explain the emergence of saltiness purely by nature, you’d have to be able to explain it by reduction. Just saying “combining sodium and chlorine naturally make salt” isn’t thorough enough. In fact, it’s not an explanation at all. The truth of reductionism is a necessary consequence of a purely naturalistic philosophy. Otherwise, you might as well say that when sodium and chlorine come together to make a molecule, saltiness appears by magic.

The emergentist believes that for instance, chemistry emerges from physics, meaning that chemicals have properties which can’t be reduced to physics. And you would never be able to imagine all the things H[sub]2[/sub]O can do if you only knew the properties of H and O, since the properties of water emerge from the combination. In the same way, biology emerges from chemistry but isn’t reducible to chemistry.

You can’t explain an elephant’s snort in terms of quantum physics. But you can build up a layered explanation, from particles to molecules to proteins to cells, etc. In this case many many layers.

Emergentism is basically Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.

I think, despite this, my argument still stands that thoughts have properties which their associated electrochemical brain events don’t have, since truth or falsehood in electromagnetism is substantially different from what it is to thoughts despite using the same words. It can’t really be said that they have truth or falsehood in the same way that thoughts have it.

Yes, an emergentist would say that properties of mind are not reducible to properties of electrochemistry, but the mind emerges. In this case through many many layers.

 

[goout]

No, there is no such requirement. Not even theoretically. There is no way to reduce the properties of a “house” to the properties of the “bricks”. There is no way to reduce a picture to the paint blobs that make up the picture.

Yet we see atheists constantly reducing the house to it’s pile of bricks.

A simple ethical system:

Rule #1: Do no harm. (Borrowed from the Hippocratic oath)
Rule #2: Do not allow harm to happen, if you can prevent it.
Rule #3: If the circumstances FORCE you to do harm, then do as little harm as possible.

This might be a simple system of ethics, but it is not morality. It is completely subjective and arbitrary.
Example:
"1) Those Jewish shop keepers are taking our money and sucking the life’s blood out of our economy. They are harming us!
2) We can prevent this harm if we take their shops and let them do labor like us.
3) They will not go quietly, so we will take them by force with as little harm as possible. ":nope:
Perhaps you can see there is a difference between a system of ethics and morality, which is the evaluation of human acts in reference to objective goods.

 

[PRmerger]

I had a conversation with the moderator ten months ago, not for public discussion, but thought by now it was safe to take you off ignore.

LOL! I knew we were kindred spirits, my friend, for what you say is exactly what happened with me. I decided to take you off ignore recently, too. How funny that there was a Mutual Ignore Situation going on.

However, my observation of the general direction your posts are taking should be heeded.

Please confine your response to the topic so I don’t have to report you again.

Interesting. I never got any notice of this report, so perhaps you only thought you reported me and you didn’t?

Sticky: “It is never acceptable to assume or say you know what another person thinks or needs”.

Amen.

You still don’t appear to have noticed the plural - unless you believe in a multiverse there’s only one reality.

Of course there is only one reality, but there are also multiple realities.

There is no reason to include an either/or when a both/and is at work.

That’s what makes Catholicism so formidable to refute.

So, for example, multiple realities exist in that there is the reality of this world on CAFs, and there is the reality of the world in which I live.

Different realities. But both exist under one reality.

 

[STT]

This appears to me to be a fancy way of saying a whole lot of nothing substantial. Perhaps I just missed it. Anyone else understand this?

In simple word, I am saying that there is not such a thing like wetness in an molecule of water. This is a property of water which give rise when you have bunch of molecules. In the same manner there is no such a thing like consciousness in a neuron. The consciousness however can give rise from a bunch of neurons.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Brain activity is made up of unconscious events since electrochemical reactions are unconscious. It still produces a contradiction to say “that reaction is unconscious” (which it is) and to say at the same time that it is conscious. . .

