Part of an ongoing conversation. Nostreculsus writes:
Mr wrf3 is making an interesting claim.
Imagine that radio antennae pick up a series of radio signals – intervals of activity (above a certain threshold) alternating with periods of radio silence. It can be transcribed as a sequence of ones and zeroes. If the sequence is long enough, we can ascertain its statistical properties. Hence we can measure its degree of disorder (its entropy).
The information per symbol and the distribution of information throughout the sequence are therefore measurable physical properties. But Mr wrf3 goes one step further. He quotes Douglas Hofstadter approvingly and claims that we can deduce the “inherent meaning, i.e. where the symbols alone [are] enough to convey their meaning” purely from the message. We can tell if it is a message and not some natural phenomenon.
Isn’t this akin to the claim of those who believe in “intelligent design”? They assert that by measuring the complexity of DNA sequences they can decide whether or not the sequence is designed. But Mr Wright contends that “Meaningfulness is not a material property.”
Let me stipulate that the sequence is not a transmission directed from the space aliens to us. So there is no allusion to areas of common knowledge: no lists of primes or encoded star maps. If it is a message, it is an intercepted signal from one group of aliens to another, discussing some alien topic. But we can download as much of it as we wish.
So, I ask, how does the intrinsic meaning of a sequence “emerge” from its bare material description?
Mr wrf3 asked me to be rude to him when I was trying my best to be polite by being aloof from his flippant snipes and dishonest accusations. He seemed to think my courteous reserve was funny, and he mocked it by daring me to be rude to him, saying it would amuse him. I thought the rudest thing I could do was ban him, which I have. Perhaps he is amused, perhaps not.
If any reader can find a way to argue his position perhaps more clearly than he did, I am happy to reply.
Before we begin, let me state my basic thesis.
The metaphysical theory that all substances can be simplified to material hence empirical properties refutes itself, since a metaphysical theory cannot be confirmed nor denied by empirical proof. The idea that all knowledge is empirical knowledge is a non-empirical idea.
If this materialist metaphysical theory were true, then the non-physical properties of statements, such as their referent-to-referand qualities (truth value or logical validity, their beauty or goodness or utility or their ability to represent the objects they pretend to represent), could be reduced to and expressed as material properties.
Yet all macroscopic material properties can be reduced to and expressed as SI Unit quantities (mass, length, duration, current, luminosity, temperature, moles of substance).
The referent-to-referand qualities cannot even in theory be reduced to nor expressed as a SI Unit quantity. Therefore the metaphysical theory is not true.
Such reductionist materialists cannot frame their argument without express or implied reference to the very concept they claim does not exist: namely, referent-to-referand abstraction, i.e. the relation between word and object the word pretends to represent, referred to by words like “meaning” or “symbol” or “sing” or “reference” or “true” or “valid” or “accurate.”
This symbol-to-object abstraction is purely ideal, and yet the argument that no pure ideals exist because all things are matter in motion cannot be expressed without reference to it.
The basic strategy adopted unfortunately by amateur materialists arguing metaphysics is to use an ambiguous word that refers both to a physical and a mental reality, and pretend they mean it only the physical sense (such as “accurate” as a symbol for the distance between a target and a shot, not as a symbol for the aptness or appropriateness of a symbol and its referand.)
The other basic strategy is to use the passive voice, so that the actor whose actions enact the act is not mentioned, lest the nature of the act (in this case, a mental act) come to one’s attention.
That said, let me turn to Nostreculsus, address you directly, and respond to your claims in order:
“Imagine that radio antennae pick up a series of radio signals…”
Sorry, a series of radio what?
I have used the word signals all my life, but in this context, to what does the word refer? Does it refer to a physical quantity or a symbol? Or are you using the word here just to mean “radio noise”?
By “symbol” here I mean when one thing (a referent: a word, a letter, a sound, a sign, a euphemism, a cipher, the thing that points) stands in the place of or represents another thing (a referand, the thing to which the referent points) in the mind of someone who knows what the code means .
Please tell me what the word “signal” means. While I have seen and heard many objects (such as soundwaves or ink marks on a page) used as signals, I have never seen nor heard the meaning of a signal except unless the observer knew the concept or code to which the signal referred. In other words, my only experience with the meaning of a signal is as a mental entity, such as a concept.
” – intervals of activity (above a certain threshold) alternating with periods of radio silence. It can be transcribed….”
