Interesting that the Philosopher who spends all his time in his conscious mind (and by his words is an amateur neuroscientist) is a Realist whereas the Neuroscientist who is rooted in brain matter, is a dualist! Life is beautiful.
This is the best debate I’ve ever heard on the mind/brain topic. It seems like every debate since 1984 has been recycling the ideas presented here, but usually in inferior ways.
Eccles is certainly NOT at the peak of his intellectual powers here. In fact, compared to Searle (who clearly IS at the peak of his powers), Eccles comes across as positively senile. Searle made a very argument about consciousness NOT being apparent at the level of individual neurons firing but appearing as an emergent property of millions (or billions) of neurons firing and working in concert. Eccles doesn’t seem to grasp this. The show should have gotten a younger man to argue Eccles’s superannuated position - if one could have been found.
@@ayunoss Well he is senile because he's very old and I think that's a very just observation. I am on his side but I don't think he did his best. He struggles to criticize his opponent when he makes an invalid point or false representation. It's not fair how the debate went because it could have ended way more favorably for the dualist side.
As a medical Dr. & Philosopher it has precisely been that question of the mind-brain problem that has haunted me almost my lifelong. I believe that if one added the philosophy of Raymond Moody, E. Kübler Ross, Anil Seth & many others we might get closer to truth. Anyway thank you for this excellent discussion held by those 2 giants of philosophy & science. Medizinalrat Mag. Dr. Issam Elias/ Austria 🇦🇹
Yes you are right, I think, that NDEs and all related experience are also critical clues on this particular path of questioning. So sad, however, that academic philosophy today is so indifferent to such experience. Truly, it is their loss.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Searle is a model of confident commitment. That is rhetorically powerful but philosophically empty. Eccles is worse - basing his argument on the claim that the only choices are physicalism and religion.
@@InfinityBlue4321 As I understand, Searle was not claiming that "liquidity causes a bunch of H2O molecules to be liquid" but that the direction of causation is the other way around: "the microstructure of H2O molecules determines their collective emergent behavior, which can be described at the macrostructure level as liquidity." Maybe his story is ultimately wrong, and perhaps we need to invoke further macro-level laws to explain this emergent behavior, but how is his reasoning fallacious?
@@anonymouscat6207Searle insists that he allows multiple "levels" but there are really only two: physical v mental. All of his levels except for the "physical" are abstractions in our minds. As Eccles hinted at, we are in touch only with our minds and only through the mind do we reach out to the physical world which seems to contain bodies with brains in them. What is questionable is not our minds (our primary object) but the world out there which as far as we can know is solely a set of mental abstractions, even if they are seemingly objective across seemingly distinct minds.
@@anonymouscat6207 Yes in fact I got it wrong, Searle really doesnt say that here, as it appeared to me at first quick listening, so I deleted my first comment. Nevertheless, the fallacy not just with Searle but with scientism materialists, is that they do not see that MIND is an immaterial thing flowing and expressing on the material substrate. As all the stuff we call "Information", the key of our reality and this dimension where Life and the Sapiens Mind emerged. And so far the mainstream has directed the scientific enterprise towards the discovery of the "material God". On that pursuit, we hit the wall many decades ago and we are stuck. The wave funtion collapses, so we dont really know what matter is. The only thing we know is that matter is designed to enable information to act on it, in a way that enabled the evolutional immaterial software program we call DNA, to build a body brain machine where immaterial processes ( the conscious Mind - Memory-logic-Reason) can run. The best way to understand this is the fact that two identical brains, can give rise to two complete different selfs ( the case of true twins). So the brain, is not the Mind, but only the machine that supports the mind ( with hardwired firmware, determining what we call instintcs and base character or nature)
@@BulentBasaran to separate the mind from the body is ridiculous, the mind cannot exist in a vacuum , without eyes to see, ears to hear, mouth to eat, lungs to breath, heart to pump blood, liver to filter blood etc, mind and body are one and the same thing
@@cyrusthompson2185 no, the kid thinks mind is secreted from the brain as bile is secreted from the gall bladder. his dependence on mythology is greater than the guy he's talking to
@@ChristianIce ask your expope of church physicalism christof koch that question, who not only asserts that awareness is not identical to its physical substrate ie. is not merely just its emergent property... ...but now recently ie. literally within the past 3mo now began asserting that base/stem awareness does not require any physical substrate, at all. or you could just stop speculating altogether and ask someone who has actually developed a method of rigorously observing the phenomenon you/they seek to understand. you know we have the neural correlates for that and therefore have know for 2 decades who has and has not developed such a rigorous method/technology....right?
Thank you very much for an excellent discussion on Science; Religion, Conscience. "Making the mind as clear as glass." John Eccles and John Searle very stimulating.
A divisao em duas partes vale como metodo, provado que enquanto uma delas se mostra prevalente sobre a outra porque esta se faz de referencia para a primeira. Em seguida a situacao se inverte e a funcao de ambas tambem se inverte num movimento com determinado ritmo proprio para cada caso de realidade em funcao da sua finalidade.
@@alfredorezende580 [WIKI trans] The division into two parts is valid as a method, proving that while one of them is prevalent over the other because the latter serves as a reference for the first. Then the situation is reversed and the function of both is also reversed in a movement with a certain rhythm specific to each case of reality depending on its purpose.
40yrs later and church physicalism has failed to pray a single emergent property consciousness anywhere. in fact its former pope koch couldn't handle the total appeal to magical thinking that he had to abandon his membership in the church, unlike his companion franic crick whos still actively advocating that placing rods and cones in a petridish correctly enables the emergent properties of color to exist in the petridish 😂
"The master is dual to the apprentice" -- the rule of two, Darth Bane, Sith Lord. "We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
I like John Searle’s very clear explanations. Made me laugh at the end when the host said the next discussion would be about Artificial Intelligence and Searle would be on hand to apply a little pressure on its claims and camera then captures him smiling
If we discover the principles that make us conscious and implement them on a different substrate then we will be able to create a non human conscious being. I think we shouldn't and urge strongly that we don't because doing so might very likely entail an entity experiencing a horror beyond imagination. Constructing a non human conscious being strikes me as profoundly immoral. How would all those theists feel if god should one day reveal himself to be a doofus in a lab coat laughing at their obeisances.
Where would Searle find the dogma when materialism is the sum total of current science, and science is the current World's source of nearly all knowledge.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
a total absence in locating the ncc or any other emergent property of consciousness inside any most basic fully mapped out brain, neural correlate, or artificially grown synapse structures with learned behavior.
He is right the razor just basically say that between two theories that explain the same thing, take the simplest one. Why go for 3-4-5... entities to explain the humain being when 1 could do.
unfortunately occams razor turned against him in this discussion, since no emergent property consciousness eg. color exists inside any most basic fully mapped out brains, neural correlates, or artificially grown synapse structures with learned behaviour.
Searle in 1984 is right at the front of the start of a new materialism which has grown and advanced in the last 40 years. Dennett's paper 'Real Patterns' gives a better account of what Searle is saying here. You can follow the structural realists (ontic, epistemic, etc.) right on through present day to see how these ideas are developed from the side of philosophy of science. I've heard knowledgable people say that Searle is misunderstood (for me, this is due to his Chinese room argument), and I have to agree after watching this. Huge respect for this guy to have caught on to a major movement in the philosophy of science so early.
Hey I'm new to this...by the comment it seems you have some grounding in the philosophy of mind....can you suggest some books for beginners to get a grip on these topics.
@@rishabhprasad5417 I would get on the reddit askphilosophy thread and ask this question there. I'm way to biased and not knowledgeable enough to give a good answer to this. ppl there are really helpful. You can also search answers to basic questions there. There's also the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
@20:00 Searle is clever, but so wrong. Liquidity _is_ an emergent property of water, but is objectively describable, so is still all objective physics, emergent physics, there is no subjectivity. I agree with Eccles, there is no explanatory path whatsoever from objective to subjective, as a point of logic, regardless of objective substrate complexity. You cannot "emerge" subjectivity from objectivity. Elsewhere Searle even states this himself: semantics does not arise from syntactics. Searle's position is just blind materialist dogma, or as Gödel said it is "a prejudice of our times." To a hammer every problem is a nail. To a materialist every phenomenon is objective. Searle is really not too different from the Strong-AI proponents he objects to, they are all behaviourists. They all think there is nothing to our life but motion of atoms, which is pure behaviourism. Every account Searle gives can be given a Chalmers Zombie story, he never explains how brains can _cause_ "mind" or "mental events" but every account he gives can produce all the behaviour of people without needing to infer any mind. The only reason he is debating Eccles is because he, Searle, knows he has a mind.
But Searle is one of the best physicalists. He admits moral action is a thing, free will is a thing, these are in physical terms pure abstractions. He can say the associated behaviour is "emergent" (and it is in a sense) but he can have no truth-based account of these abstractions, they are platonic ideas. "Truth" itself is an abstraction and cannot even be mathematically formally defined (qv. Tarski). As a mathematical platonist I have to say dualism is a more accurate account of the metaphysics we know, you cannot just say "all is physics" when you are a platonist at minimum for your mathematics. Searle must not be a mathematical platonist. Note this makes my position more than dualism, there have to be many worlds. But I can agree with Searle that it really is all just One World. The other "dimensions"just are not spatiotemporal, but they are orthogonal dimensions. Eccles does not get to this because he is too fixated on brain biology.
liquidity is an emergent property of a collection of particular molecules perhaps already at the level of atoms. either way, the notion of water is a conscious experience, not a function of the collection of molecules, just as blue is not a function of a collection of mass-energy outside the skull.
You may be conflating description with prediction. Science might predict liquidity, but to say that science really describes anything is to ask too much of science. Science can only give general principles and conceptual understanding, which thereby provide a story about how liquidity arises from a lot of H20 atoms interacting with each other under certain condnitions. Likewise, after reading about how the brain works and reading certain philosophers and cognitive scientists, I see that there is a convincing story about how subjectivity arises from the material brain.
Great debate. Schrödinger said that we should look for a synthesis or compromise between the opinions of great minds. Think of the blind sages passing opinions on the elephant.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
No matter what he says to the contrary, Searle is a materialist. It's pretty amazing how passé and narrow the blanket physicalism/materialism of the Searles of the world have become over the past 38 years!!!!
How wonderful a discussion, it’s unimaginable that such a debate would appear on a national broadcast today. Although we still have some considerable way to go, much of that which Searle discussed has been validated through advances in imaging. We can see exactly which neurones fire when experiencing beauty or disgust or love and hate. Therefore, his hypothesis that the mind is ultimately of neurophysiological origin remains wholly valid. I personally have seen a family member whose very personality was significantly different pre and post brain tumour resection. The same can be said of the similarities between the states of mind induced by psychedelic agents and the mystical experience. Nothing to date has convinced me that we are anything more than a great ape with a large neurone filled cranium, because that is what the evidence indicates is true. We all have a desire and need for the contrary to be true, but it just isn’t.
I'm with you adding only that theoretically speaking, what ties it all together is the notion of analogy. Thoughts are analogies instantiated in the coded form of neural discharge frequencies. Analogies and frequencies are both abstract immaterial entities. I think this immateriality is to what Eccles is unknowingly referring.
@@REDPUMPERNICKELIt is problematic because the analogies we use are wholly predicated on what we experience and learn from family and society during our early development. My guess is that if you take a new born and wholly isolate from all human interaction then it’s thought processes and behaviours would deviate very little from a similar experiment performed on a new born chimp. The only desires would be for nutritional energy, shelter from extremes of weather, avoidance of predation and injury and the drive to pass on one’s genetic information. There would be no thoughts and therefore no output in behaviours we would identify as morality or love or the aesthetic or spirituality, as they are purely constructs that a society has, with experience, found useful to teach to others for control purposes and therefore functionality of the wider group.
@@numbersix8919 "What is the need... for analogy?" A sense organ adjusts the discharge frequency of the neuron that connects the organ to the brain in proportion to the amount of energy impinging on it from the environment. Thus the neural discharge frequency is the encoded representation of that energy, i.e. the frequency is analogous to the amount of impinging energy, the frequency is an analogy. Every neuron in the brain maintains its own discharge frequency greatly influenced by, on average, 20,000 synaptic inputs. Easy then for me to conceptualize what's going on as, a hundred billion analogies synaptically interacting. From this point on one may theorize about the interactions of analogies and forget about the underlying hardware. The 'self' is an analogy. I mean, it is a word that stands for me. I know the word. This means the word 'self' is in my brain. Obviously I leap to say the word is instantiated as a neural discharge frequency type analogy somewhere in my brain. It is my self that is conscious. You too I imagine. I cannot see how anything but a self like me and you could be conscious. I imagine how it works is that a subset of analogies modulates my self analogy via myriad synapses. Now of course it's very likely that vast numbers of linked analogies is what my self consists of. Now that you have the basic idea you can reference it whenever you have questions about the meaning of the word 'conscious' and have a chance to formulate reasonable answers with no magic thinking involved whatsoever. The cool thing about analogies and frequencies is, both are abstract notions. This hints very strongly at why our thoughts seem to us to be immaterial, sans location, light and airy and disappear completely when we enter a deep and dreamless slumber.
