#39774: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  09:23 AM
Carter's failing is that he's unable to grasp the idea that people can find meaning in something other than his dogma.

I'm open to correction, PZ. Please share with us how the mind can be explained by physicalism. Is it the result of mystical "emergent properties?" Or is the mind merely an illusion as the eliminativists claim?

I'm sure you'll be able to provide a scientifically defensible explanation for how "meaning" (a non-physical concept) can be derived from a completly physical universe.

#39775: logopetria — 09/13  at  09:25 AM
Carter and his ilk are using a very narrow idea of "meaning" here. They look at the whole world and imagine that every last little bit of it is imbued with some kind of ineffable 'purpose' by its Creator. That is, 'meaning' to them is a genuine part of the world itself, independent of minds and observers who might have their own interpretations and understandings of things. In short, they think 'meaning' has ontological existence.

Moreover, they only seem to conceive of this one kind of 'purpose' - this Creator-imbued kind. So when naturalist/materialists like us come along, and say "No way, what you're talking about just isn't there out in the world", they can't understand. They don't distinguish between "'purpose' as a natural feature of the world" and the kind of personally-attributed 'purpose' and 'significance' that people themselves associate to things. On that view, if you deny the existence of their kind of 'meaning', you must be living in a bleak empty nihilistic world.

I don't know how they can make this mistake. Have they never seen an atheist smile? Perhaps they place no value on any personally-attributed meaning that does not somehow stem from Creator-imbued meaning? That is, maybe they think that if you deny that things have real purpose, then any significance we mere humans assign to anything is just a sham, an arbitrary product of whim and desire.

I'd be interested to know what these people really do think. Is their position as incoherent as it seems, or does it somehow follow from some background beliefs that we happen not to share? But maybe you don't want Pharyngula infested with God-thumpers casting their unwanted pity around?

#39776: — 09/13  at  09:27 AM
Whenever a religious person challenges me about religion and morality, they always insist that, as an atheist, I should not be afraid of committing some horrible crime -- no eternal consequences and all that.

My response is always, "if the only thing keeping you from driving into a McDonalds and mowing down a bunch of people with an automatic weapon is your religion, then I'm glad you're religious."

#39777: — 09/13  at  09:30 AM
"If the only thing keeping you from driving into a McDonalds and mowing down a bunch of people with an automatic weapon is your religion, then I'm glad you're religious."
And people like Joe are so squirrely that it might actually be true...

#39778: logopetria — 09/13  at  09:35 AM
Joe,

Surely you don't think that a materialist has to have an explanation of what mind is before he can believe that minds exist? Likewise, I can believe that people can personally assign meaning to things - they can love their friends and families, and find beauty in art, and so on - without yet having any kind of physical explanation for how it all works.

Physicalism is (roughly) the position that everything can in principle be explained in terms of physical processes. That's entirely different from the claim that we, today are capable of setting out such an explanation.

#39779: — 09/13  at  09:37 AM
Joe, that argument won't work. If you feel called upon to posit a supernatural creator of human minds, you still have to explain the existence of that creator (and its mind). If it can exist "just like that" without its origin needing to be explained, then so can anything, including human minds. Meanwhile, a healthier intellecual diet might include less philosophy and more cognitive science.

#39780: coturnix — 09/13  at  09:37 AM
Our emotions, including happiness; our social behavior, including the restraint against killing; our sense of esthetics including the sense of wonder at the vastness of the Universe; our drive to procreate and to provide for our offspring; our learning ability and the need to explain the world - all those are evolved traits we inherited from our reptilian ancestors because they aided in survival, reproduction or social cohesion.

#39782: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  09:41 AM
Surely you don't think that a materialist has to have an explanation of what mind is before he can believe that minds exist?

Yes, actually, I do. If you truly believe that the material is all that exist then it shouldn't be too difficult to show how the mind is made of matter.

Likewise, I can believe that people can personally assign meaning to things - they can love their friends and families, and find beauty in art, and so on - without yet having any kind of physical explanation for how it all works.

But then how do they explain it? If everything that exist is physical then whatever explanation they may have must also be physical. Meaning would either be physical, an emergent property, or an illusion. Which is it?

Physicalism is (roughly) the position that everything can in principle be explained in terms of physical processes. That's entirely different from the claim that we, today are capable of setting out such an explanation.

I agree. That is a nice "gap" argument. How is that different from a Creationist who claims that everything in principle can be explained in terms of God's actions?

