Cogito Ergo Sum

[AgnosticBoy]

:ehh:
“We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them.” - plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

My view also involves emergent properties arising out of more fundamental levels ( more fundamental than the level of the whole). I suppose it’s debatable how low or fundamental you should go. The reason I don’t believe it’s necessary that a property arises at the most basic level is because higher levels can have their own cause and effect mechanisms or a factor that is involved in causation of a new property may not come into play until some higher level of organization is reached.

:As I said, read the philosophers who came after Descartes. It’s they who put the boot in on Descartes, I just repeated one of their many objections.

Based on what you’ve cited or a lack thereof, I’m highly skeptical that there’s a consensus or real strong objections to Descartes’ conclusion, “cogito ergo sum”. I’m sure though that there are many that object to many of his conclusions, like on the soul substance, but “cogito ergo sum” is a different point.

 

[inocente]

My view also involves emergent properties arising out of more fundamental levels ( more fundamental than the level of the whole). I suppose it’s debatable how low or fundamental you should go. The reason I don’t believe it’s necessary that a property arises at the most basic level is because higher levels can have their own cause and effect mechanisms or a factor that is involved in causation of a new property may not come into play until some higher level of organization is reached.

I think your view is not emergentism as described in the literature. The SEP quote, and everything else I’ve seen, says the idea is that emergent properties are irreducible. They don’t exist in components and are irreducible to properties of components, and so obviously emergent properties cannot exist at the most basic level.

But whatever, whether nature really is layered, and whether emergentism is necessary or even useful in explaining the mind, are far from foregone conclusions.

Based on what you’ve cited or a lack thereof, I’m highly skeptical that there’s a consensus or real strong objections to Descartes’ conclusion, “cogito ergo sum”. I’m sure though that there are many that object to many of his conclusions, like on the soul substance, but “cogito ergo sum” is a different point.

You appear to be saying that you believe in the cogito, and you’re highly skeptical that anyone in his right mind could disbelieve.

Which sounds like a creed, Señor Agnóstico. I’m not going to try to precis the arguments against the cogito for you, as they’re not my arguments.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . They don’t exist in components and are irreducible to properties of components, and so obviously emergent properties cannot exist at the most basic level. . .

This is to clarify the use of the word “basic”. Since emergent properties do not exist within the components, disappearing when the object is decomposed, it would seem that they should be considered to be as “basic”, as fundamental as the properties of the individual components. Water behaves differently than oxygen or hydrogen, and moreso the individual subatomic constituents that make up the atoms. The atom may be understood as an emergent property which requires, but has properties that operate at a different level than those of its constituent parts. Likewise an organism has emergent features which are at a different level of complexity and sophistication than the organic and other molecules and atoms that provide for its structure and functionality. So, “basic” in this case would be not so much meaning “fundamental” or having to do with essence, but rather it would relate to the simplicity of the “lower” and necessary levels of material being. In other words, getting to the “basic” level, one is not getting to the essence of a thing, but to rather to the properties of the simpler parts of which it is composed. I agree with you but wanted to address this point.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I think your view is not emergentism as described in the literature. The SEP quote, and everything else I’ve seen, says the idea is that emergent properties are irreducible. They don’t exist in components and are irreducible to properties of components, and so obviously emergent properties cannot exist at the most basic level.

My definition includes a mechanism for emergence while others tend not to. Without a mechanism, it may as well just be magic. There’s also different types of emergence, like ‘weak’ emergence which is reducible. Strong emergence is irreducible, in principle. The former is centered on epistemological limitations (not enough understanding or evidence is in yet) while the latter is centered on ontology.

You appear to be saying that you believe in the cogito, and you’re highly skeptical that anyone in his right mind could disbelieve.

Which sounds like a creed, Señor Agnóstico. I’m not going to try to precis the arguments against the cogito for you, as they’re not my arguments.

I am not agnostic on every issue, especially about things that are blatantly true. You can’t deny your existence when you think and experience. This is pretty basic and undeniable reasoning. If I ever come across a good reason to believe otherwise, then I’ll change to not believing it or to agnosticism on that point.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Without a mechanism, it may as well just be magic. . .

I’m interested in what would be “magic”.

The definition that first comes to mind has to do with illusion and slight of hand.
It is what magicians do, tapping in to the delight that comes with surprises as well as our inquisitiveness and desire to understand what happens beneath the surface appearance.
Quite positive actually, except for cynics and skeptics, those who will not be fooled again.