Sorry, it can be what?
I think you used a word (transcribed) which refers to the use of one group of symbols to refer to another group of symbols.
“… as a sequence of ones and zeroes.”
Sorry, a sequence of what?
While I have used ones and zeroes all my life, I have never seen nor heard a zero. I have seen circles made of ink on paper which I have been told by intelligent beings symbolize or represent a certain concept, namely, the mathematical concept of naught, but this is not a physical property.
And who is doing the transcribing? Because we can, in English, state things in the passive voice does not mean that intellectual events can happen in reality in the absence of the intellect of a specific intelligence doing something.
The property “able to be transcribed” is not a physical property inherent in the material properties associated with the radio noise being discussed.
“If the sequence is long enough, we can ascertain its statistical properties…”
We can do what to its what?
Did you just say we could perform a nonphyiscal act of making a judgment on a conceptual level of a highly abstract mathematical concept referring to the regularity of classes of events, such as a trial, and compare that class to the theoretical (ergo abstract) class, such as a trial as it would be under counterfactual circumstances?
“… Hence we can measure its degree of disorder (its entropy).”
Are you talking about the physical property of its degree of disorder, or are you talking about the signal’s capacity to carry meaning?
Is the “capacity to carry meaning” a physical property one can quantify and measure with a yardstick and stopwatch, or is it a conclusion of a judgment about qualities, what we writers call “clarity”?
“The information per symbol and the distribution of information throughout the sequence are therefore measurable physical properties.”
The what per what and the distribution of what throughout the sequence?
Now you are using words like “information” and “symbol” which you have not used before.
Are we assuming that “order” (lack of entropy) is the same thing as symbolic value or symbolic clarity?
If that is the assumption, your enthymeme is skipping an important step to which I should like to draw your attention.
You said (1) assume radio is being heard (2) the radio noise can be measured in certain properties. You did not say, so I am assuming here we are talking about physical properties only, the frequency and strength of the radio wave, or rate of changes in the wave form. (3) Changes in the waveform can be assigned certain symbolic values, in this case, ones and zeroes. (4) The ones and zeroes can have some unspecified mathematical operation carried out upon them, so that the regularity of the noise changes can be quantified (5) Therefore the radio noise contains information and that information is a physical property of the radio wave.
The conclusion here, (5) uses terms like “information” which are not used in any of the premises. It seems at first glance to be an arbitrary assertion.
What is a physical property? What is a non-physical property?
And I simply don’t understand the example. Let us use another: let us say that I went through the phone book and underlined all the times the numbers one and zero appeared, and made this into a document. I then took, say, JRR Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS, including the dates in the Appendices, and did the same: only underlining the ones and zeroes and writing them down in order in a second document. Let us say I also count each jot above any lowercase “i” or “j” and each umlat over any elfin letters using them, and assign them one and zero values also.
I now have two documents. The first is a random string of numbers since phone numbers are assigned randomly.
Is the first one a meaningless document containing no information? And is the second one a meaningful document containing information?
If so, what information does it contain?
Can I find out what happened to Frodo, and whether the One Ring was destroyed or reclaimed by Sauron the Great by a careful examination of the second document?
If I cannot, why can I not?
In other words, does the second document convey to me the information the author meant to convey?
And on what grounds do we conclude from the fact that we can write down ones and zeroes related in some unspecified way to a document, or to a radio noise, that this tells us anything about the source and nature and substance of the information in a document or in a broadcast?
“But Mr wrf3 goes one step further. He quotes Douglas Hofstadter approvingly and claims that we can deduce the “inherent meaning, i.e. where the symbols alone [are] enough to convey their meaning” purely from the message. We can tell if it is a message and not some natural phenomenon.”
What is meant here by ‘inherent meaning’? I do not know what the phrase “symbols alone” means. Does this mean what the symbols mean absent the meaning attributed to them by the author of the message, or by the consensus of the users of the language he uses?
Also, again, the phrase “convey their meaning” is in the passive voice. Who is conveying what and to whom? Does this not involve an act of intention on someone’s part? Thought? Conceptualization? Abstraction?
And what does any of this have to do with anything? Seriously, what is the argument being made here?
Suppose I meet a Hottentot in the wasteland, or someone else with whom I share no formal language, and he points with his finger at the sun, and grunts, and makes a circle with his arm once and twice and thrice, moves his feet up and down wearily, and cups his hand before his mouth and makes a slurping noise.