#39783: — 09/13  at  09:42 AM

Let me ask you once again a question that you’ve never been able to answer: why does a materialist care if people live or die? Matter is all there is to a materialist so why does it "matter" if they are alive or dead? Seriously, try to calm your mind from the self-deluded importance for a moment and ask yourself why, if the world is truly meaningless, that it matter one way or another whether someone dies or not?

Let me ask Joe Carter a couple questions:

1) If you are a Christian who believes in an afterlife, why does it matter to you whether you live or die or what happens to you and those you love in this life? Shouldn't it all be about preparing for the great beyond? How could you possibly imagine that you care a fraction as much about this life as a materialist, for whom this life is all he/she has?

2) Wouldn't the promise of an afterlife be just the greatest method ever for manipulating people? "Go kill those infidels, and I'll pay you back big time after you die." Wow, what a bargain. Hey, Joe, can I borrow $50 from you? I'll pay you back after you're dead.

#39784: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  09:43 AM
Our emotions, including happiness; --- all those are evolved traits we inherited from our reptilian ancestors because they aided in survival, reproduction or social cohesion.

Since this is not empirically testable, how can you know this? I assume that what you are implying is that you take it on faith.

#39785: Adam Ierymenko — 09/13  at  09:45 AM
This is the common refrain of religion: how does life have any meaning without it being a part of some larger supernatural narrative?

This argument, despite being itself a fallacy, is psychologically revealing. All you have to do to reveal this is to ask "meaningful to whom?"

Value requires a valuer. Something cannot have value (meaning is a form of value) without some living entity to do the valuing.

The most basic and fundamental thing that living things do is to survive and produce more of their kind. Thus, it seems to me to be common sense that living things should self-value. The religious mind seems utterly incapable of comprehending this.

So what the speaker is revealing by statements like this is that he does not value himself and his own life, and thus requires some sense of vicarious value from elsewhere in the form of someone else's pleasant sounding narrative.

I have often noted anecdotally that really intense religious fervor is often, like habitual drug and alcohol use, extreme promiscuity, etc., a cover for depression.

#39786: — 09/13  at  09:48 AM

I agree. That is a nice "gap" argument. How is that different from a Creationist who claims that everything in principle can be explained in terms of God's actions?

Well, Joe, there's this pesky little thing called evidence. Creationism conflicts badly with all the scientific evidence we have, unless you believe in the trickster God who created the world to look just exactly like it evolved.

#39787: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  09:49 AM
Baseyian Bouffant, FCD If you are a Christian who believes in an afterlife, why does it matter to you whether you live or die or what happens to you and those you love in this life?

I can appreciate your question. Like me, you appear to believe that we should live in a way that is logically consistent with our views. But the problem with your question is that I don't believe in an "afterlife." As a Christian I believe in the resurrection, which means that this life-and my, for lack of a better term, personality-will continue to exist. Because there is a continuity, what happens now affects the future.

Wouldn't the promise of an afterlife be just the greatest method ever for manipulating people?

A better question would be why wouldn't knowing this life be all that we had be the greater motive for manipulating people? Why not get as much as you can now? Why not maximize pleasure and reduce pain on an individual level to the greatest degree possible?

#39790: logopetria — 09/13  at  09:53 AM
Joe,

A brief response to your last point - I'll come back to the others when I have a little more time.

Physicalism is (roughly) the position that everything can in principle be explained in terms of physical processes. That's entirely different from the claim that we, today are capable of setting out such an explanation.

I agree. That is a nice "gap" argument. How is that different from a Creationist who claims that everything in principle can be explained in terms of God's actions?

Well, for a start, it has a much better track record than Creationism. The physicalist hypothesis has led us to look for explanations of observed phenomena in terms of physical processes (rather than magic, or ghosts, or Creators); from this endeavour we get all the scientific knowledge we've acheived so far.

Compare that with the developments in human understanding of the workings of the world acheived by the "God's actions" hypothesis. Why is the sky blue? God made it so. Why do lions have sharp teeth? God made them so. Why X? Goddidit. Tell me, is there a crucial development in creationist science that I'm unkindly leaving out here?

#39791: Adam Ierymenko — 09/13  at  09:54 AM

Is it the result of mystical "emergent properties?"

Emergent properties are not mystical. They are a very well established, albeit sometimes a bit spooky, aspect of our reality. They are also in many cases poorly understood. The field of complexity and emergence is one of the most fascinating areas of science today, in my humble opinion, and there is a tremendous amount left to be learned.