Another view sees magic as related to supernatural causes.
Magic could be an explanation of an event that is inexplicable using one’s current understanding of how the world works.
The supernatural for some involves that dimension of existence that is separate from, beyond or transcendent to the “natural” order.
For others it is held to be a holding bin for what has not yet been explained but is an aspect of the structure that defines nature, which is held to be the Ground of our being. The supernatural in this case would be understood as being synonymous with superstition, an expression of ignorance. A person within such an environment might be embarrassed to admit their view that the supernatural is as real as the natural.

Something magical is mysterious, intriguing. It draws you in, heralding a world of wonder. But life can be brutal, dry, pointless and painful. Floundering within that sort of relationship with reality, magic is but a broken promise, a defence against the abyss.

:twocents:

I’m going to assert that existence is magical, revealed and becoming clearer as such the more one knows.
The universe is structured more in accordance with so-called supernatural causes than those of physics.
If anything is illusory it is the images that are used to describe the workings of matter and the world, when they are taken to be the reality of things.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I’m interested in what would be “magic”.

The definition that first comes to mind has to do with illusion and slight of hand.
It is what magicians do, tapping in to the delight that comes with surprises as well as our inquisitiveness and desire to understand what happens beneath the surface appearance.
Quite positive actually, except for cynics and skeptics, those who will not be fooled again.

Another view sees magic as related to supernatural causes.
Magic could be an explanation of an event that is inexplicable using one’s current understanding of how the world works.
The supernatural for some involves that dimension of existence that is separate from, beyond or transcendent to the “natural” order.
For others it is held to be a holding bin for what has not yet been explained but is an aspect of the structure that defines nature, which is held to be the Ground of our being. The supernatural in this case would be understood as being synonymous with superstition, an expression of ignorance. A person within such an environment might be embarrassed to admit their view that the supernatural is as real as the natural.

Something magical is mysterious, intriguing. It draws you in, heralding a world of wonder. But life can be brutal, dry, pointless and painful. Floundering within that sort of relationship with reality, magic is but a broken promise, a defence against the abyss.

:twocents:

I’m going to assert that existence is magical, revealed and becoming clearer as such the more one knows.
The universe is structured more in accordance with so-called supernatural causes than those of physics.
If anything is illusory it is the images that are used to describe the workings of matter and the world, when they are taken to be the reality of things.

I was referring to “magic” in the first sense that you described. Magicians make things appear or disappear out of thin air, and this fits right in with some explanations of emergence where properties just pop up out of thin air with no proposed mechanism or for no apparent reason. This is not the concept of emergence that I’d advocate for nor do I find it helpful to the scientific process.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Agnostic Boy: It is impossible for something greater to emerge from something lesser, such as materialistic evolution to produce something non-material or spiritual as the soul of man, or rational life from sentient life. The collection of smaller entities can be greater in number or quantity, but not in quality, or substance. This violates the self-evident principle of “a thing can not give what it does not have”.

In a sense, I agree with your point and this is why I think emergence would seem unreasonable unless we can specify some mechanisms for how it can come about. Your reasoning seems to assume that only the most basic components are involved in causative mechanisms. However, under my view, many different levels of organizations within a system may be involved in causation, and if we’re dealing with an open-system (e.g. the human body), then even interactions outside of the system may play a causative role. So while the brain, may’ve started out with purely physical interactions between neurons, chemicals, etc, but at higher levels of organization, other factors may apply and play a causative role. My view is not perfect because there are some transitional pieces missing, something that would lead the way to a nonphysical existence. Perhaps information itself is immaterial, and it’s playing out (like how visual and audio information plays out on a tv monitor or radio) is what consciousness is. Either way, I believe the mind has causative powers, so we can observe its interactions and deduce laws from it that may enable us to better understand nonphysical properties.

If immaterial substance could be examined empirically it would have been discovered by examining the brain, no such evidence. It is also a self-evident principle that the “the whole is equal to the sum of it’s parts”, and what ever emerges from the lesser parts necessarily belong to the whole, not a new substance.