Maybe. The shift in potassium and chlorine ions across the cell membrane that moves down the neuron, causes a change in the charge between the inside and outside of the cell. This is only a small albeit significant part of what happens at that level in the brain. I would consider the patterns of excitation with the multitude of reactions that take place to be the material "is"ness of experience, perhaps like the individual sounds that combine to make a symphony. It all happens as a manifestation of the soul’s relating to what is other to it. It can be said to all be conscious within the Holy being that contains the perception, thought, feeling and action. I guess what I’m getting is that brain activity is not unconscious. We don’t know all the constituents as the symbols, analogies and calculations with which we are familiar because we are not studying them. We are being them. The mathematical, biochemical reactions that we understand to be happening, are not something we need to compute and mix in order to see, hear, read and write these words. That I do not have to carry out the billion physical actions that are the constituent parts of the flow of activity that sees my fingers dancing on my phone’s screen does not mean they are unconscious. It all comes together as the person-in-the-world; in other words the unity of the body and the spirit who is the relational eternal (outside time and space) human soul - love damaged seeking fullness. Quite wondrous, really!! :twocents:

 

[Mort_Alz]

Yet we see atheists constantly reducing the house to it’s pile of bricks.

I think this is where I’m getting confused with atheists very confidently decrying reductionism, because they often act as if it’s true especially in conversation with the more simple-minded from among the religious population.

“If God isn’t real, how do you explain love?”

“Simple. Neuron firings in the brain.”

What? Now I’m being told you can’t reduce the conscious feeling of love to neuron firings in the brain. When I was younger and more prone to putting forth arguments like the one above, the atheistic response was almost always one of reductionism.

 

[Mort_Alz]

Maybe. The shift in potassium and chlorine ions across the cell membrane that moves down the neuron, causes a change in the charge between the inside and outside of the cell. This is only a small albeit significant part of what happens at that level in the brain. I would consider the patterns of excitation with the multitude of reactions that take place to be the material "is"ness of experience, perhaps like the individual sounds that combine to make a symphony. It all happens as a manifestation of the soul’s relating to what is other to it. It can be said to all be conscious within the Holy being that contains the perception, thought, feeling and action. I guess what I’m getting is that brain activity is not unconscious. We don’t know all the constituents as the symbols, analogies and calculations with which we are familiar because we are not studying them. We are being them. The mathematical, biochemical reactions that we understand to be happening, are not something we need to compute and mix in order to see, hear, read and write these words. That I do not have to carry out the billion physical actions that are the constituent parts of the flow of activity that sees my fingers dancing on my phone’s screen does not mean they are unconscious. It all comes together as the person-in-the-world; in other words the unity of the body and the spirit who is the relational eternal (outside time and space) human soul - love damaged seeking fullness. Quite wondrous, really!! :twocents:

This is why I tend to think like G. K. Chesterton did about the miraculous. Emergent properties themselves can be thought of as miracles. Just because they are reliable and observable does not mean they aren’t miracles. You can even think of the physical constants as miracles. We say something is a physical “constant,” but we don’t know that with 100% certainty. All we know for sure is that it has been constant up to this point. The “miracle” is that it continues to be. The same with emergent properties. We can “explain” the existence of salt by talking about sodium and chlorine since they are always associated with salt, but, (as it has been pointed out here in the invalidity of reductionism), we require an unexplained jump to get from sodium and chlorine to salt. Maybe this even works with mathematics (and I am just thinking out loud here), 1 + 2 = 3, and we think we know how this works, but we really don’t? Why does 1 + 2 = 3? Threeness isn’t contained within 1 or 2, so from where comes 3?

 

[Mort_Alz]

No, there is no such requirement. Not even theoretically. There is no way to reduce the properties of a “house” to the properties of the “bricks”. There is no way to reduce a picture to the paint blobs that make up the picture. But that does not mean that to explain the properties of the house (or a picture) we need a “supernatural” agent. The whole is NOT necessarily the sum of the parts (though in certain cases it might be).

Ok… So, then how is it a sufficient explanation of salt to say that it is sodium and chlorine?

More appropriately, how is that sufficient for explaining how all things can be explained by the purely natural (thus removing the necessity for the supernatural)?