By the way, beware of new-agey "twinked" versions of the emergence concept. If you want to find out what emergence actually is, go to the literature on complexity, artificial life, computer science, number theory, etc. Beware of pop science on the subject, as it tends to grossly misrepresent what emergence is. The worst is how the phrase "chaos theory" is used as magic pixie dust in new age land.

Don't allow new agers' misappropriation of scientific terminology to prevent you from understanding what these terms actually mean.

... and for the record, yes, I do think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon.

#39792: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  10:01 AM
dam Ierymenko ... and for the record, yes, I do think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon.

So if conciousness can be an emergent property of matter, is it possible for, say, mountains to be conciousness? I mean that in all seriousness. The primary reason I reject emergence is that it smacks of either mysticism or special pleading.

#39793: DarkSyde — 09/13  at  10:02 AM
Geez did Joe come over here and start bothering normal people? The ignorant moron is trying to defend his failed nonsense on a reality based blog? I think I'd like to know why, if Joe is so damn caring and moral and all wrapped in good and bad, and we 'materialist'--meaing anyone Joe doens't like-- are so lacking in a 'world view' which is unsupported by metaphysical bullshit framework of Joe's liking, it was we scientist and science followers and not Joe and his merry band of topnotch pseudophilosophers, who were paying attention and busting our asses to help people while Mr. Epistomology here was either missing in action or blathering on about how vacuous science is?

You're doing a heckuva job Joey.

#39794: logopetria — 09/13  at  10:04 AM
Joe,

If you truly believe that the material is all that exist then it shouldn't be too difficult to show how the mind is made of matter.

Either I'm misunderstanding you quite seriously, or you're suggesting that if a material object is made of matter, then this means its workings should be simple to explain. But that can't be what you're saying - the history of scientific progress shows lots of examples of things that were very hard to explain, and took a lot of time and effort from some very bright people, but which eventually turned out to be explicable as physical processes acting on matter. So could you clarify what you're getting at here - have I misunderstood?

#39796: Les Lane — 09/13  at  10:12 AM
Joe-

Stick with turtles. The mind only gets one into trouble.

#39798: — 09/13  at  10:15 AM
It's just plain goofy for theist to attack mind as an activity or "emergent property" of matter, and insist that materialism does not permit meaning.

>The concept of an immaterial "soul" or "spirit" interacting with matter is far more problematic than mind being the activity of matter is (see, "The Problem of the Soul," Owen Flanagan)
>Far from rescuing meaning, most frameworks for theistic meaning refer to something like, "God's glory," a commodity that no perfect being could possibly require. In other words, theists are engaged in an activity that has no purpose or reason for existing beyond the selfish, juvenile whims of a petulant uber-being. This is somehow meaningful?

Orthodox theism turns human life into its god's community theater project, humans mere meat puppets that he can make sick with sin just so he can "sacrifice" to save them--the specific pathology is called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

It is simply beyond belief that pandering to the pathology of shortbus deity can be more meaningful than enjoying reality in the here and now, with the many recognizable, proximate purposes we give it. Atheist Joss Whedon, through the TV show "Angel," put it especially well, I think:

"If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do… now, today. All I want to do is help…because people shouldn't suffer as they do. If there isn't any bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world."

No theistic notion I'm aware of is superior to this sentiment.

#39799: — 09/13  at  10:16 AM
A better question would be why wouldn't knowing this life be all that we had be the greater motive for manipulating people? Why not get as much as you can now? Why not maximize pleasure and reduce pain on an individual level to the greatest degree possible?

Good god, this is a foolish statement (I lean towards the atheistic side myself, thus the lowercase). Maximizing pleasure and reducing pain on an individual level is precisely the reason why atheists virtually always have morals...because there are 300 billion other people out there to deal with. Personally, I am willing to assume that each of them is equal in importance to myself, and have to add them to any moral calculus.

Besides that, however, is a separate issue: if I treat everyone else out there like crap, they will do the same to me, and I will be less happy and more in pain. Thus, for purely selfish reasons, I can justify treating people kindly. I would go so far as to say that the Golden Rule can be justified based merely on my own personal happiness, with the added benefit that trying to live up to its standard is likely to make many other people happy as well. This is not the only way to justify it, but it certainly is sufficient.

