5 ms·

You can agree the mental events are made up of the same stuff as physical events, without believing that they can be fully explained in physical terms. https:/

You can agree the mental events are made up of the same stuff as physical events, without believing that they can be fully explained in physical terms. https://www.iep.utm.edu/anom-mon/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/anom-mon/

foxes 8y ago
If it's entirely determined by physical stuff thats a contradiction. It may be very complicated, but its still physical.
- bordercases 8y ago
  No, because the reduction in-principle would fail if the system's description language could not support explaining the phenomena in the higher level. And going the other way, it could be impossible in-principle to conduct the experiments that get a complete description because the tools required break how it was originally organized. It's also not just about adding more variables because "it's complicated". Biology for example seems to be highly reflexive, that sort of behaviour can't really be accounted for in basic causal models. At best we have models which resemble fluid dynamics, and fluid dynamics is only as good as it is because we don't reduce the phenomena down to every molecule.
  - ssadler 8y ago
    See also: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3294 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3294
  - sooheon 8y ago
    And yet nobody claims that fluids are supernatural and above the laws of physics. It's our ability to understand, explain, and model it that is deficient, not the phenomena that is supernatural.
    - bordercases 8y ago
      Maxwell's Demon might have a thing or two to say to you. The fallacy is to believe that reduction is a total property of the territory, rather than a property of some of the territory that lends to a certain kind of map. We know that there are phenomena in the world with strong boundaries and there are phenomena with weaker boundaries. It may be that at low scales things can be easily separated, but that doesn't have to translate to how easy it is to tease-apart macro-phenomena. Heck below atoms, which lend themselves most strongly to the reductionist intuition, we have quantum waves. The wave-particle duality should at least simultaneously give reduction and non-reduction some credence.
      - sooheon 8y ago
        I won't argue that some phenomena may be resistant to reduction beyond human capability to reduce. My main problem with the thesis is that whatever irreducible phenomena that is, is still part of the natural, physical world. Because we lack the knowledge to fully map thoughts to underlying atomic events does not mean thoughts are suddenly supernatural and non-physical. They are a different category of physical event, perhaps. Maxwell's Demon is new to me, and I'm not quite sure how to interpret it in this context. At first read, the claim that the observing, calculating, acting Demon, manipulating a physical trapdoor is not part of the thermodynamic system seems... laughable.
        bordercases 8y ago
        > Maxwell's Demon is new to me, and I'm not quite sure how to interpret it in this context. At first read, the claim that the observing, calculating, acting Demon, manipulating a physical trapdoor is not part of the thermodynamic system seems... laughable. That's the immediate refutation a lot of people propose, but then to model that demon plus the system is to also become another demon. So you can't escape this problem as long as you are not an abstract ideal observer, which none of us are in practice. (The fact that it's laughable is correct, because it could never happen, including to us.)
        bordercases 8y ago
sooheon 8y ago
> although mental states, events and processes have genuine causal powers, the causal relationships that they enter into with physical entities cannot be explained by appeal to fundamental laws of nature The claim is that mental events are supernatural?
- jchanimal 8y ago
  No, the claim is that an explanatory framework limited to physical terms is not complete enough to encompass mental events.
  - simonh 8y ago
    I’m not sure if I’m reading you right. You seem to be saying some mental events don’t have physical causes, or maybe that some mental properties are not encoded physically. In which case it sounds like there should be some mental events or experiences that are impervious to physical interference. So for example there is no conceivable physical intervention that could affect them. Do you believe there may be mental phenomena that are not causally related to physical processes in that way? It sounds like this should be testable.
    - mike741 8y ago
      "You seem to be saying some mental events don’t have physical causes, or maybe that some mental properties are not encoded physically." I think he is only saying that an empirical language alone will not be enough to relate mental processes to physical ones. You have to define what a mental event really is before you can properly test anything about it, and depending on what definition you choose it might be inherently un-testable. If you define a mental process as being composed of physical processes from the start then of course you will conclude that all mental processes are influenced by physical ones. There are other possible definitions though such as physical processes being composed of multiple mental processes (the opposite of the last) in which case no physical test could be performed to verify a "change" occurred in the mental subject (but a "mental test" of sorts might still be able to tell us)
  - 8y ago
8bitsrule 8y ago
By analogy, computers don't write software programs. Programs 'run' in a physical environment, but I'll assert that higher levels of their 'behavior' when they interact with the outside world (for non-trivial programs) are non-transparent to someone who can only observe the physical computing elements. The individual mind is far more complex than any existing programs. We are certainly not aware of all of the aspects of the world it is responding to. Furthermore, the diversity of those responses across the population is staggering. 'Irreducible' seems like the right adjective at present.