Now suppose further if I look at the sun (and not at his finger) and I make the mental conceptual operation where I judge that this particular grunt is a symbol and not an accidental burp caused by eating beans for breakfast, and if I furthermore judge that this particular grunt means “time” rather than another grunt that means “light” and if furthermore the Hottentot by means of meaningful gestures and pantomime manages to convey to me, that it takes three days to trek to the oasis, where in any of this is anything even remotely connected to the assertion that all symbols are physical properties and only physical properties of physical objects?
In this example, the Hottentot and I are both thinking beings. We are capable of abstractions. He uses an abstract symbol universal enough for me to guess his meaning. Call it an informal language, if you will.
His mind makes a abstraction of a pattern of events, such as sunrise and sunset, of numbers in the abstract, such as three, and of drinking water, which he mimicked well enough for me to grasp his meaning by reference to similar abstractions in my mind and memory.
Had he mimicked the same gestures to some other creatures as intelligent as am I, but without the shared experiences the Hottentot and I share, such as a mermaid who does not drink water and does not walk, or a Man from the Moon whose days are of a different length, or a Man from Larry Niven’s RINGWOLRD for whom the circling gesture would not convey the idea of a sun rising and setting (for the sun never deviates from noon on the Ringworld, nor is there a horizon for it to rise above nor set beneath) then in all such cases, little or no meaning would have been conveyed.
He used his mind and manipulated the nonphysical properties of gestures and noises, that is, the SYMBOLIC value of the gestures and noises common to all men, in order to put across his message and I used my mind to grasp and understand it.
At no point did the physical properties of the gestures and noises come into play. It makes no difference which hand he used to gesture. It makes no difference what is the diameter of the circle used in the arm gesture, nor the amplitude of the sound wave made by his throat when describing the slurping noise. The PHYSICAL properties make no difference at all. This is because the specific physical properties are indifferent. They are variables, not constants. They can be changed (within limits) without change to the meaning.
Let us not be confused: clearly some sort of physical properties are needed for pantomime gestures and mimic sounds to be carried from him to me. The physical properties exist. In an airless darkness where I could not see the Hottentot, he could not convey his gestures and sounds to my eye and ear. My claim here is that the physical properties by convention point to something, and that this act of pointing is not itself a physical property of the matter doing the pointing. If he pointed with his spear or his nod or a roll of his eyes at the sun, I would still understand (if I were quick on the uptake) that he was referring to the passage of three day’s time. The body part with which he points has physical properties which can be empirically measured. The act of pointing is a symbolic act, and it cannot be measured; it can only be understood. Measuring the physical properties will neither aid nor hinder understanding.
A wide circle, in this case, means the same thing as a small circle, and a loud slurp means the same thing as a soft slurp; and to make things worse, the sentence in spoken in Latin “in three days of hard march shall we reach the oasis” or written on stone in Egyptian hieroglyphs or written on a bar of soap in Babylonian cuneiform all mean the same thing even when all physical properties differ, for soundwaves are not stone nor soap.
So even granting your example in the light most favorable to your case, it does not prove, NOR EVEN ADDRESS THE ISSUE on which your case rests. A radio signal from Mars which recites the value of pi or the square root of two or the Pythagorean Theorem is the same mental act as the Hottentot mimicking the noise of drinking water, but in this case using mathematical abstractions perhaps common to Earth and Mars in the same way the abstraction (the noise without the water) of drinking water is common to all men.
The Martian is doing the same thing as the Hottentot, namely, using the symbolic and nonphysical properties of the patterns (that is, the meanings) of sounds and silences to form an abstract symbol, which is meant to convey meaning to an audience whose similar experiences allow them to understand to which concrete thing the abstract symbol refers. All these things, symbols, references, abstractions, representation, are the fundamental nonphysical acts of the conceptual dimension of reality, namely, that part of our lives which cannot be expressed as numbers.
“Isn’t this akin to the claim of those who believe in “intelligent design”? They assert that by measuring the complexity of DNA sequences they can decide whether or not the sequence is designed. But Mr Wright contends that “Meaningfulness is not a material property.””
I am not sure what claim you mean. A judgment about whether an object is natural or manmade, or whether the universe is made by a supernatural intelligent creator or an unintentional natural sequence of events, is a judgment call. It is the same judgment used when deciding whether the Hottentot’s burp is deliberate, a word in his language, or is a eructation because he ate beans for breakfast. The argument rests on the assumption that the statistical frequency of certain things would be higher or lower for deliberate intelligent acts than for non-deliberate natural processes.