I don’t totally agree with you here. I believe we can discover something immaterial via indirect means IF it has reliably frequent and consistent effects or results. For instance, if I wanted to scientifically test God or some aspect of Him, then I know not to expect much because he doesn’t act on demand, and even if He did, it’s not consistent enough. To the contrary, I can frequently and consistently use my mind to change and control my brain - and I believe this has already been validated in various scientific experiments, especially those done by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz involving self-directed neuroplasticity!

The thing the soul through it’s power of intelligence is first aware of is “that a thing is” it’s existence, and not" what a thing is" it’s essence. Through the senses the intellect abstracts the idea from the physical objective world, the soul through these ideas comes "reflectively"to the knowledge of itself, it’s own existence. This is necessary because of the union of the co-principles of matter and spiritual soul. The nature of man is this union of matter and spirit. If man was pure spirit he wouldn’t need to abstract the “idea” from the material world, spirit would know spirit.

If there is not resort to the metaphysical at it’s deepest level, ontology,being qua being, you will never transcend from the physical to the immaterial or spiritual, or to the reality of a spiritual soul You can not answer the problem by empirical methods alone. What ever emerges from the physical is physical in nature.
There is also evidence of spiritual phenomenon, I have experienced this myself, there is much more evidence of this concerning our Christian Catholic Faith.

Well, this is too much speculation for me. I do value experience and tend to not reject it dismiss it apriori.

 

[inocente]

This is to clarify the use of the word “basic”. Since emergent properties do not exist within the components, disappearing when the object is decomposed, it would seem that they should be considered to be as “basic”, as fundamental as the properties of the individual components. Water behaves differently than oxygen or hydrogen, and moreso the individual subatomic constituents that make up the atoms. The atom may be understood as an emergent property which requires, but has properties that operate at a different level than those of its constituent parts. Likewise an organism has emergent features which are at a different level of complexity and sophistication than the organic and other molecules and atoms that provide for its structure and functionality. So, “basic” in this case would be not so much meaning “fundamental” or having to do with essence, but rather it would relate to the simplicity of the “lower” and necessary levels of material being. In other words, getting to the “basic” level, one is not getting to the essence of a thing, but to rather to the properties of the simpler parts of which it is composed. I agree with you but wanted to address this point.

Yes, and to me this implies that emergentism cannot be pushed too far. It only works if there is a prior assumption that things can be divided into levels, since without levels there’s nothing to emerge. So it has to presume at least two levels, the system at the upper level and the components below. But then it’s just another kind of reductionism - everything has to be reduced to levels.

 

[inocente]

My definition includes a mechanism for emergence while others tend not to. Without a mechanism, it may as well just be magic. There’s also different types of emergence, like ‘weak’ emergence which is reducible. Strong emergence is irreducible, in principle. The former is centered on epistemological limitations (not enough understanding or evidence is in yet) while the latter is centered on ontology.

Indeed but your scheme is different again.

I am not agnostic on every issue, especially about things that are blatantly true. You can’t deny your existence when you think and experience. This is pretty basic and undeniable reasoning. If I ever come across a good reason to believe otherwise, then I’ll change to not believing it or to agnosticism on that point.

A phrase like ‘blatantly true’ implies you’ve already closed your mind to other possibilities.

Descartes was trying to find something he could be certain of even if he was being constantly deceived by a demon.

He seems to be right that whatever it is that thinks must exist in order to think. He labels it ‘I’ on the assumption that the ‘I’ continues to exist between thoughts. So how does your ‘I’ know it exists between thoughts, if you can only be certain ‘I’ exists during the act of thinking? Well, the only way it can know is by remembering it had a previous thought. There’s no other possible proof, since anything else could be a deception. So doesn’t the memory that ‘I’ previously had a thought prove it?

No. Suppose the demon plants a false memory. The ‘I’ is deceived into thinking it remembers having a previous thought, and didn’t just pop into existence. But it is deceived. Smoke and mirrors.

Not sure who first came up with that disproof, it may have been Hume.

I think it was Kant though who came up with a simpler argument - if Descartes didn’t even have the common sense to know he existed, he should have been hospitalized.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Indeed but your scheme is different again.

Yeah, my view doesn’t deal with magic.

A phrase like ‘blatantly true’ implies you’ve already closed your mind to other possibilities.

If something is true, why should I be open to anything else?! I really didn’t need Descartes’ to prove to me that I exist.

Descartes was trying to find something he could be certain of even if he was being constantly deceived by a demon.