foxes 8y ago

If it's entirely determined by physical stuff thats a contradiction. It may be very complicated, but its still physical.

bordercases 8y ago
No, because the reduction in-principle would fail if the system's description language could not support explaining the phenomena in the higher level. And going the other way, it could be impossible in-principle to conduct the experiments that get a complete description because the tools required break how it was originally organized. It's also not just about adding more variables because "it's complicated". Biology for example seems to be highly reflexive, that sort of behaviour can't really be accounted for in basic causal models. At best we have models which resemble fluid dynamics, and fluid dynamics is only as good as it is because we don't reduce the phenomena down to every molecule.
- ssadler 8y ago
  See also: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3294 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3294
- sooheon 8y ago
  And yet nobody claims that fluids are supernatural and above the laws of physics. It's our ability to understand, explain, and model it that is deficient, not the phenomena that is supernatural.
  - bordercases 8y ago
    Maxwell's Demon might have a thing or two to say to you. The fallacy is to believe that reduction is a total property of the territory, rather than a property of some of the territory that lends to a certain kind of map. We know that there are phenomena in the world with strong boundaries and there are phenomena with weaker boundaries. It may be that at low scales things can be easily separated, but that doesn't have to translate to how easy it is to tease-apart macro-phenomena. Heck below atoms, which lend themselves most strongly to the reductionist intuition, we have quantum waves. The wave-particle duality should at least simultaneously give reduction and non-reduction some credence.
    - sooheon 8y ago
      I won't argue that some phenomena may be resistant to reduction beyond human capability to reduce. My main problem with the thesis is that whatever irreducible phenomena that is, is still part of the natural, physical world. Because we lack the knowledge to fully map thoughts to underlying atomic events does not mean thoughts are suddenly supernatural and non-physical. They are a different category of physical event, perhaps. Maxwell's Demon is new to me, and I'm not quite sure how to interpret it in this context. At first read, the claim that the observing, calculating, acting Demon, manipulating a physical trapdoor is not part of the thermodynamic system seems... laughable.
      - bordercases 8y ago
        > Maxwell's Demon is new to me, and I'm not quite sure how to interpret it in this context. At first read, the claim that the observing, calculating, acting Demon, manipulating a physical trapdoor is not part of the thermodynamic system seems... laughable. That's the immediate refutation a lot of people propose, but then to model that demon plus the system is to also become another demon. So you can't escape this problem as long as you are not an abstract ideal observer, which none of us are in practice. (The fact that it's laughable is correct, because it could never happen, including to us.)
      - bordercases 8y ago

sooheon 8y ago

> although mental states, events and processes have genuine causal powers, the causal relationships that they enter into with physical entities cannot be explained by appeal to fundamental laws of nature The claim is that mental events are supernatural?

jchanimal 8y ago
No, the claim is that an explanatory framework limited to physical terms is not complete enough to encompass mental events.
- simonh 8y ago
  I’m not sure if I’m reading you right. You seem to be saying some mental events don’t have physical causes, or maybe that some mental properties are not encoded physically. In which case it sounds like there should be some mental events or experiences that are impervious to physical interference. So for example there is no conceivable physical intervention that could affect them. Do you believe there may be mental phenomena that are not causally related to physical processes in that way? It sounds like this should be testable.
  - mike741 8y ago
    "You seem to be saying some mental events don’t have physical causes, or maybe that some mental properties are not encoded physically." I think he is only saying that an empirical language alone will not be enough to relate mental processes to physical ones. You have to define what a mental event really is before you can properly test anything about it, and depending on what definition you choose it might be inherently un-testable. If you define a mental process as being composed of physical processes from the start then of course you will conclude that all mental processes are influenced by physical ones. There are other possible definitions though such as physical processes being composed of multiple mental processes (the opposite of the last) in which case no physical test could be performed to verify a "change" occurred in the mental subject (but a "mental test" of sorts might still be able to tell us)
- 8y ago

8bitsrule 8y ago

By analogy, computers don't write software programs. Programs 'run' in a physical environment, but I'll assert that higher levels of their 'behavior' when they interact with the outside world (for non-trivial programs) are non-transparent to someone who can only observe the physical computing elements. The individual mind is far more complex than any existing programs. We are certainly not aware of all of the aspects of the world it is responding to. Furthermore, the diversity of those responses across the population is staggering. 'Irreducible' seems like the right adjective at present.