That assumption is one I have never understood. I can think of examples when a non-deliberate noise is more regular than a deliberate one (the beat of a bird’s wing as opposed to the beat of a drummer changing tempo) and I can thing of examples when a deliberate noise is more regular than a non-deliberate (a drummer with a stead tempo versus the drips of rain on the roof).
So, no, the intelligent design argument does not rest on the assumption that the regularity in nature is a physical property. For my money, even if it were, that has nothing to do with the argument about whether non-physical reality exists, or whether all non-physical properties can be expressed in terms of SI Units (which is what the argument is really about).
“Let me stipulate that the sequence is not a transmission directed from the space aliens to us. So there is no allusion to areas of common knowledge: no lists of primes or encoded star maps. If it is a message, it is an intercepted signal from one group of aliens to another, discussing some alien topic. But we can download as much of it as we wish. So, I ask, how does the intrinsic meaning of a sequence “emerge” from its bare material description?”
I don’t understand the question. What do you mean by emerge and why did you put that word in quotes? Since when is meaning something that emerges like a chick from an egg? Why should anyone grant the assumption that a message from one alien mind to another would have any regularity to it at all, or that the signals would contain the symbols where we look for them?
If I agree with my fellow spy to send him a message, and I write the letter M on a bar of Irish Spring soap, and then another M on Ivory soap, and then a third M on the bottom of a mustard jar, is my message “M…M…M” which means I like Marylin Monroe and M&M’s, or is my message the Colonel Mustard is moving three thousand troops from Ireland to the Ivory Coast?
If I decide to look at the letters and ignore the substance on which they are written, or if I decide to look at the finger of the Hottentot and ignore the sun at which he points, I miss the message.
All the physical properties are there, but I have failed to grasp with abstraction being used. I have failed to understand what the abstraction is being connected in the mind of the author of the message: what represents what.
Your question, if I understand it, is: assume that a message is overheard which has the property that the meaning of the message is held in the physical properties of the matter used by someone to be his symbols, and in the physical properties alone. Assume an intrinsic meaning emerges despite there being no nonphyiscal properties (such as the meaning of the message) present. If an intrinsic meaning can emerge despite the absence of nonphysical properties, therefore meaning can be expressed just in terms of material properties.
The argument makes no sense even on its own terms. There is no reason to assume the physical rather than the symbolic properties of the message is where the meaning of the message inheres. There is no reason to assume that the message can convey any meaning whatsoever to an audience whose experiences do not include those things like lists of primes or encoded star maps that the audience and the message makers have in common.
Whoa, hold up. First, there is a necessary distinction you are failing to draw, between “a thought consists of smaller parts which are not themselves thoughts” and “the thought’s truthfulness can be judged by reference to the weight of the component parts, and only those weights”. The first may be true without the second. But additionally, if it is true that empirical properties have inherent meaning, then it is not true that metaphysical theories cannot be tested by empirical measurement. The argument runs in circles: You assert that metaphysical theories are not empirical, and then you use this to further assert that the opposite theory is self-refuting, because it cannot be tested empirically, which is due to the first assertion. So your whole argument amounts to just a plain denial of the other guy’s axiom. “If my axiom is true,” you say, “then your theory is false, because self-refuting.” Well yes; “if”. That’s the point in dispute!
“If my axiom is true,” you say, “then your theory is false, because self-refuting.” Well yes; “if”. That’s the point in dispute!
Ah, but if the axiom is false, then none of the terms used in the theory are meaningful, because by definition they presume the truth of the axiom. That is precisely the problem. It’s the fallacy of the stolen concept.
You cannot assume that a physical phenomenon is a signal, i.e., carries information, without assuming the entire basis of information theory — which includes the assumption that signals are arbitrary and translatable. A thing that can be translated from one physical medium into an entirely different one, without losing any of its essential properties, is clearly not dependent upon the properties of a particular physical medium, and is therefore in and of itself not a physical thing. You continually deny this evident truth, even as you exploit it for your own purposes.