 

[Mort_Alz]

What you suggest is called “reductionism”, and it is simply incorrect. The point is that not just “according to physics”. Just think about NaCl (ordinary salt) which is the composition of Natrium (Sodium) and Chlorine. Neither one of the elements is “salty”, but the composition is salty. That is NOT a contradiction. Neither Hydrogen, nor Oxygen are “wet”. The concept of “wetness” is undefined on the atomic level. But if you combine one Oxygen atom and two Hydrogen atoms, you will get “water”, which is “wet”. And that is not a contradiction.

But, hang on, we CAN explain the “wetness” of water at an atomic level. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a water molecule have slight positive and negative charges respectively, which causes the two “gasses” (that are arranged into H2O) to stick to one another more strongly than in their original state, which is consistent with our experience of water which has surface tension and doesn’t separate from itself without some level of force being exerted on it. Thus, “wetness.”

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

But, hang on, we CAN explain the “wetness” of water at an atomic level. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a water molecule have slight positive and negative charges respectively, which causes the two “gasses” (that are arranged into H2O) to stick to one another more strongly than in their original state, which is consistent with our experience of water which has surface tension and doesn’t separate from itself without some level of force being exerted on it. Thus, “wetness.”

Hurrah, hurrah! You just proved that wetness cannot be reduced to the atoms themselves, it is the arrangement which is needed for the explanation. And that is called an emergent attribute, something that cannot be reduced to the constituent parts.

Just like the oxygen’s composition of 8 protons, 8 neutrons and 8 electrons cannot explain why does oxygen supports “burning” and why nitrogen 7 protons, 7 neutrons and 7 electrons does not. The whole is frequently more than the sum of its parts.

 

[Mort_Alz]

Hurrah, hurrah! You just proved that wetness cannot be reduced to the atoms themselves, it is the arrangement which is needed for the explanation. And that is called an emergent attribute, something that cannot be reduced to the constituent parts.

Just like the oxygen’s composition of 8 protons, 8 neutrons and 8 electrons cannot explain why does oxygen supports “burning” and why nitrogen 7 protons, 7 neutrons and 7 electrons does not. The whole is frequently more than the sum of its parts.

How condescending.

Then, obviously, reductionism is not what I am referring to when I say that consciousness cannot be the same as the electrochemical events in the brain.

We can “reach” wetness “from below.” It’s obviously more than a summation of its parts, but there are more ways to bring things together than with sums. Ways which cause “emergent attributes.” But these attributes are comprehensible in terms of their smaller parts. We see that because of the physics of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Their coming together causes a change in how they behave which gives rise to behavior that only occurs when they ARE arranged together. This provides no difficulty.

Not so when trying to move from electrochemical events to consciousness.

We can see that electrochemical events correspond with consciousness. We can even see that they cause consciousness. But we don’t even have the first clue to a direction of study to find out HOW electrochemical arrangements (as arrangements) ARE consciousness. I maintain it is because they logically can’t be the same, given what we know about consciousness.

 

[inocente]

LOL! …]

Sure, whatever you say.

*Of course there is only one reality, but there are also multiple realities.

There is no reason to include an either/or when a both/and is at work.

That’s what makes Catholicism so formidable to refute.

So, for example, multiple realities exist in that there is the reality of this world on CAFs, and there is the reality of the world in which I live.

Different realities. But both exist under one reality.*

Please link the Catholic documents which teach that, or the papers giving the philosophical arguments. I’ll wait patiently.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

How condescending.

There was no condescension involved. I was happy that you accepted the concept of emerging attributes. Many people are unable to comprehend the concept.

We can see that electrochemical events correspond with consciousness. We can even see that they cause consciousness. But we don’t even have the first clue to a direction of study to find out HOW electrochemical arrangements (as arrangements) ARE consciousness. I maintain it is because they logically can’t be the same, given what we know about consciousness.

There is no logical contradiction there. Just a very complex problem.