@@numbersix8919 "At one point you say that signal strength is what you mean by frequency. Are either of those things really in the neurotransmitters flowing across a synaptic gap" The main function of a synapse is to allow the frequency of one neuron to participate in affecting the frequency of a 'downstream' neuron. Consider the average neuron with 20,000 inputs. These are the main factor controlling its discharge frequency. Can you see that the frequency encoded analogy is actually spread among those 20,000 upstream neurons? (not mentioning feedback loops or other complex interconnections present in the brain's neural actuality) Do you notice thoughts related to holography surreptitiously infiltrating your conscious field? "Who or what is the Subject, the Observer, the Purusha? We know it is not a figment of the Observer's imagination, right"? The Subject, the Observer, the Purusha, the self is the analogy labelled 'self'. Say the word aloud right now. To what does it refer? It refers to your self. Isn't it amazing that a word and your self are in a sense the same 'thing'? Perhaps not just 'in a sense' but literally and actually. Analogies maintained in coded form as neural discharge frequencies arising in the sense organs and terminating in muscle fibers. "A motor neuron (or motoneuron or efferent neuron[1]) is a neuron whose cell body is located in the motor cortex, brainstem or the spinal cord, and whose axon (fiber) projects to the spinal cord or outside of the spinal cord to directly or indirectly control effector organs, mainly muscles and glands." I.e. how analogy raises your arm when you think to do it. Ooops didn't mention thoughts are analogies. (A thought is about something and is not the thing it is about, a thought merely represents the thing it is about, analogizes it, see?) I don't know if perhaps you have noticed that all words are analogies? There's the way it looks (or sounds) the pattern/process and there's the meaning that the pattern/process represents/analogizes. It's not the pattern/process of words that hold our interest, it is their meaning. Sorry about the ragged style but I think it's 'cuz I'm hungry. Yes, definitely peckish ttyl.
@@numbersix8919 I try to avoid going there. I know thinking will evolve as we learn more, however I see most clarity in the thinking of Messrs Darwin and Dawkins and all the seemingly distasteful implications thereof.
The same chemical could be generated in different functional cases. But also, the same material can be interpreted differently depending on different people. The problem with the Razor is that if there is something that is hard to explain or cannot be explained by a sentence that generally a certain group of people understands, then it just ignores it or even makes assumptions that class of theory is meaningless. We can say that when people talk, they generate sound, and these sounds can be analyzed with phonetic theories or techniques, but the problem is that phonetics doesn't generate meaning; the meaning will only appear in its use. This is very similar to the mind-body problem. Logically, we can say that every mental phenomenon will at the same time happen with some physical or neurological phenomenon, but the problem is that the "use" is not reflected in the neuron firing; instead, it is about the other side, which is the mind. It is a language game to discuss if, after all, these are the same things, or there are "multiple" levels of things, because after all, we cannot even make a strict definition of what we mean by level, and why level? From a linguistic view, these sentences related to level can be perfectly grammatically and semantically fit if we replace the word level with others such as: sphere, dimension, space, point of view, or even world. The talk could be better if we don't fall into this language game; one side is only focusing on razoring everything that will create uncertainty, while the other side doesn't mention so much about the third world. Even so, it gives insight.
From my perspective, this is clearly a debate that Sir John won. Searle's arguments appear so dated to me now, yet Sir John's seem quite current. Of course, we have the work of Chalmers and others to thank for this shift in the debate. What is also important to keep in mind is that there are more options than either a materialist monism or dualism. Indeed, there is more than even adding the idealist option, which, of course, most contemporary philosophers ignore and caricature. My own view is that this is where the real work needs to be done: ontology. We are simply working with very limited ontological options with respect to the mind-brain discussion.
What have you been watching? Eccles pulling out pictures of the brain to "prove" that another entity is responsible for this was laughable. Anyone believing in dualism these days literally needs their head examined. You cite Chalmers as an authority lol
I suspect the peculiarities of linguistic thinking are responsible for the "hard problem". It's hard to get a handle on an abstract entity using vocabulary restricted to concretes.
"I think you are a monist just because you have to be one to be accepted by science", is this even an argument? And more, Searle also talks about Chalmers and other dualists in his work, it's not like he can't refute them as well.
18:30 This is a simple misunderstanding, which could have been cleared up quite easily. 19:50 "This is another world." This appears to be simple confusion of nature with theory.
Strange that some make fun of Eccles. It's very helpful to have someone so smart being wrong, and explaining why. I suspect Eccles was partially confused by the hard problem which i think Searle agrees on but couldn't quite formulate it correctly. The different levels make sense: we experience thoughts just as liquidity of water, but the underlying reality is dry and simple. However: why is there anything represented at all, which is what we refer to as consciousness?
We know a lot about how the physical came about by two physical gametes coming to fuse together and gradually develop from there. Where does the mind enter the picture? Did it have a precursor in each gamete? If so, how does it split in identical twins?
John Searle on point again. Its amazing how much Cartesian Ontological Dualism still has a strangle hold on peoples idea of the mind. In 1984 and indeed in the present. I quite found it funny how Eccles called Searles view a ''Dogma'' but when Searle (Rightly) calls Eccles view a ''Dogma'', Eccles gets riled up. Don't give it if you cant take it.
Roger Penrose has some arguments that may favor Eccles position - perhaps not in a way 'exactly' like Eccles puts it. The fact is some behaviors of complex systems can't be determined by the description of each element's behavior. The explanation of gravity in relation to a single body leads not to the a complete description of the interaction of several particles gravitational pull - it actually leads to the a description of how mathematically impossible that description is. I think mind is a product of the brain but what is the brain and what is the brain product of? The usual reply is "brain is the product of evolution" and that answer will lead - due to a poor understanding of evolutionary processes - to a poor understanding of where the brain comes from. And recently we have the following problem: patients who had their brains split in the middle have observed a very interesting phenomenon - a patient wanted to get a piece of clothing but her arm wanted to get another one! Splitting the brain is used for some severe life threatening cases of epilepsy and though it produces some problems the overal result is a much better life and also some super powers like being able to draw a square with one hand and a circle with the other at the same time. The reason why it results in a almost normal life for the patient is the same information enters both hemispheres - the same sound enters one hemisphere through one year and the other through the other year ... the same applies to sight and taste and global tactile responses. The arms, however, are connected each to one hemisphere only as is localized tactile response. So ... here we have a weird thing about "the mind". In defense of Eccles, I think he's arguint the same as Searle is but the words he uses and the ones Searle uses have different meanings to each of them. Searle, btw, on a onother debate, also argues that the brain is not computation. The most important truth we can arrive is this one: this channel is the greatest on all of UA-cam!
@@maxheadrom3088 To speak or imply of anything ''Immaterial'' or that the mind is anything other than the functions of the brain and body, is to commit a contradiction of definitions and to literally be talking nonsense. Thomas Hobbes pointed this out in the 17th century. Ontological dualism belongs in the bin alongside any other sort of woo and spiritual quackery.
@@maxheadrom3088 Nice comment. Donald Hoffman's theory is what I've been mentally comfortable with the most. It's not something new but new wrapper on old concept. Even Sufism have similar idea. Also, I once heard David Berlinski making a great point that mechanism of evolution seems to have forward looking ability. And I for one can't negate this feeling (some may call it an illusion) that I'm not just this body in this physical world.
If we were scientific we would consider the only real evidence of consciousness and mind that we have. But one side of this debate seems to be ignoring that evidence. From this evidence, it seems improbable that the brain could do more than mediate consciousness. Now, whether there is a separate world of the mind, it's difficult to say. But to ignore the only evidence so blithely is not science. There must be a mechanism suggested or some very compelling argument made before a reasonable person can agree with Searle. Searle can agree to disagree with Eccles, but he cannot simply claim with arguments about how a car engine works, or whatever, that the mind is not real or is just an epiphenomenon. John Searle has a history that is being assumed in all of this, so that the arguments he makes are probably short telegraphs of his already documented arguments. In that case, the arguments may be more reasonable and effective than I imagine.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Searle's materialism (he calls it Realism, for a few reasons) is always appreciated. I especially liked his point about being able to derive the macro *from* the macro Eccles reminds me of the dogmatic but rather nice (to a point) older Catholic fellas at my old Catholic school. Desperate, being argued back into a terrible cul-de-sac, mired in Dualism. The poor fellow brought evidence that supports Searle's position. I half-expected Eccles to claim he'd actually found the locus of the soul.
John must have a greater task because we all have experience with the mind and tend to have no real experience with the brain per se. We tend t know that the two are separate. Therefore, he must do better than claim that the mind or consciousness is an emergent property. He must gives us some possible mechanism.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
I think that non-philosophers don't think much about the mind and brain and we don't make much of a distinction between the two. What you may be pointing to, however, ispossibly the idea that there is a self that persists alongside all the particular thoughts/experiences that occur in my head/brain. So explaining that would be the objective. I think that a story about the natural emergence of a sense of self through time is a fairly easy one to tell.
If biology is completely disjointed from the material world, like multiverses no amount of brain processing could generate the vision of the world, we are looking, the processes could create nothing of subjective experience. Hence there is a link of biology with the material world. And the linking factor cannot be localized matter but a non local thing or the most fundamental building block of our universe.
like most scientist in the Anglo-American tradition, Eccles was fundamentally a high-intellect technician. he should not have meddled with matters that require different skills. also, he had a temper that made him unsuited for a truly productive debate.
51:23 You kind of knew from the start that the actual dogma Eccles spouts here, as opposed to the fabricated dogma he keeps attributing to Searle, was what was probably underlying the preposterousness and illogicality of his proposition all along. He's a good old-fashioned believer who doesn't think that happiness or "meaning" or "dedication to ideals" can exist without religious belief. As Searle replies "This has no logical implication..."
Searle seem to keep referring to qualia as the main question in how a mind could exist in a physicalist universe. but what about freewill? how could freewill be explained as an emergent property of material atoms? it seems like it by definition defies the laws of physics. So, you cant just write it off as just the other side of the explanatory coin.
searle doesnt accept qualia. he believes physicality can arise in such a way that it contains the property of for example a color, the way a pattern on a shell emerges with a shell. of course 40yrs later this is clearly shown not to be the case.
I'm more than a duelist I'm a polyist there are all kinds of higher level features of the world not just consciousness but the liquidity of the water or the solidity of the table ? What? A dualist believes there are two components, the mind is one component and the brain another. It is amazing to see the extravagant dancing the materialist does to get around any spiritual inference. Sir John being a Roman Catholic, mentions Darwinian evolution and how it guided creation which shows he is confounded in his understanding between what the Scriptures actually teach and what his priest or Missalette tells him. Reader, it is not your fault that you may not know what law of being is or what laws of being exist and what they are called. The Academy is a private club and none of us are in it. Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled, No intelligence allowed" exposed how bad and controlled the situation is in the academic world. All sciences are very controlled, censored and full of false assumptions, especially archeology. Lastly, there is information in our DNA molecules, about 2 GB. Information is admitted to be the product of a mind and never by random processes for that is shown to be impossible. Where did that information come from? This just the first question. There are a multitude of problems with that bankrupt theory that only produces eugenics, racism, genocide and division among all peoples. BYW body plans for man, animals and plants are NOT in the DNA which only codes for proteins and not any higher level such as a cell wall or a tissue, or organ, or skeletal system etc. It is NOT there. But over 2000 years ago the book of Genesis made accurate statements about creation. In Jeremiah 1:5 God said to the prophet, "before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." In 1Cor 15: Paul said, "Foolish one! What you sow is not made alive unless it dies. (37) And what you sow, you do not sow the body that is going to be, but a bare grain, (it may be of wheat, or of some of the rest), (38) and God gives it a body according as He willed, and to each of the seeds its own body." 1Co 15:36-38 LITV
Can it be that all this talk around the brain and the mind is trying to simplify a complex system. Complexity is a system containing multiple different events effecting/interacting. Levels do open the way to seeing aspects/characteristics but the thought is fragmented. When you look at your mind the one thing you cannot do is perceive how it works because the self has no mirror to perceive itself-you cannot perceive/comprehend /intuit/grasp the fullness of the ‘whatever’ from the inside Physical evidence must always be incomplete because of the ignorance of the observer who will not see his mistake because his model is incomplete thus giving no example of what doesn’t fit.The rational left side of the brain wants certainty and the right accepts mystery-the totality exists in, “I don’t know” We gotta learn to accept that there is a range that cannot be probed to find the exact quantity of truth-incompleteness tells us we have always to make an assumption to pretend a world we want to live in. We will run out of fuel spinning the wheels of our SUV trying to reach the pinnacle of knowing all or despair of life-it IS a mystery. It’s not a cop out when answer, “I do not know.” Ignorance is not stupid. Stupid is acting like a ‘know-it-all and calling the other one ignorant as if the point of contention has a simple answer.
Peculiarmente, há um curioso problema de correspondência nos argumentos do professor J. Searle. Tendo em vista a continuidade entre um estímulo e o seu respectivo efeito exposto mentalmente, como defendido por ele, representando necessariamente o mesmo fenômeno, é possível haver novidade?
Não vejo qualquer impasse quanto a isso. Primeiro porque o senso de novidade só é possível aparecer quando aquilo que vem até nós influencia não apenas nosso organismo, mas a função sistemática que torna aquele estímulo uma percepção (necessariamente consciente). Segundo, a percepção não é estimulada meramente por algo externo ao corpo, mas age em consonância com as memórias e "background" já presentes no cérebro, que causam provavelmente a maior influência nas percepções conscientes. Se as memórias se acumulam e o background cresce, há sempre novidade. Essa é um das possíveis respostas com base no naturalismo biológico de Searle.
Good discussion up until 50:39 when the porn question gets asked, even Eccles chortled as the host led up to the question (even though the host said the connection was made in Eccles’s to be published book.)
@@numbersix8919 Yup, he was dismissed from Berkeley I think. He's had several women accuse him of harassment. Ironically, one of them accused him of openly watching pornography in his office.
Is understanding the mental falling under the category "how the world works"? If we assume that the mental is just something that "works", a process, something physical, then we assume what we want to argue for.
Huh. @42:00 despite my comments below, I find I agree _somewhat_ with Searle here, not fully. I'd say I am a polyontologist too. It is all One world really, I just think Searle has some of the causality backwards, and fails to see if the "emergent" realities truly are "real" they might have top-down causal impact on the physical level, and are not really physical, they are abstract and yet real. So that is Mind acting on Brain, not the other way around, so *_not_* brain causing Mind, not brain causing mental events. But obviously, it's safer to say there is a two-way street, the absurd proposition would be it is _only_ one way or the other.