The thoughts in your head are not strokes on a keyboard; the strokes on your keyboard are not magnetic domains in your computer, which are not electrical impulses in wires, which are not light pulses in optical fibres, which are not pixels on my screen. And none of these things have any meaning except in relation to codes by which they are equated to one another and to linguistic symbols; and all of those codes, and also the linguistic symbols themselves, are entirely arbitrary. You literally cannot deny the nonphysical essence of symbolism to me over the Internet without employing it — and your argument is entirely self-refuting. But you have repeatedly shown your inability to grasp this obvious fact.
Same problem. “If my axiom is true, then we can deduce from it that, if it’s false, the terms used in it are meaningless”. If, on the other hand, it’s not true, then the terms used in it may still have meaning even if it’s false. Your “by definition” is actually a “by axiom”, and it is the same axiom that it is dispute.
Isn’t “thoughts are X”, a conclusion, rather than an axiom?
It’s not a problem at all. Let me rephrase your summary:
‘If my axiom is true, then we can deduce from that. If it’s false, we cannot use concepts that are derived from the assumption that the axiom is true.’ But you are doing just that: using concepts that can only be meaningful if you accept the axiom you are concerned to deny. You are committing — and always commit, in these kinds of arguments — the fallacy of the stolen concept.
How?
Not so. You are mistaking my conclusion for my axiom here. I take it as an axiom that the word “empirical” means “depending upon experience or observation alone.” Observation involves the five senses and what can be deduced from them. I take it as granted that no observation can support anything other than contingent and conditional truths.
Example: we can say the sun rose yesterday, but to say the sun will rise tomorrow, whatever else it may be, is not an empirically proven truth. It is not an absolute statement, true under all times, conditions, places circumstances. It requires no great imagination to picture a tide locked world of the remote future when rotation has stopped, and the sun will not rise. Such a counter-factual is possible.
Metaphysical statements are those which concern the subject matter of first principles necessary to other disciplines, such as the first principles of physics or epistemology. This is the definition: whether there are any members of the set or no remains to be seen.
The statement “all knowledge whatsoever is empirical; there is no non-empirical knowledge” is a universal statement, an absolute statement.
An absolute statement is (or alleges to be) true under all places, conditions and circumstances.
Certain things follow from this: In this case, if knowledge is empirical and no non-empirical sources of knowledge exist, it is meaningless to say that non-empirical knowledge existed in prehistory, or beyond the moon, or some sphere orbiting Achernar.
If the statement is true, it must be true everywhere and for all rational beings, because it is a statement about the nature of knowledge, not a statement about the biological sense apparatus of humans versus Martians, or the brain structure of men versus elves. Even if Martians were mind-readers the knowledge entering their brains could not be non-empirical knowledge: their mind-reading antennae (or whatever) would merely be another organ of sensation like earthly eyeballs.
If the statement is true, no counter-factual is possible. If no counter-factual is possible, the attempt to describe the nature of knowledge in any non-empirical terms is and must be nonsense, something that exists in words only, but which, upon examination is an incoherent or illogical description. If no counter-factual is possible, then trying to imagine a universe where other forms or other sources of knowledge existed would be as impossible as imagining a universe where twice two was not four, or “A is A” were false.
So, by definition, metaphysical statements are universal and absolute. True everywhere and always, no matter what our senses say. Empirical statements are contingent and conditional. True here and now, and only because our sense do not yet show us any exceptions or variation.
So, then: if the statement “all knowledge whatsoever is empirical” were an empirical conclusion from sense data, a skeptic could be shown the sense data. The skeptic could look through a telescope at “knowledge” or loft it in his hand, and see its visible and or feel its tangible properties. And if one of the properties were “Always empirical” the skeptic could see and feel that as well.
But if the statement “all knowledge whatsoever is empirical” were a metaphysical deduction from first principles, such as, for example, a deduction from the axiom that truth is a correspondence between sense impressions and sense data, then only a metaphysical argument could convince a skeptic of its truth.
At this point, I merely call upon you to observe which sort of argument convinced you, or anyone, of the statement. Since an empirical argument in favor of a metaphysical ergo universal proposition is impossible by definition, the argument must be metaphysical.
There is no circularity in my argument. It consists of two definitions and an invitation that you see which definition fits the subject matter.
The only room for argument is that I have wrongly defined the statement as falling under an empirical definition. In that case, all that need be shown is the empirical proof of the statement, and not an argument from first principles.
I challenge you or anyone to show me empirical proof that no non-empirical source of knowledge exists for Martians of the year Two Billion AD. Produce the telescope that sees the abstract nature of knowledge rather than objects lit with light, and I will bend my eye to the lens and look through it.