He seems to be right that whatever it is that thinks must exist in order to think. He labels it ‘I’ on the assumption that the ‘I’ continues to exist between thoughts. So how does your ‘I’ know it exists between thoughts, if you can only be certain ‘I’ exists during the act of thinking? Well, the only way it can know is by remembering it had a previous thought. There’s no other possible proof, since anything else could be a deception. So doesn’t the memory that ‘I’ previously had a thought prove it?

At best, your point would relate to a continued existence and does not take away existence overall. The implication of your point is that a person pops in and out of existence based on the moments of thinking and not thinking. Interestingly, William James considered consciousness to be a continuous process of thinking, something which he called a “stream of consciousness”.

No. Suppose the demon plants a false memory. The ‘I’ is deceived into thinking it remembers having a previous thought, and didn’t just pop into existence. But it is deceived. Smoke and mirrors.

Or you can just continue to think or have experience, and that would also count as existence.

Not sure who first came up with that disproof, it may have been Hume.

Right now, I’m thinking neither. The argument could’ve come from a blogger for all I know.

 

[hicetnunc]

I am an orthopedic surgeon. Before that training almost a half of a century ago,
I was a neurosurgery resident for 2 years at UVA.

My question: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BRAIN AND THE MIND?

Thank you.
EC

Hi Dr;

Have you read Raymond Tallis’ book, “Aping Mankind”? He deals with this distinction from both a philosophical and neuroscientific point of view. It’s a brilliant book, which I am sure will go a long to way to answering some of your questions (even though Tallis is no a Christian, he gives one of the best descriptions of the mind I have ever read).

 

[inocente]

Yeah, my view doesn’t deal with magic.

If something is true, why should I be open to anything else?! I really didn’t need Descartes’ to prove to me that I exist.

At best, your point would relate to a continued existence and does not take away existence overall. The implication of your point is that a person pops in and out of existence based on the moments of thinking and not thinking. Interestingly, William James considered consciousness to be a continuous process of thinking, something which he called a “stream of consciousness”.

Or you can just continue to think or have experience, and that would also count as existence.

Right now, I’m thinking neither. The argument could’ve come from a blogger for all I know.

You’re the only one who has appealed to magic.

The point of the disproof, aka ‘solipsism of the present moment’, still seems to elude you. I found where I first saw it, perhaps it will help you understand. It’s from an old series of 80 lectures about different philosophers. Watch this lecture from around minute 20.
youtube.com/watch?v=iQewi0DEBSI&list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM&index=32

As that closes that point, I think we’re done here.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

You’re the only one who has appealed to magic.

I’ve offered a mechanism for emergence so I’m not sure how that equates to being magic.

The point of the disproof, aka ‘solipsism of the present moment’, still seems to elude you. I found where I first saw it, perhaps it will help you understand. It’s from an old series of 80 lectures about different philosophers. Watch this lecture from around minute 20.
youtube.com/watch?v=iQewi0DEBSI&list=PL9GwT4_YRZdBf9nIUHs0zjrnUVl-KBNSM&index=32

As that closes that point, I think we’re done here.

I appreciate you finally revealing your source, but this only shows a problem with certain aspects of Descartes’ point. It does disprove his entire point, since existence is required in order for a person to think.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I appreciate you finally revealing your source, but this only shows a problem with certain aspects of Descartes’ point. It does disprove his entire point, since existence is required in order for a person to think.

CORRECTION: It does NOT disprove his entire point…

 

[STT]

I’ve offered a mechanism for emergence so I’m not sure how that equates to being magic.

Elementary particles have a set of properties, charge, mass, color, etc. Any behavior of any system is reducible to behavior of parts, elementary particles. The behavior of matter can be found by using the laws of physics. There is no room left for emergent phenomena unless one claims that there are hidden properties in matter or the laws of physics break down.

 

[Norwich12]

Thank you hicetnunc for your post #130 early yesterday.

I read a couple of reviews about the book you suggested
APING MANKIND by R. Tallis.
It was interesting on a religious forum to read about an author whose
theory is that humans are unique from animals because of the
presence of conciousness as opposed to being created
in the image of God.

I have already ordered the book.

My initial question when starting this thread was not original from me.
It was from a neuroscience symposium at Cambridge University several years ago.
The question was passed around the audience.

But I never heard how the majority of the attendees answered.

 

[Norwich12]

I really shouldn’t have formed sn opinion before I read the book. For this I apologize!