I believe the solution lies in the difference between matter and movement. We accept that both matter and movement exist. Matter does not need to move in order to exist but matter must exist before there can be movement. This is self evident, yes? Yet movement is not a property of a material object because the movement of an object is entirely relative to other objects and is not absolute. Does this mean movement is an abstract notion? If so then it's not a big leap to see mind as movement based. If movement is not an abstract notion then what is it?
I really doubt that a person as smart as Searle would fail to realize that when my brain undergoes the process of noticing pain, this noticing-process in turn has influences on the brain. You, seem to be making the mistake that Searle warns about. You are concluding that the emergence of a pattern out of a process produces an ontological 'thing', and that this thing must be able to influence the processes that gave rise to it or other processes at the material level. Searle has a consistent point of view here. The processes occurring on the material level are ongoing, and 'thematically noticing' the pain also is a material-level process in which the brain reflectively becomes aware of hte pain, so this reflective process of course can then influence (any) other processes occurring in the networked brain. It might be more convenient and make more sense (I'm carefully choosing those two descriptors) to talk as if aspects of mind are acting on the brain ('this pain is making me want to lie down'), but there is no contradiction in Searle's argument.
Biological Naturalism applied to Philosophy of Mind is bizarre. There's no evidence that an *objective* being (e.g., physiological processes) can call into existence a *subjective* being (for instance, a first perspective experience) - and the analogy between *H2O molecules* and the *water* won't help us, since both are objectives entities Otherwise, the very condition of possibility of causality is the *ontological contiguity* between 'cause' and 'effect'. This has been known since Dharmakirti, the neglect of Eastern thought in the West is regrettable and impoverishes the debate
One could presage the property of wetness from the nature of a water molecule. The description would be technical and would not feel like wet, but it would be the way science would currently describe wet. But I doubt that one can look at the brain at any resolution and presage conscious experience in any language,, scientific or otherwise.
water is not an objective entity ie. mass-energy external or internal to the skull, no more than blue is mass-energy internal or external to the skull. what is objective is the emergent property fluidity on the basis of emergence namely a collection of particular molecules or possibly atoms which is currently too difficult to ascertain.
The modern mind concept replaced the religious soul concept thanks to Bacon, Hobbes, Willis, Locke and others on the same path as opposed to Descartes and followers who insist that the individual soul is immaterial and immortal. Yet, the big question is not whether the mind is purely contained in a brain (with a hope to upload it to a computer for safe keeping! :-) or not, but who we are. Are we a body with a brain, are we a mind, or are we a mysterious self with a mind and a body as tools we use? Eccles hinted at a great analogy: the body is the hardware, the mind, the software. We are programmers/users of that amazing software.
To me it seems Sir Eccless's view would be closer to saying that the immaterial mind is the solid hardware and the body's input by the senses is the software.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Personal experience: in general and in a particular experience I endured. I had reason to explain my experience and I realized that Descartes' ideas were closest to it. Now Eccles is not precisely aligned with Descartes I take it, and neither am I, but the three are similar.
The brain seems to be a physical writer bound to write unidirectionally in space and time. The mind is an abstract reader that can read the writing regardless of the time and place it was set and evaluate it and trigger further writing that can clarify/elaborate/contradict previous writing. The time and place of writing can't be changed. Reading can move to writing regardless of the time and place of it's writing. The mind can't do physical things but only trigger physical action be it by the brain or other part of the physical body. The making of decisions to act falls in the domain of the mind. The provision of energy for abstract thought falls in the domain of the brain. They are intricately bound but there can be no mind with a dead brain which still has a physical presence but can't provide energy. The mind may be considered to reside in energy rather than matter.
Someone ask Eccle to explain Near death experience, those children who have Encephalopathy with almost missing brain ( cortex ) & still express their emotions ? Also Mental health issues have no brain pathology but still exist why ? Depression isn't the mere imbalances of hormones, If this was the case, there would be no depression in the case of taking anti depressants !
He is using language or communication. "We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
29:50 Why do the neurons fire? Going back to his engine analogy: Who or what is turning the key in the ignition? Searle's mind engine is one that undergoes spontaneous combustion. Eccles' response is appropriate. There is no evidence whatsoever for this bizarre thought-terminating idea that the brain/mind is some sort of self-contained mechanism. We know why the neurons fire when we react to pain, loud noises, bright light, etc. so there must be some kind of stimulus or stimuli responsible for the neurons firing which cause regular thought. There is no evidence that this stimulus comes from within the brain itself. Even if you want to propose that there is a physical explanation, maybe one related to quantum mechanics, you can't just sit down and proclaim that the brain is itself responsible for the neurons firing to create thought. That is circular reasoning: "How do we think?" "The brain." "How does the brain do this?" "The firing of neurons." "Why do the neurons fire?" "The brain." "How does the brain do that?" "The firing of neurons." "Why do the neurons fire?" "The brain." Etcetera ad infinitum.
I laughed out loud watching Escles facial expression when he tried to treat Searles sound answers as an appeal to dogma, yet he himself is appealing to dogma.
But yet it is not quite a stalemate. Eccles states where he thinks mind originates from, and is honest enough to admit it is beyond science/physics. Searle never says how subjective phenomena can arise form objective physics. Emergence is just a buzzword. Liquidity is an objective property of water, not subjective. Even in all future possible time Searle will never have any reason why subjective phenomena can arise from objective, because as a simple point of logic there is no explanatory path from objective through emergence to anything subjective.
@@Achrononmaster I'm curious why subjective phenomena cannot arise from objective phenomena. It doesn't seem obvious to me. Not to say that you're wrong, I just don't know either way
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
'Hard problem of consciousness' is a dogmatic assumption presented as a problem. The dogmatic assumption being that mind and subjective experience exist independently of physical-biological systems.
@@Zayden. no, that not what the hard problem say, it say that a positivist epistemology and an empirical approach based on the physicalist theories as we know them wont do. Its object isnt to kill consciousness because its self evident but to redefine what we call matter.
@@numbersix8919 we are saying the same thing with differents words.I agree with you but it is the hard problem because traditional methods wont cut it. We need a new paradigme shift.
John being only a philosopher and not a neural physicist who as far as I know, has no laboratory experience. No actual hands on, so to speak. All he has is his theoretical hypothesis that he has not proved by experiment and getting the proof by getting the same results under the same conditions. Sir John on the other hand speaks of what he has observed and measured in the laboratory with repeated experimentation and getting the same results to form a much better hypothesis and conclusion. Scientific materialism died for me when I began to research the claim that our body plans are not in our DNA! The information to form basic building blocks called proteins is there but, higher levels of information are not there. No information to form a cell wall let alone a cell. No information to make any organ. No information to form any of the many systems in the body--NOT THERE! Check it out, the butterfly and caterpillar have completely different bodies and natures BUT IDENTICAL DNA! And the idea that two body plans are in the DNA controlled by a switch is absurd. The amount of information to form 3-D components like the organs including our skin would take more that few giga-bytes of DNA. A new born baby has 60,000 miles of blood vessels, arteries and capillaries. The plan for interfacing with trillions of cells, no cell is more that once cell away from a capillary. It is almost incomprehensible. How does one explain how all the nations are controlled and implement medical health policies in lock step by a hierarchy of corporations and governments who admittedly serve Satan. BAAL worship is ancient and alive today among the "elites" of the World. Don't let the Christian Religion interfere with searching out the Living God who is not only the Creator but also the Father. Many are put off by a God who is said to be of Divine Love and says to overcome evil with good and to love ones enemies but doesn't hold Himself to the same standard but punishes without mercy or purpose. To torture and burn and torment forever without purpose is not of Love. God is Love (1Jn 4:8). His Law returns the soul (Psa 19:7) and His judgments have purpose too--they teach righteousness (Isa 26:9). This is because love builds up and doesn't tear down (1Cor 8:1; 2Cor 10:8). This comment has become way too long. God bless.
Determinism must be true and it is a bit frustrating to know that we don’t really have free will. However, we have no choice but to live our lives as if we do have free will
Watch some current Searle---his ribald self-assurance via physicalism in solum is supplanted by a weary bitterness. "Everything in the world is composed by physical particles and the interaction between them" says Searle. My how far we are now from that kind of peculiar mix of arrogance and naïvete!!!
Problem is that Eccles is some sort of religious fundamentalist, in his published book he states his beliefs as though they are facts, when they are actually nothing more than subjective beliefs that are most likely not tenable. His judgement is so distorted and his bias is so strong that I would tend to discount anything he said (other than direct experimental evidence).
My brain isnt the only part of my body that has a mind of its own....i probably only think and feel with my brain a little less than half the time..though it's a little more often the older i get
Sure. Searle actually answered a question in a much later talk that touches on this. You have a nervous system, muscular, lymphatic, and so on, and you are not unconscious of all these inputs at all times. You're not a brain in a vat
Searle was quite aggressively dominant throughout the debate while Eccles didn't have much opportunity to elaborate his own view and refute Searle's position. I think Eccles might have argued against a couple of points in Searle's monism like this way: 1. Searle was very confident that not only our mental states but also all human values (morality, culture, beauty, etc.) actually emerged from physical elements. But is it even conceptually possible to maintain such proposition? Maybe at least it can be 'said' about mental states that they emerged from physical states, as they are, in a sense, physical, that is, are temporal. But how can it even be said about values that they emerged from physical states and processes, as they are not even temporal - that is, they are a wholly different category from physical reality? On the other hand, if it anyhow should be admitted that these values are somehow emergent from, and dependant on, physical states and processes, this should mean they would lack any objective existential status - that is, they would become sort of 'apparitions,' or 'empty names.' But, if so, how can they be meaningfully cherished as real, subsistent values by mankind? How can Searle contend that his version of monism will never nullify our precious values such as morality, responsibility, beauty, etc? 2. At the end of the discussion, Searle emphasizes that, in order to attain a systematic knowledge of the world, we have no option but accepting physical monism. But I don't see why dualism, or, for that matter, theism, should be inconsistent with any systematic understanding of the world. He seems to just presume this point without ground. Anyhow, one of the world's most systematic thinker, Descartes, was dualist, and another systematic thinker (maybe greater systemizer than Descartes), Thomas Aquinas, was a theist. I don't see any reason that dualism, or theism, or any other -ism, by itself, should be contradictory with a systematic knowledge, or understanding of the world, unless a systematic knowledge of the world is presupposed to be the same as the scientific knowledge of the world. But Searle himself admitted that these two are not identical. ㅡ Overall, it seemed to me that Searle was a little dogmatic and hasty throughout the debate. He was too confident that his was the correct theory, and wouldn't listen to his opponent elaborate. As this is not a political debate, but a philosophical one, where victory is less important than truth, it's a little regretful that Searle didn't show more generous and calm manner.
@@TheWorldTeacher I don't know how much or little Western thought has come to terms with Indian philosophical and theological thought, but I do know from my very superficial reading that 1) as a monist I think I agree broadly with advaita vedanta and 2) that Hindu philosophers were entertaining _extremely_ advanced and profound investigation into epistemology (for example perceived, perception, and perceiver; and known, knowing, and knower), and in ontology at very early date.
Even more compelling is the nature of the values we hold. People have put their lives on the line to save works of art or literature, to defend (Socrates…) their philosophy and even to protect the rights of their enemies. Darwinism can’t begin to explain such morality.
I think Searles would contend, as I would also, that the material phenomena that give rise to human "mind" and thought and value and morality will maintain their importance for humans because the same physical processes that cause those cognitive effects also cause the more unconscious effects of instinct and impulse, which had no small effect on the emergence of value and morality and are motivations even more powerful. In short, we will remain all too human, despite the awareness of our material nature.
Understand yourself is my goal :Eccles. Searle: al that exist is physical , mind and body are one. Glass of water is h20 proprieties, its not a liquid state. It’s behavior, its not separate its a system of the whole. Higher level of micro elments. It’s same feature. It’s the mind and brain. It’s all one thing Brain Brain has certain process consciousness and caused by those process are features for the whole system. Leveles and features: relationship of the physical causes the mental. Two entities or two parts. I am not a dualist. Mentalist we have conscious states.. we do have conscious states and awake and physicalist. Of micro particles. Those are correct.. mind body problem. I am not a dualist. I believe everything is one and its all as one princess and not separate. Different levels of descriptions We are a whole being. Californiansurfer 15:39
Wow, very Interesting stuff - if now Eric Voegelin would have been present - one could have bring both sides together. Searles initial distinction or rather explanation of the emergent property in an assembly of water molecules to be in a state of liquidity IS in logical analogy to an assembly of neurons and assembly of neuron-groupings resembling a specific emergent state of the brain and our conscious as a certain tought-structure - a topology of logic semantic relations. Then a new idea or the certain grasping of the solution for a problem then is another emergent state - so the brain is then an emergent state machine - because the emergence of new states can not be predicted with mathematical certainty - the mental then unfolds really as a kind of general new property - a realm of it's own - as if you had a substance with a nearly unlimited number of possible emergent states - which are absolutly distinct but cannot be predicted other than with semantics and thus logic - and thus outside of the purely mechanistic physical. From there then it is a small step to state that there is no theory of the mental as there is no theory of Evolution possible, because you can only revert back to the fullness of the whole. Regarding the impossibility of a theory of Evolution: E. Voegelin in his 1 1/2 hour lecture. One could also it's compactness is absolute as is the nothing from the non-nothing - you cannot have a little of both.
Voluntary action is involuntary actions triggered by consciousness. The trigger slows it compared to involuntary. The residence of consciousness has to be figured out. It seems to be a part of the mind that wakes up at dreaming before the waking of the senses which in turn wakes before motor nerves. Underlying all is the network of abstract thought mapped onto the network of physical neurons. The physical may be studied by physical means. The abstract may only be observed by the physical response it triggers. Consciousness is an aperture to thoughts that are present even when not connecting to consciousness. They may be recalled from memory to consciousness.