Another option is to amend the statement and make it properly empirical, such as by saying you yourself have never seen any non-empirical knowledge so far in your life; that you do not know good from evil or fair from foul or logical from illogical. This statement would be easier to defend, since it is not an absolute statement, but it involves the argument in additional difficulties.
I think that wrf3 was essentially arguing that universe is an isolated-system of matter in motion and as such there are no non-referent concepts such as morality. When we use terms like “morality” we are using them as a shorthand for an extremely long series of referent experiences without any inherent moral character. As such “morality”, as one example, is relative to a specific place and period in time — though a person who holds something to be true is completely unaffected by this relativity.
He is then adding to this argument by saying that divine revelation does occur and such revelation is only true, moral, and should be obeyed in the sense that it is a communication from God. If God tells Abraham to kill his son then Abraham is perfectly moral in doing so because the universe is relativistic and no actions have a moral character without revelation.
“non-referent concepts such as morality”
How has morality here been argued as having no referent?
I’m not certain that I understand your question. What wrf3′s argument seemed to be is that everything in the universe is matter in motion. When someone uses a term like “moral” or “true” they are either consciously or unconsciously employing an experience referential system that is inherently relativistic. Murder may be immoral in early 21st century America but might be perfectly moral in late 21st century America if there is no referal to divine revelation. This is because morality is a relativistic social construct.
In other words, nothing is universally and timelessly moral within the material universe even so far as we restrict it to humanity. Things are moral or immoral only in so far as they have been so pronounced by divine revelation — there would be no possible way that you could deduce morality (God’s commandments) by observation.
The same would be true for (as an example) “truth”. Truth is a relativistic term for how people understand and describe an experience but has no existence outside the brain of the person other than as a common reference to shared environmental stimuli.
Nevermind. wrf3 had no point worth trying to probe.
My comments above, which Mr Wright was kind enough to quote, seems to have been taken as a defence of wrf3′s materialism or, at least, as an attempt to clarify his comments. But, I was trying to pinpoint exactly where the materialist case has a gap. Because there is always this strange moment – this hiatus when they abruptly announce, “And then a miracle occurs”. So I am asking if they can be a bit more explicit about one step in their exposition.
Mr wrf3 talks about patterns of brain activity, and states that meaning emerges spontaneously from these patterns. I don’t understand. I don’t see how a truly consistent materialist can justify this emergence of meaning. So let’s look at some discrete data and at the material, measurable properties of data and see if “meaning” is indeed such a property.
The data I proposed is the simplest possible – a binary sequence of ones and zeroes. If you prefer, picture a segment of DNA – a chain of molecules labeled A,C,G and T. We can count the number of units, the number of adenines, of cytosines et cetera, or, in the binary case, of ones and zeroes. The number of bases of a certain type is a physical property, by most definitions. So we can derive the statistical distributions that occur in our sequence: these statistics are also material properties. Given such statistics, we can quantify the disorder in our sequence i.e. its entropy.
So our data, the DNA sequence, or alien message, consists of order interwoven with randomness and the amount of randomness can be measured (or at least bounded from above). The technical term for this “amount of randomness” is “information”, a physical property measured in bits. A string like 10101010… recurring has lots of pattern but little “information.” A completely random string has lots of “information” but little pattern. But that seems to be about as far as a material description of data can go. Nowhere does “meaning” emerge on its own from data. Rather, minds sometimes recognise meaning – someone says, “Aha! They are transmitting primes, or a star map, or the binary digits of pi.”
This technical use of the word “information” is at odds with everyday usage. There is no engineering difference between transmitting meaningful and meaningless bits. In normal speech “information” has meaning, “noise” is random. But a really consistent materialist would see in any data only regularities, (which by their nature cannot contain information) and irregularities (which by their nature are random).
Can wrf3 or some other materialist make good on their claim? Show me how meaning somehow “emerges” from a sufficiently complicated mix of pattern and irregularity. Because they are always claiming that this happens. Please show me the material difference between meaningful information and gibberish.
I said
and Mr Wright responded “How?” I shall attempt to answer.