#39800: David Heddle — 09/13  at  10:17 AM
For those arguing with Joe, keep in mind that his first assumption is that God exists. This, you may or may not know, is called presuppositional apologetics, and it is but one school. One which I happen to disagree with, for exactly the reasons we are seeing here—there is no point to argue presuppositionally with atheists, who simply deny your very first assumption and (if they are reasonable, which is unlikely on this site) ask for evidence. Most theologians (e.g. Aquinas) have understood this and eschew the presuppositional method, preferring to first make an extra-biblical case for, (or to attempt a proof of) God, starting from creation and/or human consciousness.

#39801: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  10:17 AM
DarkSyde The ignorant moron is trying to defend his failed nonsense on a reality based blog?

Uh, yeah, this is the guy that PZ was so impressed with.

logopetria Either I'm misunderstanding you quite seriously, or you're suggesting that if a material object is made of matter, then this means its workings should be simple to explain.

You're right, I framed that rather poorly. What I meant is that for the mind to work as you imply it does, it would have to be made of matter. If it is made of matter then it should be easy to detect the matter that the mind is composed of.

Let me provide an example of what I mean. Imagine that after touching a red spot on an electric stove and burning my hand, I form a belief that touching a stove will burn me. In the future, this belief causes me to pull back my hand when I get close to a hot stove.

What has happened is that a physical event in P (getting burned) causes an event in M (my mind feels pain). M produces an M event (a belief that anytime I touch a hot stove I will get burned) that causes P* (an automatic reaction in which I pull my hand back anytime I get close to a stove).

We can put this in diagram form as follows:

M--->M*
|....|
P....P*


An materialist, however, would have to disagree with this claim. In their view, mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but since they are not physical they can have no effect upon any physical events. Ergo, my belief could not have affected my behavior.

Instead my behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs. Or something like that. The important part, in the materialist view, is that my mental events played no causal role in this process.

The position could be diagrammed as follows:

M.... M*
|.... |
P --> P*

My brain (P) produces my mind (M) but my reaction (P*) is not caused by a mental event (M*).

Now you may accuse me of creating a strawman. But in order to do that you need to explain how non-physical properties affect the physical world. (Or at least explain why this is even a possibility.)

#39804: — 09/13  at  10:27 AM
Joe Carter wrote: “If you truly believe that the material is all that exist then it shouldn't be too difficult to show how the mind is made of matter… If everything that exist is physical then whatever explanation they may have must also be physical. Meaning would either be physical, an emergent property, or an illusion. Which is it?”

Of course it is difficult – you’re asking a science question, not just looking for lazy intuitions about what feels right. The scientific explanation for “how the mind is made of matter” requires an understanding of current findings in brain science and neurology. So far, all the evidence does indeed seem to point towards physicalism -- and none away from it. Everything that happens in the mind has a physical correlation in the brain. This doesn’t “prove” physicalism, of course, but it’s the most parsimonious and fruitful working assumption we have.

"How" this happens is the subject of intense research and debate (unlike the religious answer, where God's Mind is just assumed to be a mysterious, inexplicable, and irreducibly complex *thing* that's just there, and that's that.) If your question is sincere, then, I suggest Damasio, Pinker, Dennett, or Ramachandran for popular, well-written approaches to the mind-brain “problem.” Owen Flanagan’s “The Problem of the Soul” is particularly good in that it specifically addresses the implications for religion. The answers will be neither easy nor intuitive, but informative. And doing some reading in the subject will allow you to ask better questions.

Physicalism comes in many forms: you seem to be using what’s called greedy or eliminative reductionism, sometimes called “smallism” – the idea that high-level phenomena can and should be explained completely at the physical level. Few physicalists accept that; it’s certainly not a necessary component of materialism. Proper explanations take place at various levels of complex organization and interactions, depending on what is being discussed. “Meaning” would be found and described on the level of human psychology, not “out there” in the cosmos -- as logopetria so wisely explained.

#39805: Joe Carter — 09/13  at  10:29 AM
faberuiuc Maximizing pleasure and reducing pain on an individual level is precisely the reason why atheists virtually always have morals...because there are 300 billion other people out there to deal with.

I realize that an internally consistent worldview is difficult but you could at least make an effort.

If "maximizing pleasure and reducing pain on an individual level" is the primary ethic then you should be able to maximize pleasure in whatever way you choose (promiscuous sex, drugs, driving fast cars, or whatever else turns you on) and that has the least amount of pain for you. Your concern should not be with maximizing the pleasure of others but only attempting to prevent them from affecting your own pleasure. If this means taking a libertarian view, then so be it. But unless what happens to them has some negative effect on you, then it shouldn't matter if they all drop dead. (That might even leave more sexual partners, drugs, and fast cars for you!)