We all must have known mentally disabled people. Some were totally good in their approach to other people, yet others were hateful for no good reason.. Such differences, with similar brain defects, point to some entity beyond just the physical brain.
I disagree, they could have totally different genes, epigenetic interactions, psychologies, life experiences, etc. They could have the exact same mental disability but be totally different because all of the things listed above are different in some way.
Searle won't submit to the obvious truth revealed by Hume: physical causality is indemonstrable. Or as Nietzsche put it, "No one has ever SEEN a 'cause'!"
@@numbersix8919 no you, like the others here, keep missing the point that a feature or emergent property of a system is relational to the physical properties (circular causation). So your linear thinking, one thing causes another, rather than being mutually dependent and circular, embodies the assumption of mind body dualism and this is tripping you up. Instead of seeing that you call the argument "scientism" because you are yet to question the assumptions of your perspective.
@@numbersix8919 could you state your assumptions in clear language? As stated above, my assumption is that systems have emergent properties that are describable and in circular relationship. Evidence: any interference with a system changes the emergent property. Slice out part of the brain (neurological system) and consciousness is affected (emergent property). No need to invent a magical spiritual realm.
@@numbersix8919 assuming you meant my statement that there is no need to invent a magical spiritual realm, this follows from what I said. But by not answering the question which you posed to me, and which I answered plainly, I take your misdirecting comment to be an admission of not having reflected on the assumptions. Sidetracking the fact that you tried to insult me by suggesting I'm a "strong-AI" type. Typical villain-victim cop out.
"Wet" is not an emergent objective feature of water but an emergent "subjective" feature of mind interpreted from the sensorium.sensor immediately. So if "mind" and "brain" are one and the same thing, then one can argue that anything with a brain has a mind and is conscious of itself. And in regard to "pain", it is only from self-reporting that "pain" is acknowledged; I am not aware of any instance where "pain" can be identified without self-reporting-the science follows, but does not preceed, the examination of the brain. And how would Serle explain "personality " ?
indeed the assertion that water emerges from the collection of h2o is on the same level of naive realism as asserting that colors exist in the external world. he should have maintained using the word fluidity.
Searle's position reduces to a postulate. He postulate that there is no conflict between materialism and the metal. But where is the argument? It is not just so because we claim it is so. It is no argument that the problem reduces to description of the same "system" at two different levels. That is just another postulate.
He is using language. "We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
no. he was just early in his 9-5 philosophy career so he was not yet sensitive enough to the obvious fact that the emergent properties he continuously asserts do not actually have any capacity to produce effects modern contemporaries such as frankish do not make anywhere near such severe mistakes.
eccles being a neurophysiologist just cant fathom that the structures he studied so thoroughly could produce emotions, desires, thoughts etc. it seems too much to ask that a bundle of mere 'matter' could do this which is why he creates another realm for these things to exist in. But now your introducing entities that we definitely dont have evidence or insight into whereas we do for the physical
what??? the dudes who spent the past 400yrs specialising in investigating only the physical..... have specialised knowledge of physicality and nothing else???? inconceivable!!!!
Searle highly agressive. the studies into quantum physics role with consciousness / mind, as is booming atm due to AI, seemingly shows eccles to have been more thoughtful, but searle far more aggressive, at the time...
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist. Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:- ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual! Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory. Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses. Sender is dual to receiver -- communication. Causality loops :- Cause is dual to effects -- causality. Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality. The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy. Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics. Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects). Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions. "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Why does John Eccles wish to go outside the material world to explain things that happen in the material world? It's far more economical theoretically to confine explanations to objects in the material world.
cos physicalism is a metaphysics that is untestable in principle ie. continuation of no progress in understanding consciousness. and its only gotten worse in case you havent noticed, and as neural imaging tech advances.
The problematic aspect of Searle’s thinking is one highlighted by his Berkeley contemporary, the Heideggerian Hubert Dreyfus, concerning his being hung up on mental states, which seem to imply a kind of robotic view of human beings. The phenomenologists subsequent to Husserl are correct in this regard that when we are involved in any skilled activity, we are hardly cognizant of the fact. When I’m driving or typing at the keyboard, I am not at all focused on my own intentionality as directed towards some object. Eccles appeared to object to this aspect of Searle’s explanations also, though for different reasons than the phenomenologists.
@@martianuslucianus4485 I wouldn't worry too much about any Heideggerian. Wasn't Heidegger a vocal anti-humanist despite inadvertently becoming an arch-humanist.
I usually like Searle but I'm not buying his argument here. Also tinted with an optimism about the field that feels dated. He's trying to smuggle an equivalence between liquidity and the mind that he thinks we won't notice. Liquidity is a physical property of physical molecules, the mind is a mental property of a physical system. How can there be higher level mental expressions of lower level physical processes? Searle is only asserting a continuity between the two, he's not demonstrating it. The analogy doesn't hold.
I think that dualism lost this debate. Basically the argument for dualism is none of us can prove conclusively that either theory is true or false, therefore i choose to believe in dualism because it fits my religious beliefs and i like it better. I dont find that a very strong argument. Saying that everything in the phyisical world is a product of the physical world, and the mind is no exception, is a much stronger argument imo. Now this argument might turn out to be false, but since everything is a product of the physical world, and the mind is supposed to be the only exception, i think that dualist have to bare the burden of proof. Also, it seems to me that the mind grows as the rest of your body grows. Chomsky said that language grows and i think that it could be said that the mind grows too. However, you could argue that the mind exceeds the limits of your body and that there is something like a collective mind, and that the brain is the only organ that requires outside input in order to function properly and to develop things like language. You could also argue that you need to be stoned and drunk in order to understand and discuss this subject properly. 😁
physicalism already lost 1000s of years ago when tukdam was accomplished and is still presently happening and being fully tested and monitored by neuroscientists 😅 keep trying to talk and pray non-existent emergent properties of consciousness into existence 👍
@@backwardthoughts1022 i said that dualism lost this debate. Maybe there are other dualists that can win this debate, but this dualist certainly did not. I have no money invested in the outcome of this debate and for all i care, dualism can be the correct answer. I am certainly not praying for either outcome. However, this question could not have been conclusively resolved 1000 years ago, and it will not be resolved in the centuries to come. All that I can say is that everything that i am seems to be connected to my body and to suggest that my consciousness is somehow disconnected from my body is an extrordinary claim that requires extrordinary evidence. If dualism is fact, why does my consciousness seem to develop in the same manner that my body develops? Why does it not come into existence armed with wisdom or why does it not stay at the same level that it was when my body was born? It seems that it matures just like the rest of my body does. It also seems that it dies, just like the rest of my body does. It also seems that it gets damaged, when the brain gets damaged. When my arm gets damaged, it is unaffected. And what about animals? Is dualism applied to them as well? Or is it only applied to humans, because god loves us?
@@skeptic1124 those all have answers but the point is even this religious neuroscientist pluralist ie. not a dualist automatically wins against non-existent emergent properties of consciousness
@@backwardthoughts1022 lol he did not even claim that it is possible to win this debate. And i did not see you try to win it either. If you have any evidence or arguments to add to the discussion, bring them on. You cant just say he won or i won.
@@skeptic1124 there are no emergent properties consciousness ie. there is emergent property digestion. searles speech refers to nothing, so he loses by definition. the neuroscientist on the other hand although very weak in details is at least based in existing things in principle eg. in modern terms equivalent in principle to arguing the obvious effects of mental objects upon the physical, a minor example being countless placebo effects of non-functioning drugs post trial shown to be able to for example initiate endogenous dopamine production in the brains of severe psrkinsons patients, etc etc.
as don hoffman says not one of his contemporaries has been able to give him the precise neurophysiologogy of the taste of garlic as opposed to the smell of a rose - but indeed if we could say neuron 3 billion and one is the taste of garlic and neuron 3 billion and two is the smell of a rose have we really explained the different conscious experiences? - always up against a category error in my opinion
Sense organs transduce impinging energies into discharge frequency encoded representations of that energy. Thoughts are representations. Sense organs output thoughts. Mind is simply an elaboration of what's going on there. Self is the thought that is conscious, as in... It is my self who is conscious.
Searle is completely correct and the argument can be summarised as follows: "without matter, there would be no mind". Cartesian dualism often tries to conflate their argument with objective vs subjective debate, which is separate. Bringing Searle's analogy to the engineering level makes complete sense. In computing for example, electronics work in accordance with Maxwells equations, from there you have logic gates, all the way up to ISA level where one can write software. You can't write software without hardware. And software is not programmed in terms of what happens at the component level. it's built on layers of extraction, that are not separate in themselves, but branches of the same tree.
@@멸문멸공-b4c Thank you. Just noticed a typo on my last sentence I meant layers of abstraction* (not extraction). I subsequently watched the next debate with Searle on AI, and in that debate I completely disagreed with him, ironically for all the points he argues for in this one.
Not so! What we can say is: In this dimension we are in, we need a material substrate to serve as the register or the hardware for the immaterial processes ( flowing states). Mind itself is immaterial as all information, starting with DNA. Just immaterial minds can deal with information. Etc
@@shanek1195 No, circular reasoning is to consider that because in this dimension we need matter (a body brain machine) to regist the states of Information, and process information, we conclude that the information and the mind ( immaterial things) is matter. See? If you dont see you have millions of miles to go ( to nowhere) in circles, driven by and seated in the John Searle motor car combustion engine... one of the most ludicrous image I've seen to explain the materialist dogma.
Interesting that the Philosopher who spends all his time in his conscious mind (and by his words is an amateur neuroscientist) is a Realist whereas the Neuroscientist who is rooted in brain matter, is a dualist! Life is beautiful.
Wut broo?! Neuroscience is not dualistic they assume that the mind is a function of the brain not two distincts entities.
@@casudemous5105 This particular neuroscientist was a dualist, or rather a trialist (i.e. he believed in three distinct worlds).
@@casudemous5105 Your generalization is astoundingly simplistic & superficial.
What are you on about, Searle is the philosopher and a dualist and Eccles is the neuroscientist, an emergentist realist. You got it exactly backwards
@@pixair Did you watch the video?
Searle is a philosopher and a monist (4:41) and Eccles is a neuroscientist and a dualist (3:45) or trialist (7:11).
This is the best debate I’ve ever heard on the mind/brain topic. It seems like every debate since 1984 has been recycling the ideas presented here, but usually in inferior ways.
What a thrill it is to watch three giants at the peak of their intellectual powers having a debate of profundity at this level! Thank you so much!
Eccles is certainly NOT at the peak of his intellectual powers here. In fact, compared to Searle (who clearly IS at the peak of his powers), Eccles comes across as positively senile.
Searle made a very argument about consciousness NOT being apparent at the level of individual neurons firing but appearing as an emergent property of millions (or billions) of neurons firing and working in concert. Eccles doesn’t seem to grasp this. The show should have gotten a younger man to argue Eccles’s superannuated position - if one could have been found.
@@ayunosswhat's so funny?
@@ayunoss Well he is senile because he's very old and I think that's a very just observation. I am on his side but I don't think he did his best. He struggles to criticize his opponent when he makes an invalid point or false representation. It's not fair how the debate went because it could have ended way more favorably for the dualist side.
As a medical Dr. & Philosopher it has precisely been that question of the mind-brain problem that has haunted me almost my lifelong. I believe that if one added the philosophy of Raymond Moody, E. Kübler Ross, Anil Seth & many others we might get closer to truth. Anyway thank you for this excellent discussion held by those 2 giants of philosophy & science. Medizinalrat Mag. Dr. Issam Elias/ Austria 🇦🇹
Yes you are right, I think, that NDEs and all related experience are also critical clues on this particular path of questioning. So sad, however, that academic philosophy today is so indifferent to such experience. Truly, it is their loss.
Anil Seth a philosopher? 😂
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Another great debate! Searle was a model of clarity. Please upload more debates from this program, if you have any more. Thank you.
Searle is a model of confident commitment. That is rhetorically powerful but philosophically empty. Eccles is worse - basing his argument on the claim that the only choices are physicalism and religion.
@@InfinityBlue4321 As I understand, Searle was not claiming that "liquidity causes a bunch of H2O molecules to be liquid" but that the direction of causation is the other way around: "the microstructure of H2O molecules determines their collective emergent behavior, which can be described at the macrostructure level as liquidity." Maybe his story is ultimately wrong, and perhaps we need to invoke further macro-level laws to explain this emergent behavior, but how is his reasoning fallacious?
@@anonymouscat6207Searle insists that he allows multiple "levels" but there are really only two: physical v mental. All of his levels except for the "physical" are abstractions in our minds. As Eccles hinted at, we are in touch only with our minds and only through the mind do we reach out to the physical world which seems to contain bodies with brains in them. What is questionable is not our minds (our primary object) but the world out there which as far as we can know is solely a set of mental abstractions, even if they are seemingly objective across seemingly distinct minds.
@@anonymouscat6207 Yes in fact I got it wrong, Searle really doesnt say that here, as it appeared to me at first quick listening, so I deleted my first comment. Nevertheless, the fallacy not just with Searle but with scientism materialists, is that they do not see that MIND is an immaterial thing flowing and expressing on the material substrate. As all the stuff we call "Information", the key of our reality and this dimension where Life and the Sapiens Mind emerged. And so far the mainstream has directed the scientific enterprise towards the discovery of the "material God". On that pursuit, we hit the wall many decades ago and we are stuck. The wave funtion collapses, so we dont really know what matter is. The only thing we know is that matter is designed to enable information to act on it, in a way that enabled the evolutional immaterial software program we call DNA, to build a body brain machine where immaterial processes ( the conscious Mind - Memory-logic-Reason) can run. The best way to understand this is the fact that two identical brains, can give rise to two complete different selfs ( the case of true twins). So the brain, is not the Mind, but only the machine that supports the mind ( with hardwired firmware, determining what we call instintcs and base character or nature)
@@BulentBasaran to separate the mind from the body is ridiculous, the mind cannot exist in a vacuum , without eyes to see, ears to hear, mouth to eat, lungs to breath, heart to pump blood, liver to filter blood etc, mind and body are one and the same thing
Searle is majestic, simplicity at best!
truly marvelous to watch the complete absence of knowledge appeal to magical thinking
@@backwardthoughts1022hahah does your username mean that your comment is sarcastic?