Consider my brain. As I write, it is in some particular physical state, describable (at least in principle) in terms of SI units. Further, my mind is in a particular mental state, which for the time being, for lack of an exact understanding, we must describe in English sentences such as “Considering how to formulate the comment so as to get my point across” or “aware of the tactile sensation of the ergonomic keyboard” or “watching the words appear on the screen to ensure they are not mis-spelled.” That’s the top levels of my mind, the tasks which my conscious being is performing; we could add such things as “monitoring the faint hunger signals to decide when it’s time for lunch” and “generating ideas for how to model the efficiency” (at least I hope my subconscious is working on that…) and, digging still deeper, “sending regulatory signals to the heart”, although by that point it’s a matter of taste whether we’re talking about my mind or my body.
Now, my first assertion is that, if you created an exact copy of my brain, with the same physical quantities, you would necessarily also create an exact copy of my mind at this moment, thinking the same thoughts. Unless you had a very exact copy of my surroundings set up, that copy would then wildly diverge from my train of thought, starting with an extremely confused “Wait, I was just in my office writing a blog comment, why am I in some mad scientist’s lab?” Nevertheless, at the moment of copying the two minds would be the same; and the reactions of the copy to finding itself suddenly whisked from my office would be my reactions – they would be the same as if I had been suddenly teleported, for the new mind would have my character, memories, nature, and thoughts.
My next assertion is that the first assertion is not contingent, but necessary; that the relation between brain and mind is inherent in the laws governing our universe. In other words, the atoms of the brain are unlike the letters of my comment, in that they are not arbitrary: This particular arrangement of atoms always makes up the same mind and could not do otherwise without changing the laws of physics, while the same arrangement of letters could spell quite a different message if, for example, we had decided beforehand to use a code, or if ye Anglic write-craft had grown otherwise than in unser kenning, or what-have-you. Hence the irrelevance of the many examples Mr Wright has given of the arbitrariness of symbols: The claim is precisely that the ‘symbols’ inscribed in the matter of the brain are different, in this respect, from the symbols we use to communicate between ourselves.
Now, if the above assertions are true, it seems to me that it is reasonable to say that my thoughts are made of atoms, in the sense that changing the atoms would change the thought, nor can the thought be changed in any other way. When two things are so closely intertwined that any change in one is accompanied by a change in the other, and the two are completely correlated – if you know how the one changed, you know also the change in the other – then it does not seem fruitful to me to say that they are different things; they are the same, but described differently. To analogise, the economy is the sum of all the interactions involving money that occur each day; you cannot change GDP without making some change in the actions of the citizens, nor can you change the actions without affecting the macro-quantities, and if you fully understood the one you would know the other exactly. Likewise, if you exactly knew my mind – which admittedly cannot be done right now, because I cannot describe it exactly in English sentences and anyway I don’t have full introspective access to all its workings – and also were fully informed about the relevant laws, then you could exactly describe my brain in terms of its physical quantities; and vice-versa.
Moreover it makes sense to say that my thoughts have a definite location and time: They are in my office in Cincinnati somewhat after noon on September 5th, because that is where they can interact with the rest of the world. The immediate effect of my current thoughts is that my fingers play on the keyboard. I may in a metaphorical sense “send my thoughts elsewhere”, but their actual direct effects are going to be limited to the location of my body.
Thus I claim that my mind has smaller parts, not themselves mind-ful; the atoms do not think but the brain does, in the same sense that rubber does not roll but a wheel does. The whole has properties not present in the components, just as bricks are not individually walls, but can make up a wall. But it does not follow that the truth of a thought must necessarily be judged by the weight of its component atoms, any more than the ability of a wall to keep the wind out can be judged by taking it apart and looking at the bricks. That is a separate and additional claim. It might be true or false, but it is not inherent in the two assertions I made above.
“in the sense that changing the atoms would change the thought, nor can the thought be changed in any other way. ”
I thought changing the atoms doesn’t change the thought in the one sense that thought is meaningful – the ‘aboutness’ of a thought may well be constructable, but ‘aboutness’ is not a material property of a thought, but one of organization. The organization of material may well become a thought, but I suspect that not all organizations of material can be thought-full. And it seems to me that this is the point we’re all kind of stumped on.
A copy of you may indeed be a copy of you in totality, but ‘you’ are formally separate from your copy in a way very different from how a message might be interchangeably meaningful in cursive or in sign language. In that case, the meaning does not change; a hundred thousand copies of a newspaper are univocal as to content, but two of you would probably find something to argue about – as to what about, it’s immaterial.
Could you be a bit more precise here. Is it the arrangement or the atoms?