 

[Aloysium]

There was no condescension involved. I was happy that you accepted the concept of emerging attributes. Many people are unable to comprehend the concept. There is no logical contradiction there. Just a very complex problem.

:twocents:

The reality of our existence is actually very simple, which paradoxically makes it almost impossible to understand, as any student of Zen can tell you.

I’m going to suggest that things are upside down to the way the world presents itself. This not only true in our human relations as revealed by the beatitudes, but also with the nature of physical reality.

The reader may wish to consider that what is emergent is not the mind from brain as if they were separate. It is the realm of concepts such as those of atoms and cells, the patterns on the spectrometer and what we observe through the microcope that are all emergent features that arise from our relationship with the material, based on the senses (primarily sight) and analyzed by our rational mind. They emerge from our relationship with what is other, in this case the physical universe.

Na and Cl are emergent from our relationship with a glass of salty water, as much as its taste and clarity. Whatever salt dissolved in water is in itself, it is through our relationship with it, through the activity of the person, whose spirit knows and acts, that we can come to know something of it.

We are composed of star dust, what was once an ocean of plasma, was cooled into the bits that came together as protons, electrons, to make the wholes that are atoms that went on to combine as molecules. That dust, including what we describe as Na and Cl are the tiniest pieces of being which coalesce forming a more sophisticated but equally simple being, whole in itself - a cell. Within us, cells are the substrate that composes, under the influence of the soul, a human person. When we die, the wholeness, the unity which we are, decomposes into its primary components.

Cells are not merely what we visualize from our microscopes and text books. They exist as themselves, but surrendered in their being to form a far more complex, but again equally as simple being - “me-in-the-world”. Some patterns of neuronal excitation are the colour yellow, others the wetness of water. That is some of the reality of our nervous system. The mind is not emergent from the brain; it is the brain when it is in union with the spirit that experiences and acts. By spirit, is not meant ghost. The spirit is the unifying relational life of the body.

I think one of the confusing parts to understanding this involves our use of visual imagery to conceptualize the brain. While it clearly exists in time and three spatial dimensions, what it is in its connection to the physical, moral and aesthetic universe is more understandable using the sense of sound. The brain in its connection to the world is like a symphony, where the various sounds represent different cerebral areas and structures within the universe in which we participate. One song, and many, many, chords and notes - which gives us this.

 

[PRmerger]

Sure, whatever you say.

sigh

Bye, (again), I say with some regret, for I really liked you. :sad_yes:

It’s a shame that you have alienated one of your biggest supporters behind the scenes.

 

[Mort_Alz]

There was no condescension involved. I was happy that you accepted the concept of emerging attributes. Many people are unable to comprehend the concept.

Then, thanks for the compliment.

There is no logical contradiction there. Just a very complex problem.

I think I understand your thinking now. Unconscious matter being, at the same time, conscious is not a contradiction simply because it is an inaccurate portrait of what is really going on. To have consciousness be purely physical, you don’t have to say that unconscious matter is conscious. Rather, just like with emergent chemical properties of molecules from atoms, consciousness is an emergent property you get from a special arrangement of unconscious matter. Emergentism answers that quite well.

Moving on, then, from this, just because we don’t understand exactly how it works does not give us license to assign any other non-physical cause to it without evidence because that is a God of the gaps argument which has time and time again been proven to be an ineffective argument for the existence of the supernatural.

I follow you. That pretty effectively addresses my assertion that it was a very simple contradiction.

One thing which hasn’t been addressed, however, (and I couldn’t for the life of me get Bradski to acknowledge that I even brought it up) is this:

From C. S. Lewis:

“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview]… The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… nless Reason is an absolute–all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.”

Here he is using the word “Reason,” but I think it’s safe to equate it, for our purposes, with consciousness, since reason, as a noun, is a part of consciousness. It requires consciousness, anyway. After all, we say that unconscious computers “reason” or “think,” but we all know that’s just anthropomorphic language. We know they don’t consciously think in the way that we do.

Anyway, the quoted argument, so far, still stands. It has not even been addressed yet despite my ad nauseam repetitions of it on this thread.