@@cyrusthompson2185 no, the kid thinks mind is secreted from the brain as bile is secreted from the gall bladder. his dependence on mythology is greater than the guy he's talking to
@@backwardthoughts1022
What else if not the brain?
The liver? The stomach?
Let me guess... the ""SOUL"" ?!?
@@ChristianIce ask your expope of church physicalism christof koch that question, who not only asserts that awareness is not identical to its physical substrate ie. is not merely just its emergent property...
...but now recently ie. literally within the past 3mo now began asserting that base/stem awareness does not require any physical substrate, at all.
or you could just stop speculating altogether and ask someone who has actually developed a method of rigorously observing the phenomenon you/they seek to understand. you know we have the neural correlates for that and therefore have know for 2 decades who has and has not developed such a rigorous method/technology....right?
Thank you very much for an excellent discussion on Science; Religion, Conscience. "Making the mind as clear as glass." John Eccles and John Searle very stimulating.
A divisao em duas partes vale como metodo, provado que enquanto uma delas se mostra prevalente sobre a outra porque esta se faz de referencia para a primeira. Em seguida a situacao se inverte e a funcao de ambas tambem se inverte num movimento com determinado ritmo proprio para cada caso de realidade em funcao da sua finalidade.
Os filosofos devem responder a razao de tantas explicacoes contraditorias para um mesmo fenomeno sendo que o objetivo ser um unico.
@@alfredorezende580
[WIKI trans] The division into two parts is valid as a method, proving that while one of them is prevalent over the other because the latter serves as a reference for the first. Then the situation is reversed and the function of both is also reversed in a movement with a certain rhythm specific to each case of reality depending on its purpose.
Can we all just take a moment and give huge respect to Searle for waiting 10 MINUTES to speak...
Bravo professor Searle.
Searle is admirably generous and merciful in the presence of this dogmatist.
40yrs later and church physicalism has failed to pray a single emergent property consciousness anywhere. in fact its former pope koch couldn't handle the total appeal to magical thinking that he had to abandon his membership in the church, unlike his companion franic crick whos still actively advocating that placing rods and cones in a petridish correctly enables the emergent properties of color to exist in the petridish 😂
I was taken aback when he admitted to being on board with "final ends".
He might have preferred "inquiring philosopher" but you're right. Dogma.
Love this, a good recent book I liked on this subject The Master and His Emissary
"The master is dual to the apprentice" -- the rule of two, Darth Bane, Sith Lord.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
I like John Searle’s very clear explanations. Made me laugh at the end when the host said the next discussion would be about Artificial Intelligence and Searle would be on hand to apply a little pressure on its claims and camera then captures him smiling
If we discover the principles that make us conscious and
implement them on a different substrate
then we will be able to create
a non human conscious being.
I think we shouldn't and urge strongly that we don't
because doing so might very likely entail
an entity experiencing a horror beyond imagination.
Constructing a non human conscious being
strikes me as profoundly immoral.
How would all those theists feel
if god should one day reveal himself
to be a doofus in a lab coat
laughing at their obeisances.
Where would Searle find the dogma when materialism is the sum total of current science, and science is the current World's source of nearly all knowledge.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL
Think you’re right, but suspect someone will do it because of speciesism.
@@REDPUMPERNICKELWhy?
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 Can you be more specific?
I need a current update of this argument. This is wonderful, but it’s 38 yr ago and neuroscience has had new understanding.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
a total absence in locating the ncc or any other emergent property of consciousness inside any most basic fully mapped out brain, neural correlate, or artificially grown synapse structures with learned behavior.
Searle's clarity is a good example of a brain producing a sharp mind. Sharp as an Occam's Razor.
He is right the razor just basically say that between two theories that explain the same thing, take the simplest one. Why go for 3-4-5... entities to explain the humain being when 1 could do.
@@casudemous5105 Occam's Razor isn't mention to tell the truth about everything.
unfortunately occams razor turned against him in this discussion, since no emergent property consciousness eg. color exists inside any most basic fully mapped out brains, neural correlates, or artificially grown synapse structures with learned behaviour.
@@leomacdonald6929
But an Occy's certainly shaves off the superfluous bloviation better than a Gilette.
And some very tasty parsimony
Am I wrong assuming that Searle is making a Spinozist argument, while Eccles is making a Cartesian argument? I am newish to philosophy......
You’re quite right.
Searle in 1984 is right at the front of the start of a new materialism which has grown and advanced in the last 40 years. Dennett's paper 'Real Patterns' gives a better account of what Searle is saying here. You can follow the structural realists (ontic, epistemic, etc.) right on through present day to see how these ideas are developed from the side of philosophy of science. I've heard knowledgable people say that Searle is misunderstood (for me, this is due to his Chinese room argument), and I have to agree after watching this. Huge respect for this guy to have caught on to a major movement in the philosophy of science so early.
Hey I'm new to this...by the comment it seems you have some grounding in the philosophy of mind....can you suggest some books for beginners to get a grip on these topics.
@@rishabhprasad5417 I would get on the reddit askphilosophy thread and ask this question there. I'm way to biased and not knowledgeable enough to give a good answer to this. ppl there are really helpful. You can also search answers to basic questions there. There's also the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
spoilers, searle is regurgitating emergent property physicalist metaphysics from 1000s of years ago.
@20:00 Searle is clever, but so wrong. Liquidity _is_ an emergent property of water, but is objectively describable, so is still all objective physics, emergent physics, there is no subjectivity. I agree with Eccles, there is no explanatory path whatsoever from objective to subjective, as a point of logic, regardless of objective substrate complexity. You cannot "emerge" subjectivity from objectivity. Elsewhere Searle even states this himself: semantics does not arise from syntactics. Searle's position is just blind materialist dogma, or as Gödel said it is "a prejudice of our times." To a hammer every problem is a nail. To a materialist every phenomenon is objective.
Searle is really not too different from the Strong-AI proponents he objects to, they are all behaviourists. They all think there is nothing to our life but motion of atoms, which is pure behaviourism. Every account Searle gives can be given a Chalmers Zombie story, he never explains how brains can _cause_ "mind" or "mental events" but every account he gives can produce all the behaviour of people without needing to infer any mind. The only reason he is debating Eccles is because he, Searle, knows he has a mind.
But Searle is one of the best physicalists. He admits moral action is a thing, free will is a thing, these are in physical terms pure abstractions. He can say the associated behaviour is "emergent" (and it is in a sense) but he can have no truth-based account of these abstractions, they are platonic ideas. "Truth" itself is an abstraction and cannot even be mathematically formally defined (qv. Tarski). As a mathematical platonist I have to say dualism is a more accurate account of the metaphysics we know, you cannot just say "all is physics" when you are a platonist at minimum for your mathematics. Searle must not be a mathematical platonist. Note this makes my position more than dualism, there have to be many worlds. But I can agree with Searle that it really is all just One World. The other "dimensions"just are not spatiotemporal, but they are orthogonal dimensions. Eccles does not get to this because he is too fixated on brain biology.
liquidity is an emergent property of a collection of particular molecules perhaps already at the level of atoms.
either way, the notion of water is a conscious experience, not a function of the collection of molecules, just as blue is not a function of a collection of mass-energy outside the skull.
You may be conflating description with prediction. Science might predict liquidity, but to say that science really describes anything is to ask too much of science. Science can only give general principles and conceptual understanding, which thereby provide a story about how liquidity arises from a lot of H20 atoms interacting with each other under certain condnitions. Likewise, after reading about how the brain works and reading certain philosophers and cognitive scientists, I see that there is a convincing story about how subjectivity arises from the material brain.
I'd like to see that next episode with Searle - his Chinese Room is nicely relevant now with ChatGPT
Great debate. Schrödinger said that we should look for a synthesis or compromise between the opinions of great minds. Think of the blind sages passing opinions on the elephant.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
22:06 my man Ted just popping in and out
good work
No matter what he says to the contrary, Searle is a materialist. It's pretty amazing how passé and narrow the blanket physicalism/materialism of the Searles of the world have become over the past 38 years!!!!
Two good points.
Gack! This is so wrong.
Not an argument. 😂
Materialism is dominant both in the hard sciences and in philosophy, then and now.
Can you be more specific about this development?
How wonderful a discussion, it’s unimaginable that such a debate would appear on a national broadcast today.
Although we still have some considerable way to go, much of that which Searle discussed has been validated through advances in imaging. We can see exactly which neurones fire when experiencing beauty or disgust or love and hate. Therefore, his hypothesis that the mind is ultimately of neurophysiological origin remains wholly valid. I personally have seen a family member whose very personality was significantly different pre and post brain tumour resection. The same can be said of the similarities between the states of mind induced by psychedelic agents and the mystical experience.
Nothing to date has convinced me that we are anything more than a great ape with a large neurone filled cranium, because that is what the evidence indicates is true. We all have a desire and need for the contrary to be true, but it just isn’t.
I'm with you adding only that
theoretically speaking,
what ties it all together is the notion of analogy.
Thoughts are analogies instantiated in the coded form of neural discharge frequencies.
Analogies and frequencies are both abstract immaterial entities.
I think this immateriality is to what Eccles is unknowingly referring.
@@REDPUMPERNICKELIt is problematic because the analogies we use are wholly predicated on what we experience and learn from family and society during our early development. My guess is that if you take a new born and wholly isolate from all human interaction then it’s thought processes and behaviours would deviate very little from a similar experiment performed on a new born chimp. The only desires would be for nutritional energy, shelter from extremes of weather, avoidance of predation and injury and the drive to pass on one’s genetic information. There would be no thoughts and therefore no output in behaviours we would identify as morality or love or the aesthetic or spirituality, as they are purely constructs that a society has, with experience, found useful to teach to others for control purposes and therefore functionality of the wider group.
@@numbersix8919 "What is the need... for analogy?"
A sense organ adjusts the discharge frequency of the neuron that connects the organ to the brain in proportion to the amount of energy impinging on it from the environment.
Thus the neural discharge frequency is the encoded representation of that energy, i.e.
the frequency is analogous to the amount of impinging energy,
the frequency is an analogy.
Every neuron in the brain maintains its own discharge frequency greatly influenced by, on average, 20,000 synaptic inputs.
Easy then for me to conceptualize what's going on as,
a hundred billion analogies synaptically interacting.
From this point on one may theorize about the interactions of analogies and forget about the underlying hardware.
The 'self' is an analogy.
I mean, it is a word that stands for me.
I know the word.
This means the word 'self' is in my brain.
Obviously I leap to say the word is instantiated as a neural discharge frequency type analogy somewhere in my brain.
It is my self that is conscious.
You too I imagine.
I cannot see how anything but a self like me and you could be conscious.
I imagine how it works is that a subset of analogies modulates my self analogy via myriad synapses.
Now of course it's very likely that vast numbers of linked analogies is what my self consists of.
Now that you have the basic idea you can
reference it whenever you have questions about the meaning of the word 'conscious' and have a chance to formulate reasonable answers with no magic thinking involved whatsoever.
The cool thing about analogies and frequencies is, both are abstract notions.
This hints very strongly at why our thoughts seem to us to be immaterial, sans location, light and airy and disappear completely when we enter a deep and dreamless slumber.
@@numbersix8919 "At one point you say that signal strength is what you mean by frequency. Are either of those things really in the neurotransmitters flowing across a synaptic gap"
The main function of a synapse is to allow the frequency of one neuron to participate in affecting the frequency of a 'downstream' neuron.
Consider the average neuron with 20,000 inputs.
These are the main factor controlling its discharge frequency.
Can you see that the frequency encoded analogy is
actually spread among those 20,000 upstream neurons?
(not mentioning feedback loops or other complex interconnections present in the brain's neural actuality)
Do you notice thoughts related to holography
surreptitiously infiltrating your conscious field?
"Who or what is the Subject, the Observer, the Purusha? We know it is not a figment of the Observer's imagination, right"?
The Subject, the Observer, the Purusha, the self is
the analogy labelled 'self'.
Say the word aloud right now.
To what does it refer? It refers to your self.
Isn't it amazing that a word and your self
are in a sense the same 'thing'?
Perhaps not just 'in a sense' but literally and actually.
Analogies maintained in coded form
as neural discharge frequencies
arising in the sense organs and
terminating in muscle fibers.
"A motor neuron (or motoneuron or efferent neuron[1]) is a neuron whose cell body is located in the motor cortex, brainstem or the spinal cord, and whose axon (fiber) projects to the spinal cord or outside of the spinal cord to directly or indirectly control effector organs, mainly muscles and glands."
I.e. how analogy raises your arm when you think to do it.
Ooops didn't mention thoughts are analogies.
(A thought is about something and is not the thing it is about,
a thought merely represents the thing it is about,
analogizes it, see?)
I don't know if perhaps you have noticed that
all words are analogies?
There's the way it looks (or sounds) the pattern/process and
there's the meaning that the pattern/process represents/analogizes.
It's not the pattern/process of words that hold our interest,
it is their meaning.
Sorry about the ragged style but I think it's 'cuz I'm hungry.
Yes, definitely peckish
ttyl.
@@numbersix8919 I try to avoid going there.