Suppose your mad scientist uploads all the data that specifies the atoms of your brain into a megacomputer. He also uploads all the necessary physics to simulate the brain’s evolution in time as well as a simulated environment. Now he runs the simulation.
Does this simulation “necessarily also create an exact copy of [your] mind at this moment, thinking the same thoughts”? Because then your brain atoms aren’t so different from arbitrary symbols; we only need the same data and the same dynamical patterns to re-create your mind.
Are you claiming that certain atoms have some hitherto undescribed mind-creation powers or are you endorsing the wrf5 position, that certain patterns of data spontaneously create mind?
I am not sure these are different. Your hypothetical example does not properly differentiate them, for the mad scientist’s computer does not have anything like the atomic arrangement that my brain does; it has electrons arranged according to a system which the mad scientist has decided to interpret as corresponding to atoms in my brain. The laws of physics which cause my brain activity to be mind activity are not obliged to take any notice of the interpretive decisions of mad scientists. So, no, I am not endorsing any position about “patterns of data”; I want patterns of atoms. Simulated atoms are not the same thing, even though they may have the same output in terms of, say, moving limbs around and even writing blog comments.
I observe in passing that the above is a point which I did not fully understand when I first started commenting here, so I may be contradicting some of my older posts.
Miracle of meaning
Nostreculsus writes:
”So, I ask, how does the intrinsic meaning of a sequence “emerge” from its bare material description?”
[…]
”I was trying to pinpoint exactly where the materialist case has a gap. Because there is always this strange moment – this hiatus when they abruptly announce, “And then a miracle occurs”.
Mr wrf3 talks about patterns of brain activity, and states that meaning emerges spontaneously from these patterns. […] I don’t see how a truly consistent materialist can justify this emergence of meaning.”
I agree completely. I just have a couple of comments to add.
I would put the first question as follows: How does meaning emerge from the very matter of a thing (since for materialists all things are material)? For a description to be possible, the meaning is necessarily inherent to the thing itself.
The metaphoric miracle which occurs and hits us full in the face is indeed that there are intrinsic patterns in things – to say nothing about the greater miracle that there are things at all and we can know it. These patterns automatically have intrinsic meaning whether or not we grasp it, and whatever arbitrary meaning we may ascribe or add to a thing or its patterns.
Explaining a miracle away with illogical escapes, or confining oneself to repeating the same superficial assertions that are either misinterpretations or falsities compared to sound metaphysical propositions, while avoiding at all costs a real discussion on basic tenets is no argument.
Burden of proof
Dr. Andreassen accuses Mr. Wright of making a circular argument:
“The argument runs in circles: You assert that metaphysical theories are not empirical, and then you use this to further assert that the opposite theory is self-refuting, because it cannot be tested empirically, which is due to the first assertion”
That metaphysics are not empirical is not an orphan assertion but a conclusion from other axioms showing that all beings absolutely call for a first immaterial cause independent of the empirical world, and that every material being has an immaterial component (form, essence, nature) that gives it its intelligibility either as a possible or actual being. These axioms are (with a certain amount of reflection) self-evident to us because our mind – which seemingly resides in our brains without being in any way reducible to it – is also non empirical, immaterial.
The burden of proof is not anymore on Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysicians, who had amply proved their point by the 13th century, namely that the world makes sense only in the complex and maximally coherent classical theist doctrine. Anyone can see the truth of its main assertions with some study. The burden of proof is on the bad or anti philosophers who did not succeed in proving contrary assertions before or since, for these contrary assertions are not true, or only true enough to disguise errors as truths.
I do not accept any of these assertions, if they should even be dignified with that name; they are mainly empty word games.
On the contrary, Rolf, such universally used abstract words are fundamentally necessary for a discussion that’s meant to be quickly intelligible to more than two people.
A man can say: “Porn harms the soul.”
Or he can say: “The viewing of pictures currently understood to be ‘pornographic’ has a progressive effect on the male thought-matrix resulting in progressive mental and physical addiction toward certain aspects of the encounter in question, resulting in a sociosexual developmental adjunct that has measurable effects on later encounters with the opposite gender that result in a neural configuration not optimally wired toward societal control groups.”
The theological types at least have the decency to use well-packed words with widely understood, if fuzzy, meanings.
Sorry. That’s what happens when one tries to put too many things in too few words… It comes out almost as gibberish. Hope you would not be so disgusted as to not take a look at what real classical theist philosophers say.