5 ms·

> Psycology can't answer questions like where does the mind come from or what is experience. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Of course it can

by nzp 13y ago

> Psycology can't answer questions like where does the mind come from or what is experience. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Of course it can, that's the whole purpose of psychology (and, more fashionably, neuroscience of course). To me that sounds like saying science can't answer these questions. Do note that when I say "psychology" I mean strictly the scientific areas of whatever comes in the bag labelled "psychology". Due to historical accidents the term acquired a lot of BS pseudo-scientific baggage, and it's really a shame those things can detract from a wealth of valuable hard results honest scientific psychology uncovered. The answer that developmental cognitive psychology, at least the theory I'm referring to, gives is that "the mind" comes from the only place it can come from: neural processes and the way they hook into environmental interactions of the organism (social and physical). The key to understanding what gives rise to "consciousness" is in understanding the role of language acquisition in broader cognitive development. The point where a child utters it's first words is neither the beginning nor the end of this extremely nuanced process. In my first post I took it for granted it's understood that this is not just armchair speculation, it's based on empirical data. As any good scientific theory it's far from complete, maybe in some details is inaccurate but it's certainly infinitely better that an endless philosophical debate (with strong religious, or in the best case idealist, undertones) on what the mind is and where it comes from.

haberman 13y ago
> it's based on empirical data What empirical data can say anything about, for example, the philosophical zombie problem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- nzp 13y ago
  There's no such data, because the zombie problem is complete nonsense. Well, actually, it is complete nonsense precisely because empirical data can't say anything about it.
  - haberman 13y ago
    By that argument, there is no moral argument against inflicting pain on others, because the pain of another is not something we can empirically observe, except by analogy of how we react to the pain we ourselves experience.
    - nzp 13y ago
      First, the moral argument against inflicting pain on others doesn't depend on existence of pain. The moral dilemma is: is it acceptable to inflict pain on others or not. This is different, and to a large extend independent, from the question if pain exists in experience of others. In other words, if pain exists in others, it doesn't follow that you have to, by mere logical reasoning, make a moral conclusion that inflicting pain is wrong. There is an uncrossable ontological abyss between the empirical what is and the moral what should be. Second, the case of pain from an empirical side is not at all like what we have in the philosophical zombie "problem". We can empirically observe pain. There are all sorts of physiological and neural manifestations of pain. Of course, now you may say "ah, but how can we know that these empirical manifestations mean the person is experiencing the sensation of pain". Scientifically that dilemma makes little sense, it's simply unproductive, it's scientifically useless. If we were to go by that route, we could inject a similar dilemma into every scientific problem, which inevitably would lead to the problem of solipsism. How can we really, really be certain that anything at all exists? Well, I suppose we can't, but this is a question that science has long ago abandoned because it doesn't get you anywhere, it doesn't yield any useful results. Do note that unlike the question of pain, the zombie problem is defined so that there is in principle absolutely no way to detect, to measure, if someone is a zombie or not. On the other hand, we can in principle measure and detect events correlated with introspective reports on sensations. If we couldn't do that for some phenomenon it would be wise to consider that the phenomenon doesn't exist for the purpose of empirical scientific examination. Frankly, I'm surprised that my previous post (where I say the zombie problem is nonsense) got downvoted because this is the foundation of scientific methodology. If you can not, even in principle, measure/detect something then it makes no sense to discuss it. Of course, you can amuse yourself and speculate on it, but that falls outside of boundaries of scientific inquiry and I hope that's what we're discussing here.

by nzp 13y ago

haberman 13y ago

> it's based on empirical data What empirical data can say anything about, for example, the philosophical zombie problem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

nzp 13y ago
There's no such data, because the zombie problem is complete nonsense. Well, actually, it is complete nonsense precisely because empirical data can't say anything about it.
- haberman 13y ago
  By that argument, there is no moral argument against inflicting pain on others, because the pain of another is not something we can empirically observe, except by analogy of how we react to the pain we ourselves experience.
  - nzp 13y ago
    First, the moral argument against inflicting pain on others doesn't depend on existence of pain. The moral dilemma is: is it acceptable to inflict pain on others or not. This is different, and to a large extend independent, from the question if pain exists in experience of others. In other words, if pain exists in others, it doesn't follow that you have to, by mere logical reasoning, make a moral conclusion that inflicting pain is wrong. There is an uncrossable ontological abyss between the empirical what is and the moral what should be. Second, the case of pain from an empirical side is not at all like what we have in the philosophical zombie "problem". We can empirically observe pain. There are all sorts of physiological and neural manifestations of pain. Of course, now you may say "ah, but how can we know that these empirical manifestations mean the person is experiencing the sensation of pain". Scientifically that dilemma makes little sense, it's simply unproductive, it's scientifically useless. If we were to go by that route, we could inject a similar dilemma into every scientific problem, which inevitably would lead to the problem of solipsism. How can we really, really be certain that anything at all exists? Well, I suppose we can't, but this is a question that science has long ago abandoned because it doesn't get you anywhere, it doesn't yield any useful results. Do note that unlike the question of pain, the zombie problem is defined so that there is in principle absolutely no way to detect, to measure, if someone is a zombie or not. On the other hand, we can in principle measure and detect events correlated with introspective reports on sensations. If we couldn't do that for some phenomenon it would be wise to consider that the phenomenon doesn't exist for the purpose of empirical scientific examination. Frankly, I'm surprised that my previous post (where I say the zombie problem is nonsense) got downvoted because this is the foundation of scientific methodology. If you can not, even in principle, measure/detect something then it makes no sense to discuss it. Of course, you can amuse yourself and speculate on it, but that falls outside of boundaries of scientific inquiry and I hope that's what we're discussing here.