I know thinking will evolve as we learn more, however I see most clarity in the thinking of Messrs Darwin and Dawkins and all the seemingly distasteful implications thereof.
This is the first time I've ever agreed with Searle
The same chemical could be generated in different functional cases. But also, the same material can be interpreted differently depending on different people. The problem with the Razor is that if there is something that is hard to explain or cannot be explained by a sentence that generally a certain group of people understands, then it just ignores it or even makes assumptions that class of theory is meaningless.
We can say that when people talk, they generate sound, and these sounds can be analyzed with phonetic theories or techniques, but the problem is that phonetics doesn't generate meaning; the meaning will only appear in its use. This is very similar to the mind-body problem. Logically, we can say that every mental phenomenon will at the same time happen with some physical or neurological phenomenon, but the problem is that the "use" is not reflected in the neuron firing; instead, it is about the other side, which is the mind.
It is a language game to discuss if, after all, these are the same things, or there are "multiple" levels of things, because after all, we cannot even make a strict definition of what we mean by level, and why level? From a linguistic view, these sentences related to level can be perfectly grammatically and semantically fit if we replace the word level with others such as: sphere, dimension, space, point of view, or even world.
The talk could be better if we don't fall into this language game; one side is only focusing on razoring everything that will create uncertainty, while the other side doesn't mention so much about the third world. Even so, it gives insight.
From my perspective, this is clearly a debate that Sir John won. Searle's arguments appear so dated to me now, yet Sir John's seem quite current. Of course, we have the work of Chalmers and others to thank for this shift in the debate. What is also important to keep in mind is that there are more options than either a materialist monism or dualism. Indeed, there is more than even adding the idealist option, which, of course, most contemporary philosophers ignore and caricature. My own view is that this is where the real work needs to be done: ontology. We are simply working with very limited ontological options with respect to the mind-brain discussion.
This is an epistemological argument. Eccles seems to me to be very muddled. The only winners here are we the listeners.
What have you been watching? Eccles pulling out pictures of the brain to "prove" that another entity is responsible for this was laughable. Anyone believing in dualism these days literally needs their head examined. You cite Chalmers as an authority lol
Chalmers is a question begge.
I suspect the peculiarities of linguistic thinking are
responsible for the "hard problem".
It's hard to get a handle on an abstract entity
using vocabulary restricted to concretes.
"I think you are a monist just because you have to be one to be accepted by science", is this even an argument? And more, Searle also talks about Chalmers and other dualists in his work, it's not like he can't refute them as well.
18:30 This is a simple misunderstanding, which could have been cleared up quite easily.
19:50 "This is another world." This appears to be simple confusion of nature with theory.
I can easily imagine three engineers debating the machine-hum relation.
Was this shot in a caravan tent?
Why is there a carpet in the background
Certain atrocious design trends from the late 70s persisted well into the 80s, especially in more Conservative settings.
@@mattgilbert7347In the 70’s and late 60’s the carpets were on the ground.
they're trapped in a carpet and corduroy prison called the 1970s.
@@Midnight_MoonFiM Were you around in 1970? What age?
Strange that some make fun of Eccles. It's very helpful to have someone so smart being wrong, and explaining why.
I suspect Eccles was partially confused by the hard problem which i think Searle agrees on but couldn't quite formulate it correctly. The different levels make sense: we experience thoughts just as liquidity of water, but the underlying reality is dry and simple. However: why is there anything represented at all, which is what we refer to as consciousness?
We know a lot about how the physical came about by two physical gametes coming to fuse together and gradually develop from there. Where does the mind enter the picture? Did it have a precursor in each gamete? If so, how does it split in identical twins?
That's not how it works.
(قَالَ رَبُّنَا الَّذِي أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلْقَهُ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ) سورة طه....
What is so special about the mind separating given that the rest of the cell has separated?
Isn't liquidity a result of the amount of agitation of individual molecules?
John Searle on point again. Its amazing how much Cartesian Ontological Dualism still has a strangle hold on peoples idea of the mind. In 1984 and indeed in the present. I quite found it funny how Eccles called Searles view a ''Dogma'' but when Searle (Rightly) calls Eccles view a ''Dogma'', Eccles gets riled up. Don't give it if you cant take it.
Roger Penrose has some arguments that may favor Eccles position - perhaps not in a way 'exactly' like Eccles puts it. The fact is some behaviors of complex systems can't be determined by the description of each element's behavior. The explanation of gravity in relation to a single body leads not to the a complete description of the interaction of several particles gravitational pull - it actually leads to the a description of how mathematically impossible that description is. I think mind is a product of the brain but what is the brain and what is the brain product of? The usual reply is "brain is the product of evolution" and that answer will lead - due to a poor understanding of evolutionary processes - to a poor understanding of where the brain comes from.
And recently we have the following problem: patients who had their brains split in the middle have observed a very interesting phenomenon - a patient wanted to get a piece of clothing but her arm wanted to get another one! Splitting the brain is used for some severe life threatening cases of epilepsy and though it produces some problems the overal result is a much better life and also some super powers like being able to draw a square with one hand and a circle with the other at the same time. The reason why it results in a almost normal life for the patient is the same information enters both hemispheres - the same sound enters one hemisphere through one year and the other through the other year ... the same applies to sight and taste and global tactile responses. The arms, however, are connected each to one hemisphere only as is localized tactile response. So ... here we have a weird thing about "the mind".
In defense of Eccles, I think he's arguint the same as Searle is but the words he uses and the ones Searle uses have different meanings to each of them. Searle, btw, on a onother debate, also argues that the brain is not computation. The most important truth we can arrive is this one: this channel is the greatest on all of UA-cam!
@@maxheadrom3088 To speak or imply of anything ''Immaterial'' or that the mind is anything other than the functions of the brain and body, is to commit a contradiction of definitions and to literally be talking nonsense. Thomas Hobbes pointed this out in the 17th century. Ontological dualism belongs in the bin alongside any other sort of woo and spiritual quackery.
@@maxheadrom3088 Nice comment.
Donald Hoffman's theory is what I've been mentally comfortable with the most. It's not something new but new wrapper on old concept. Even Sufism have similar idea.
Also, I once heard David Berlinski making a great point that mechanism of evolution seems to have forward looking ability.
And I for one can't negate this feeling (some may call it an illusion) that I'm not just this body in this physical world.
If we were scientific we would consider the only real evidence of consciousness and mind that we have. But one side of this debate seems to be ignoring that evidence. From this evidence, it seems improbable that the brain could do more than mediate consciousness. Now, whether there is a separate world of the mind, it's difficult to say. But to ignore the only evidence so blithely is not science. There must be a mechanism suggested or some very compelling argument made before a reasonable person can agree with Searle.
Searle can agree to disagree with Eccles, but he cannot simply claim with arguments about how a car engine works, or whatever, that the mind is not real or is just an epiphenomenon.
John Searle has a history that is being assumed in all of this, so that the arguments he makes are probably short telegraphs of his already documented arguments. In that case, the arguments may be more reasonable and effective than I imagine.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Searle's materialism (he calls it Realism, for a few reasons) is always appreciated.
I especially liked his point about being able to derive the macro *from* the macro
Eccles reminds me of the dogmatic but rather nice (to a point) older Catholic fellas at my old Catholic school. Desperate, being argued back into a terrible cul-de-sac, mired in Dualism.
The poor fellow brought evidence that supports Searle's position. I half-expected Eccles to claim he'd actually found the locus of the soul.
Searles position is very strong as he try to explain very rational and logical.
En español no lo encuentro o subtitulado.
John must have a greater task because we all have experience with the mind and tend to have no real experience with the brain per se. We tend t know that the two are separate. Therefore, he must do better than claim that the mind or consciousness is an emergent property. He must gives us some possible mechanism.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
I think that non-philosophers don't think much about the mind and brain and we don't make much of a distinction between the two. What you may be pointing to, however, ispossibly the idea that there is a self that persists alongside all the particular thoughts/experiences that occur in my head/brain. So explaining that would be the objective. I think that a story about the natural emergence of a sense of self through time is a fairly easy one to tell.
If biology is completely disjointed from the material world, like multiverses no amount of brain processing could generate the vision of the world, we are looking, the processes could create nothing of subjective experience. Hence there is a link of biology with the material world. And the linking factor cannot be localized matter but a non local thing or the most fundamental building block of our universe.
like most scientist in the Anglo-American tradition, Eccles was fundamentally a high-intellect technician. he should not have meddled with matters that require different skills. also, he had a temper that made him unsuited for a truly productive debate.
Prof Searle, what is a Number?
51:23 You kind of knew from the start that the actual dogma Eccles spouts here, as opposed to the fabricated dogma he keeps attributing to Searle, was what was probably underlying the preposterousness and illogicality of his proposition all along. He's a good old-fashioned believer who doesn't think that happiness or "meaning" or "dedication to ideals" can exist without religious belief. As Searle replies "This has no logical implication..."
Exactly right!
good stuff
Searle seem to keep referring to qualia as the main question in how a mind could exist in a physicalist universe. but what about freewill? how could freewill be explained as an emergent property of material atoms? it seems like it by definition defies the laws of physics. So, you cant just write it off as just the other side of the explanatory coin.
searle doesnt accept qualia.
he believes physicality can arise in such a way that it contains the property of for example a color, the way a pattern on a shell emerges with a shell. of course 40yrs later this is clearly shown not to be the case.
I'm more than a duelist I'm a polyist there are all kinds of higher level features of the world not just consciousness but the liquidity of the water or the solidity of the table ? What?
A dualist believes there are two components, the mind is one component and the brain another. It is amazing to see the extravagant dancing the materialist does to get around any spiritual inference. Sir John being a Roman Catholic, mentions Darwinian evolution and how it guided creation which shows he is confounded in his understanding between what the Scriptures actually teach and what his priest or Missalette tells him.
Reader, it is not your fault that you may not know what law of being is or what laws of being exist and what they are called. The Academy is a private club and none of us are in it. Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled, No intelligence allowed" exposed how bad and controlled the situation is in the academic world. All sciences are very controlled, censored and full of false assumptions, especially archeology.
Lastly, there is information in our DNA molecules, about 2 GB. Information is admitted to be the product of a mind and never by random processes for that is shown to be impossible. Where did that information come from? This just the first question. There are a multitude of problems with that bankrupt theory that only produces eugenics, racism, genocide and division among all peoples. BYW body plans for man, animals and plants are NOT in the DNA which only codes for proteins and not any higher level such as a cell wall or a tissue, or organ, or skeletal system etc. It is NOT there. But over 2000 years ago the book of Genesis made accurate statements about creation. In Jeremiah 1:5 God said to the prophet, "before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." In 1Cor 15: Paul said, "Foolish one! What you sow is not made alive unless it dies. (37) And what you sow, you do not sow the body that is going to be, but a bare grain, (it may be of wheat, or of some of the rest), (38) and God gives it a body according as He willed, and to each of the seeds its own body." 1Co 15:36-38 LITV
fantastic!
Can it be that all this talk around the brain and the mind is trying to simplify a complex system. Complexity is a system containing multiple different events effecting/interacting. Levels do open the way to seeing aspects/characteristics but the thought is fragmented. When you look at your mind the one thing you cannot do is perceive how it works because the self has no mirror to perceive itself-you cannot perceive/comprehend /intuit/grasp the fullness of the ‘whatever’ from the inside Physical evidence must always be incomplete because of the ignorance of the observer who will not see his mistake because his model is incomplete thus giving no example of what doesn’t fit.The rational left side of the brain wants certainty and the right accepts mystery-the totality exists in, “I don’t know”
We gotta learn to accept that there is a range that cannot be probed to find the exact quantity of truth-incompleteness tells us we have always to make an assumption to pretend a world we want to live in. We will run out of fuel spinning the wheels of our SUV trying to reach the pinnacle of knowing all or despair of life-it IS a mystery. It’s not a cop out when answer, “I do not know.” Ignorance is not stupid. Stupid is acting like a ‘know-it-all and calling the other one ignorant as if the point of contention has a simple answer.
Eccles understands Kant’s Observer as the Self outside the brain cause you can’t prove the self comes from the brain .
….yet. And nor can you assume it doesn’t, nor that it’s not an integral part of the story.
Peculiarmente, há um curioso problema de correspondência nos argumentos do professor J. Searle. Tendo em vista a continuidade entre um estímulo e o seu respectivo efeito exposto mentalmente, como defendido por ele, representando necessariamente o mesmo fenômeno, é possível haver novidade?
Não vejo qualquer impasse quanto a isso. Primeiro porque o senso de novidade só é possível aparecer quando aquilo que vem até nós influencia não apenas nosso organismo, mas a função sistemática que torna aquele estímulo uma percepção (necessariamente consciente).
Segundo, a percepção não é estimulada meramente por algo externo ao corpo, mas age em consonância com as memórias e "background" já presentes no cérebro, que causam provavelmente a maior influência nas percepções conscientes. Se as memórias se acumulam e o background cresce, há sempre novidade.
Essa é um das possíveis respostas com base no naturalismo biológico de Searle.
Good discussion up until 50:39 when the porn question gets asked, even Eccles chortled as the host led up to the question (even though the host said the connection was made in Eccles’s to be published book.)
Yes, its funny how poorly it aged considering the accusations raised against Searle in recent times.
@@numbersix8919 Yup, he was dismissed from Berkeley I think. He's had several women accuse him of harassment. Ironically, one of them accused him of openly watching pornography in his office.
@@numbersix8919 I know several men his age who wouldn't behave that way, so I'll assume you're speaking in jest.
@@numbersix8919 yeah, that's for sure!
Is that old Christopher Plummer?
Is understanding the mental falling under the category "how the world works"? If we assume that the mental is just something that "works", a process, something physical, then we assume what we want to argue for.
Process is an abstract notion.
This fact unifies mind and matter for me.
Huh. @42:00 despite my comments below, I find I agree _somewhat_ with Searle here, not fully. I'd say I am a polyontologist too. It is all One world really, I just think Searle has some of the causality backwards, and fails to see if the "emergent" realities truly are "real" they might have top-down causal impact on the physical level, and are not really physical, they are abstract and yet real. So that is Mind acting on Brain, not the other way around, so *_not_* brain causing Mind, not brain causing mental events. But obviously, it's safer to say there is a two-way street, the absurd proposition would be it is _only_ one way or the other.
I believe the solution lies in
the difference between matter and movement.
We accept that both matter and movement exist.
Matter does not need to move in order to exist but
matter must exist before there can be movement.
This is self evident, yes?
Yet movement is not a property of a material object because
the movement of an object is entirely relative to other objects and
is not absolute.
Does this mean movement is an abstract notion?
If so then it's not a big leap to see mind as movement based.
If movement is not an abstract notion
then what is it?
I really doubt that a person as smart as Searle would fail to realize that when my brain undergoes the process of noticing pain, this noticing-process in turn has influences on the brain. You, seem to be making the mistake that Searle warns about. You are concluding that the emergence of a pattern out of a process produces an ontological 'thing', and that this thing must be able to influence the processes that gave rise to it or other processes at the material level. Searle has a consistent point of view here. The processes occurring on the material level are ongoing, and 'thematically noticing' the pain also is a material-level process in which the brain reflectively becomes aware of hte pain, so this reflective process of course can then influence (any) other processes occurring in the networked brain. It might be more convenient and make more sense (I'm carefully choosing those two descriptors) to talk as if aspects of mind are acting on the brain ('this pain is making me want to lie down'), but there is no contradiction in Searle's argument.
Biological Naturalism applied to Philosophy of Mind is bizarre. There's no evidence that an *objective* being (e.g., physiological processes) can call into existence a *subjective* being (for instance, a first perspective experience) - and the analogy between *H2O molecules* and the *water* won't help us, since both are objectives entities
Otherwise, the very condition of possibility of causality is the *ontological contiguity* between 'cause' and 'effect'. This has been known since Dharmakirti, the neglect of Eastern thought in the West is regrettable and impoverishes the debate
One could presage the property of wetness from the nature of a water molecule. The description would be technical and would not feel like wet, but it would be the way science would currently describe wet.
But I doubt that one can look at the brain at any resolution and presage conscious experience in any language,, scientific or otherwise.
water is not an objective entity ie. mass-energy external or internal to the skull, no more than blue is mass-energy internal or external to the skull.
what is objective is the emergent property fluidity on the basis of emergence namely a collection of particular molecules or possibly atoms which is currently too difficult to ascertain.
Great debate, but what is the host doing under the table while talking?
What is the moderator doing under the table?
IKR?
The modern mind concept replaced the religious soul concept thanks to Bacon, Hobbes, Willis, Locke and others on the same path as opposed to Descartes and followers who insist that the individual soul is immaterial and immortal. Yet, the big question is not whether the mind is purely contained in a brain (with a hope to upload it to a computer for safe keeping! :-) or not, but who we are. Are we a body with a brain, are we a mind, or are we a mysterious self with a mind and a body as tools we use? Eccles hinted at a great analogy: the body is the hardware, the mind, the software. We are programmers/users of that amazing software.
To me it seems Sir Eccless's view would be closer to saying that the immaterial mind is the solid hardware and the body's input by the senses is the software.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Spinoza is credited with monism aye?
Is there anyone buying Eccles argument who is not religious? If so, why?
Personal experience: in general and in a particular experience I endured. I had reason to explain my experience and I realized that Descartes' ideas were closest to it. Now Eccles is not precisely aligned with Descartes I take it, and neither am I, but the three are similar.
The BUDDHA taught that the self is a fabrication of our minds
The brain seems to be a physical writer bound to write unidirectionally in space and time. The mind is an abstract reader that can read the writing regardless of the time and place it was set and evaluate it and trigger further writing that can clarify/elaborate/contradict previous writing. The time and place of writing can't be changed. Reading can move to writing regardless of the time and place of it's writing. The mind can't do physical things but only trigger physical action be it by the brain or other part of the physical body. The making of decisions to act falls in the domain of the mind. The provision of energy for abstract thought falls in the domain of the brain. They are intricately bound but there can be no mind with a dead brain which still has a physical presence but can't provide energy. The mind may be considered to reside in energy rather than matter.
Or more likely, mind refers to the patterned dynamics of the matter.
Searle is so sharp and eloquent in a very down earth manner. I'm afraid Eccles is left behind. Notwithstanding this, a fascinating materia.
Someone ask Eccle to explain Near death experience, those children who have Encephalopathy with almost missing brain ( cortex ) & still express their emotions ?
Also Mental health issues have no brain pathology but still exist why ?
Depression isn't the mere imbalances of hormones, If this was the case, there would be no depression in the case of taking anti depressants !
Depression is a story about feelings
Depression should be understood as a social sickness
Why is the word "system" appropriate for the mental? It is assuming what you would like to argue for.
Roger Penrose has something to say about Eccles position, innit?
John is very kind the dude has questioned his integrity his sincerity so much I must contend his brain is mendacious.
He is using language or communication.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
29:50 Why do the neurons fire? Going back to his engine analogy: Who or what is turning the key in the ignition? Searle's mind engine is one that undergoes spontaneous combustion.
Eccles' response is appropriate. There is no evidence whatsoever for this bizarre thought-terminating idea that the brain/mind is some sort of self-contained mechanism. We know why the neurons fire when we react to pain, loud noises, bright light, etc. so there must be some kind of stimulus or stimuli responsible for the neurons firing which cause regular thought. There is no evidence that this stimulus comes from within the brain itself. Even if you want to propose that there is a physical explanation, maybe one related to quantum mechanics, you can't just sit down and proclaim that the brain is itself responsible for the neurons firing to create thought. That is circular reasoning:
"How do we think?"
"The brain."
"How does the brain do this?"
"The firing of neurons."
"Why do the neurons fire?"
"The brain."
"How does the brain do that?"
"The firing of neurons."
"Why do the neurons fire?"
"The brain."
Etcetera ad infinitum.
Nice strawman
15:14
thats because thats magical thinking, not rigorous observation.
I laughed out loud watching Escles facial expression when he tried to treat Searles sound answers as an appeal to dogma, yet he himself is appealing to dogma.
But yet it is not quite a stalemate. Eccles states where he thinks mind originates from, and is honest enough to admit it is beyond science/physics. Searle never says how subjective phenomena can arise form objective physics. Emergence is just a buzzword. Liquidity is an objective property of water, not subjective. Even in all future possible time Searle will never have any reason why subjective phenomena can arise from objective, because as a simple point of logic there is no explanatory path from objective through emergence to anything subjective.
@@Achrononmaster I'm curious why subjective phenomena cannot arise from objective phenomena. It doesn't seem obvious to me. Not to say that you're wrong, I just don't know either way
49:00 - did they lose what causes the dendrites to shake with the moon tapes? 😂
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Is the mind 'just' the brain. That little trick, or tick, says a lot.
It seems Eccles hints toward the beginning at the so-called "hard problem of consciousness".
'Hard problem of consciousness' is a dogmatic assumption presented as a problem. The dogmatic assumption being that mind and subjective experience exist independently of physical-biological systems.
@@Zayden. no, that not what the hard problem say, it say that a positivist epistemology and an empirical approach based on the physicalist theories as we know them wont do. Its object isnt to kill consciousness because its self evident but to redefine what we call matter.
@@numbersix8919 we are saying the same thing with differents words.I agree with you but it is the hard problem because traditional methods wont cut it. We need a new paradigme shift.
John being only a philosopher and not a neural physicist who as far as I know, has no laboratory experience. No actual hands on, so to speak. All he has is his theoretical hypothesis that he has not proved by experiment and getting the proof by getting the same results under the same conditions. Sir John on the other hand speaks of what he has observed and measured in the laboratory with repeated experimentation and getting the same results to form a much better hypothesis and conclusion.
Scientific materialism died for me when I began to research the claim that our body plans are not in our DNA! The information to form basic building blocks called proteins is there but, higher levels of information are not there. No information to form a cell wall let alone a cell. No information to make any organ. No information to form any of the many systems in the body--NOT THERE!
Check it out, the butterfly and caterpillar have completely different bodies and natures BUT IDENTICAL DNA! And the idea that two body plans are in the DNA controlled by a switch is absurd. The amount of information to form 3-D components like the organs including our skin would take more that few giga-bytes of DNA. A new born baby has 60,000 miles of blood vessels, arteries and capillaries. The plan for interfacing with trillions of cells, no cell is more that once cell away from a capillary. It is almost incomprehensible.
How does one explain how all the nations are controlled and implement medical health policies in lock step by a hierarchy of corporations and governments who admittedly serve Satan. BAAL worship is ancient and alive today among the "elites" of the World.
Don't let the Christian Religion interfere with searching out the Living God who is not only the Creator but also the Father. Many are put off by a God who is said to be of Divine Love and says to overcome evil with good and to love ones enemies but doesn't hold Himself to the same standard but punishes without mercy or purpose. To torture and burn and torment forever without purpose is not of Love. God is Love (1Jn 4:8). His Law returns the soul (Psa 19:7) and His judgments have purpose too--they teach righteousness (Isa 26:9). This is because love builds up and doesn't tear down (1Cor 8:1; 2Cor 10:8). This comment has become way too long. God bless.
i love this fucking debate series!!!
Determinism must be true and it is a bit frustrating to know that we don’t really have free will. However, we have no choice but to live our lives as if we do have free will
Brilliant. Physicalism wins every time.
except that emergent properties of consciousness eg. color don't exist at all.
Don't they? I thought I saw in colors last time I opened my eyes. Just saying! Tuck the Bible into the trash bin.
@@luizr.5599 study logic 101 while youre ai it.
@@backwardthoughts1022 joke's on you, I have a degree in Philosophy
@@luizr.5599 wooow now attempt to make a coherent statement that doesn't appeal to magical thinking.
Watch some current Searle---his ribald self-assurance via physicalism in solum is supplanted by a weary bitterness.
"Everything in the world is composed by physical particles and the interaction between them" says Searle. My how far we are now from that kind of peculiar mix of arrogance and naïvete!!!
mr 'static brain' searle along with his buddy dennett 😂
Problem is that Eccles is some sort of religious fundamentalist, in his published book he states his beliefs as though they are facts, when they are actually nothing more than subjective beliefs that are most likely not tenable. His judgement is so distorted and his bias is so strong that I would tend to discount anything he said (other than direct experimental evidence).
I don't know: Is Eccles a fundamentalist or just a religious person? There is a difference, and being a fundamentalist my not be all bad either.
My brain isnt the only part of my body that has a mind of its own....i probably only think and feel with my brain a little less than half the time..though it's a little more often the older i get
Sure. Searle actually answered a question in a much later talk that touches on this. You have a nervous system, muscular, lymphatic, and so on, and you are not unconscious of all these inputs at all times.
You're not a brain in a vat
Searle was quite aggressively dominant throughout the debate while Eccles didn't have much opportunity to elaborate his own view and refute Searle's position. I think Eccles might have argued against a couple of points in Searle's monism like this way:
1. Searle was very confident that not only our mental states but also all human values (morality, culture, beauty, etc.) actually emerged from physical elements. But is it even conceptually possible to maintain such proposition? Maybe at least it can be 'said' about mental states that they emerged from physical states, as they are, in a sense, physical, that is, are temporal. But how can it even be said about values that they emerged from physical states and processes, as they are not even temporal - that is, they are a wholly different category from physical reality?
On the other hand, if it anyhow should be admitted that these values are somehow emergent from, and dependant on, physical states and processes, this should mean they would lack any objective existential status - that is, they would become sort of 'apparitions,' or 'empty names.' But, if so, how can they be meaningfully cherished as real, subsistent values by mankind? How can Searle contend that his version of monism will never nullify our precious values such as morality, responsibility, beauty, etc?
2. At the end of the discussion, Searle emphasizes that, in order to attain a systematic knowledge of the world, we have no option but accepting physical monism. But I don't see why dualism, or, for that matter, theism, should be inconsistent with any systematic understanding of the world. He seems to just presume this point without ground.
Anyhow, one of the world's most systematic thinker, Descartes, was dualist, and another systematic thinker (maybe greater systemizer than Descartes), Thomas Aquinas, was a theist. I don't see any reason that dualism, or theism, or any other -ism, by itself, should be contradictory with a systematic knowledge, or understanding of the world, unless a systematic knowledge of the world is presupposed to be the same as the scientific knowledge of the world. But Searle himself admitted that these two are not identical.
ㅡ Overall, it seemed to me that Searle was a little dogmatic and hasty throughout the debate. He was too confident that his was the correct theory, and wouldn't listen to his opponent elaborate. As this is not a political debate, but a philosophical one, where victory is less important than truth, it's a little regretful that Searle didn't show more generous and calm manner.
@@TheWorldTeacher Superb explanation which points to a reality beyond realism and dualism. Also, the word "Ignorance" was only mentioned once...!
@@TheWorldTeacher I don't know how much or little Western thought has come to terms with Indian philosophical and theological thought, but I do know from my very superficial reading that 1) as a monist I think I agree broadly with advaita vedanta and 2) that Hindu philosophers were entertaining _extremely_ advanced and profound investigation into epistemology (for example perceived, perception, and perceiver; and known, knowing, and knower), and in ontology at very early date.
Even more compelling is the nature of the values we hold. People have put their lives on the line to save works of art or literature, to defend (Socrates…) their philosophy and even to protect the rights of their enemies. Darwinism can’t begin to explain such morality.
I think Searles would contend, as I would also, that the material phenomena that give rise to human "mind" and thought and value and morality will maintain their importance for humans because the same physical processes that cause those cognitive effects also cause the more unconscious effects of instinct and impulse, which had no small effect on the emergence of value and morality and are motivations even more powerful.
In short, we will remain all too human, despite the awareness of our material nature.
@@richardatkinson4710 All of that poses no particular problem to a materialist account of the world.
Missing from this debate is what has been learned from strokes and traumatic brain injuries
Understand yourself is my goal :Eccles. Searle: al that exist is physical , mind and body are one. Glass of water is h20 proprieties, its not a liquid state. It’s behavior, its not separate its a system of the whole. Higher level of micro elments. It’s same feature. It’s the mind and brain. It’s all one thing Brain
Brain has certain process consciousness and caused by those process are features for the whole system.
Leveles and features: relationship of the physical causes the mental. Two entities or two parts. I am not a dualist. Mentalist we have conscious states..
we do have conscious states and awake and physicalist. Of micro particles. Those are correct.. mind body problem. I am not a dualist. I believe everything is one and its all as one princess and not separate.
Different levels of descriptions
We are a whole being.
Californiansurfer 15:39
Wow, very Interesting stuff - if now Eric Voegelin would have been present - one could have bring both sides together.
Searles initial distinction or rather explanation of the emergent property in an assembly of water molecules to be in a state of liquidity IS in logical analogy to an assembly of neurons and assembly of neuron-groupings resembling a specific emergent state of the brain and our conscious as a certain tought-structure - a topology of logic semantic relations. Then a new idea or the certain grasping of the solution for a problem then is another emergent state - so the brain is then an emergent state machine - because the emergence of new states can not be predicted with mathematical certainty - the mental then unfolds really as a kind of general new property - a realm of it's own - as if you had a substance with a nearly unlimited number of possible emergent states - which are absolutly distinct but cannot be predicted other than with semantics and thus logic - and thus outside of the purely mechanistic physical.
From there then it is a small step to state that there is no theory of the mental as there is no theory of Evolution possible, because you can only revert back to the fullness of the whole.
Regarding the impossibility of a theory of Evolution: E. Voegelin in his 1 1/2 hour lecture.
One could also it's compactness is absolute as is the nothing from the non-nothing - you cannot have a little of both.
Voluntary action is involuntary actions triggered by consciousness. The trigger slows it compared to involuntary. The residence of consciousness has to be figured out. It seems to be a part of the mind that wakes up at dreaming before the waking of the senses which in turn wakes before motor nerves. Underlying all is the network of abstract thought mapped onto the network of physical neurons. The physical may be studied by physical means. The abstract may only be observed by the physical response it triggers. Consciousness is an aperture to thoughts that are present even when not connecting to consciousness. They may be recalled from memory to consciousness.
We all must have known mentally disabled people. Some were totally good in their approach to other people, yet others were hateful for no good reason.. Such differences, with similar brain defects, point to some entity beyond just the physical brain.
I disagree, they could have totally different genes, epigenetic interactions, psychologies, life experiences, etc. They could have the exact same mental disability but be totally different because all of the things listed above are different in some way.
If the same brain setup yields different reactions, then there would be something for the materialists to explain.
there are perfectly fine high iq ppl missing half a brain, and ppl missing 99% of their brains and are only mildly impaired.
34:28 LMFAO
Searle won't submit to the obvious truth revealed by Hume: physical causality is indemonstrable. Or as Nietzsche put it, "No one has ever SEEN a 'cause'!"
@@numbersix8919 no you, like the others here, keep missing the point that a feature or emergent property of a system is relational to the physical properties (circular causation). So your linear thinking, one thing causes another, rather than being mutually dependent and circular, embodies the assumption of mind body dualism and this is tripping you up. Instead of seeing that you call the argument "scientism" because you are yet to question the assumptions of your perspective.
@@numbersix8919 could you state your assumptions in clear language? As stated above, my assumption is that systems have emergent properties that are describable and in circular relationship. Evidence: any interference with a system changes the emergent property. Slice out part of the brain (neurological system) and consciousness is affected (emergent property). No need to invent a magical spiritual realm.
@@numbersix8919 assuming you meant my statement that there is no need to invent a magical spiritual realm, this follows from what I said. But by not answering the question which you posed to me, and which I answered plainly, I take your misdirecting comment to be an admission of not having reflected on the assumptions. Sidetracking the fact that you tried to insult me by suggesting I'm a "strong-AI" type. Typical villain-victim cop out.
"Wet" is not an emergent objective feature of water but an emergent "subjective" feature of mind interpreted from the sensorium.sensor immediately.
So if "mind" and "brain" are one and the same thing, then one can argue that anything with a brain has a mind and is conscious of itself.
And in regard to "pain", it is only from self-reporting that "pain" is acknowledged; I am not aware of any instance where "pain" can be identified without self-reporting-the science follows, but does not preceed, the examination of the brain.
And how would Serle explain "personality " ?
indeed the assertion that water emerges from the collection of h2o is on the same level of naive realism as asserting that colors exist in the external world.
he should have maintained using the word fluidity.
Searle's position reduces to a postulate. He postulate that there is no conflict between materialism and the metal. But where is the argument? It is not just so because we claim it is so. It is no argument that the problem reduces to description of the same "system" at two different levels. That is just another postulate.
Fun fact: Searle just advocated for propertie dualism
He is using language.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
no.
he was just early in his 9-5 philosophy career so he was not yet sensitive enough to the obvious fact that the emergent properties he continuously asserts do not actually have any capacity to produce effects
modern contemporaries such as frankish do not make anywhere near such severe mistakes.
eccles being a neurophysiologist just cant fathom that the structures he studied so thoroughly could produce emotions, desires, thoughts etc. it seems too much to ask that a bundle of mere 'matter' could do this which is why he creates another realm for these things to exist in. But now your introducing entities that we definitely dont have evidence or insight into whereas we do for the physical
what??? the dudes who spent the past 400yrs specialising in investigating only the physical..... have specialised knowledge of physicality and nothing else???? inconceivable!!!!
The moderator is constantly scratching his balls!
Maybe they itch.
How do you know? Did you look under the table?
Searle highly agressive. the studies into quantum physics role with consciousness / mind, as is booming atm due to AI, seemingly shows eccles to have been more thoughtful, but searle far more aggressive, at the time...
Yet the QP ‘studies’ & AI show nothing at present: it’s all posturing & speculation.
"We predict ourselves into existence" -- Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
Watch at 55 minutes 50 seconds:-
ua-cam.com/video/qXcH26M7PQM/v-deo.html
Prediction is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages, communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual!
Messages in a communication system are predicted into existence using the concept of probability -- Shannon's information theory.
Predicting messages into existence is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
From a convergent, convex or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave, entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics!
Convex is dual to concave -- mirrors, lenses.
Sender is dual to receiver -- communication.
Causality loops :-
Cause is dual to effects -- causality.
Effects are dual to causes -- retro causality.
The process of thinking converts the effects of the outside world into causes in your mind -- retro causality or syntropy.
Your mind is synthesizing causes or concepts from effects or perceptions -- mathematics.
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Mathematicians create new concepts (causes) all the time from their perceptions, observations, measurements or intuitions (effects).
Your mind is syntropic as it creates predictions.
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Why does John Eccles wish to go outside the material world to explain things that happen in the material world? It's far more economical theoretically to confine explanations to objects in the material world.
Good question: he seems no different from a presuppositionalist in this regard.
cos physicalism is a metaphysics that is untestable in principle ie. continuation of no progress in understanding consciousness. and its only gotten worse in case you havent noticed, and as neural imaging tech advances.
a agua dentro do copo de John para a consciencia tem nada a ver com o que constitui a agua mas qual sua finalidade na existencia para homem
John Searle doesn't hear to John eccles speak, he just wait that John eccles speak finish and than himself tell.
And quite rightly. John Searle has heard the same Cartesian dualism for years, doesn't matter how one dresses it up.
The problematic aspect of Searle’s thinking is one highlighted by his Berkeley contemporary, the Heideggerian Hubert Dreyfus, concerning his being hung up on mental states, which seem to imply a kind of robotic view of human beings. The phenomenologists subsequent to Husserl are correct in this regard that when we are involved in any skilled activity, we are hardly cognizant of the fact. When I’m driving or typing at the keyboard, I am not at all focused on my own intentionality as directed towards some object. Eccles appeared to object to this aspect of Searle’s explanations also, though for different reasons than the phenomenologists.
@@martianuslucianus4485 I wouldn't worry too much about any Heideggerian. Wasn't Heidegger a vocal anti-humanist despite inadvertently becoming an arch-humanist.
I usually like Searle but I'm not buying his argument here. Also tinted with an optimism about the field that feels dated. He's trying to smuggle an equivalence between liquidity and the mind that he thinks we won't notice. Liquidity is a physical property of physical molecules, the mind is a mental property of a physical system. How can there be higher level mental expressions of lower level physical processes? Searle is only asserting a continuity between the two, he's not demonstrating it. The analogy doesn't hold.
I think that dualism lost this debate. Basically the argument for dualism is none of us can prove conclusively that either theory is true or false, therefore i choose to believe in dualism because it fits my religious beliefs and i like it better. I dont find that a very strong argument. Saying that everything in the phyisical world is a product of the physical world, and the mind is no exception, is a much stronger argument imo. Now this argument might turn out to be false, but since everything is a product of the physical world, and the mind is supposed to be the only exception, i think that dualist have to bare the burden of proof. Also, it seems to me that the mind grows as the rest of your body grows. Chomsky said that language grows and i think that it could be said that the mind grows too.
However, you could argue that the mind exceeds the limits of your body and that there is something like a collective mind, and that the brain is the only organ that requires outside input in order to function properly and to develop things like language. You could also argue that you need to be stoned and drunk in order to understand and discuss this subject properly. 😁
physicalism already lost 1000s of years ago when tukdam was accomplished and is still presently happening and being fully tested and monitored by neuroscientists 😅
keep trying to talk and pray non-existent emergent properties of consciousness into existence 👍
@@backwardthoughts1022 i said that dualism lost this debate. Maybe there are other dualists that can win this debate, but this dualist certainly did not.
I have no money invested in the outcome of this debate and for all i care, dualism can be the correct answer. I am certainly not praying for either outcome. However, this question could not have been conclusively resolved 1000 years ago, and it will not be resolved in the centuries to come. All that I can say is that everything that i am seems to be connected to my body and to suggest that my consciousness is somehow disconnected from my body is an extrordinary claim that requires extrordinary evidence. If dualism is fact, why does my consciousness seem to develop in the same manner that my body develops? Why does it not come into existence armed with wisdom or why does it not stay at the same level that it was when my body was born? It seems that it matures just like the rest of my body does. It also seems that it dies, just like the rest of my body does. It also seems that it gets damaged, when the brain gets damaged. When my arm gets damaged, it is unaffected. And what about animals? Is dualism applied to them as well? Or is it only applied to humans, because god loves us?
@@skeptic1124 those all have answers but the point is even this religious neuroscientist pluralist ie. not a dualist automatically wins against non-existent emergent properties of consciousness
@@backwardthoughts1022 lol he did not even claim that it is possible to win this debate. And i did not see you try to win it either. If you have any evidence or arguments to add to the discussion, bring them on. You cant just say he won or i won.
@@skeptic1124 there are no emergent properties consciousness ie. there is emergent property digestion. searles speech refers to nothing, so he loses by definition.
the neuroscientist on the other hand although very weak in details is at least based in existing things in principle eg. in modern terms equivalent in principle to arguing the obvious effects of mental objects upon the physical, a minor example being countless placebo effects of non-functioning drugs post trial shown to be able to for example initiate endogenous dopamine production in the brains of severe psrkinsons patients, etc etc.
as don hoffman says not one of his contemporaries has been able to give him the precise neurophysiologogy of the taste of garlic as opposed to the smell of a rose - but indeed if we could say neuron 3 billion and one is the taste of garlic and neuron 3 billion and two is the smell of a rose have we really explained the different conscious experiences? - always up against a category error in my opinion
@@jonc3214 ua-cam.com/video/ynTqCFBhRmw/v-deo.html
Sense organs transduce impinging energies into discharge frequency encoded representations of that energy.
Thoughts are representations.
Sense organs output thoughts.
Mind is simply an elaboration of what's going on there.
Self is the thought that is conscious, as in...
It is my self who is conscious.
Searle is completely correct and the argument can be summarised as follows: "without matter, there would be no mind".
Cartesian dualism often tries to conflate their argument with objective vs subjective debate, which is separate.
Bringing Searle's analogy to the engineering level makes complete sense. In computing for example, electronics work in accordance with Maxwells equations, from there you have logic gates, all the way up to ISA level where one can write software.
You can't write software without hardware. And software is not programmed in terms of what happens at the component level. it's built on layers of extraction, that are not separate in themselves, but branches of the same tree.
Excellent explanation!
@@멸문멸공-b4c Thank you. Just noticed a typo on my last sentence I meant layers of abstraction* (not extraction). I subsequently watched the next debate with Searle on AI, and in that debate I completely disagreed with him, ironically for all the points he argues for in this one.
Not so! What we can say is: In this dimension we are in, we need a material substrate to serve as the register or the hardware for the immaterial processes ( flowing states). Mind itself is immaterial as all information, starting with DNA. Just immaterial minds can deal with information. Etc
@@InfinityBlue4321 Without matter or energy, there would be no information to conceptualise. There also be no mind. So it's just circular reasoning.
@@shanek1195 No, circular reasoning is to consider that because in this dimension we need matter (a body brain machine) to regist the states of Information, and process information, we conclude that the information and the mind ( immaterial things) is matter. See? If you dont see you have millions of miles to go ( to nowhere) in circles, driven by and seated in the John Searle motor car combustion engine... one of the most ludicrous image I've seen to explain the materialist dogma.