robbo203
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Groan. Obviously you have some difficulty following a logical train of thought. It not me who has an “obsession” with religion but the Party – by flagging up religious belief as a reason for turning down applications for membership from solid socialists – whereas from my point of view the question of religious beliefs is or should be utterly irrelevant. Thats what I mean by it being a matter of indifference to me,It is an irrational policy to turn away socialists when the point of having a political party is surely to grow – not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of that growth. That is a compelling enough argument for jettisoning this daft and irrelevant anti-religion policy and if you cant see that well then, yes, you are irrational!In fact the policy itself which is allegedly designed to ensure (according to ALB) that only people with a …ahem ..rational view of society and history can join it, is itself irrational and self defeating from that point of view since paradoxically being in denial about the irrational aspects in all of us whether we are in the SPGB or not , and claiming to be completely rational is itself an example of irrationality to add to the other examples of irrationality one could list about the SPGB
Well, the WSPUS approach certainly seems superior to, and rather more nuanced than, the SPGB’s. There is the hint of a suggestion that the holding of religious views is irrelevant to one being a socialist or not – which is my position. A religious socialist would not necessarily disagree with the suggestion that the (ethical elements of religious teaching) “don’t in themselves lead to an understanding of the causes of such injustices”. People are capable of wearing different caps on their heads at different times. A religious scientist does not let her religion get in the way of her science. Nor would a religious socialist let his religious views get in the way of his understanding and advocacy of socialism ( and if it did, it would “come out in the wash anyway” – as I have always argued – and express itself as opposition to some real aspect of the case e.g.. the principle of anti-leadership and you would have a legitimate case for expulsion on those grounds rather than the mere holding of religious ideas per se which is irrelevant The bit on historical materialism is reasonably OK but it is important to recognize that it is historical materialism and not metaphysical materialism that is being emphasized. My only quibble would be with the expression the “human brain weaves its ideas”. This seems to treat mind as a mere epiphenomenon incapable of “downward causation” – of interacting with or influencing the brain even though it is ultimately dependent on the brain .I tried to explain this in the thread on materialism On the other hand the peice does acknowlege that ideas do have an influence – as in they “eventually exert their own influence on the cycle”So does the WSPUS now accept religious applicants – or certain categories of religious socialists – albeit under stringent conditions?
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:robbo203 wrote:An idea is not a “material condition” is it? There is no such thing as a unicorn in material reality yet people have the thought of a unicorn.Of course it is! Unless you can show it is something else. Where did the idea of the unicorn come from if not from the physical brain? When an artist ‘creates’ they create form their material existence and the creation takes place within their physical brain. and with the use of their physical body.
No. You are confusing two quite separate things again. The idea of unicorn itself is not a material thing, it does not have an objective material existence unless you want to denude the term “material” of any real meaning. The “idea” is a figment of our imagination,To imagine it certainly requires a human brain. However it is one thing to say that imagining a unicorn requires a human brain , it is quite another to say that it “comes from” the human brain. For one thing, the human brain is an organ that processes sensory input. The component traits of our imaginary unicorn are traceable, as I said earlier, to characteristics of several different kinds of animals which characteristics are then assembled imaginatively in the mind in the form of a montage which we call a unicorn. So even on your own materialist terms, it is simply not true that the idea of unicorn “came from the physical brain” . It came at least in part from outside the human brain in the form of the sensory perception of objects external to the brain – namely the aforementioned animals – that constituted the raw material out of which the idea of a unicorn emerged For another thing, as I ve argued in an earlier post, the brain and the mind are NOT one and the same thing. Brain does not equal mind. Mind depends on the brain but is not reducible to the brain. It is crucial to understand this point in order to properly grasp the nature of mind-brain interactions. This has important implications for a materialist conception of history . For instance , the SPGB would point to the role of ruling class propaganda in perpetuating capitalism. But what is propaganda but a set of ideas circulating in the social environment which the mind assimilates and acts upon to modify the behavior of the individual concerned. It really does not make much sense in terms of a Marxist theory of society and history to say that “ideas come from the human brain”. Are you suggesting we now have capitalist brains wired up to perpetuate capitalism? Old fashioned identity theory in the cognitive science which cliams that brain states equal mind states has been superseded by non reductive physicalism which sees the relationship between mind and brain as one of token identity rather than type identity. An example of a type identity is “the morning star” and the evening “star” which is the same planet – Venus -seen at different times of the day. Token identity is different…If I were to say that the book I was reading at the moment – let us say, “Wuthering Heights” – was a library book, I would be alluding to a token identity in this case. I would not be saying that there is something about this book called “Wuthering Heights” which means that it can only ever be obtained from a library (one could conceivably purchase it from a bookshop) since that would entail a type identity in which “Wuthering Heights” supervenes on “library book”. I would simply be asserting that this particular copy – or token instance – of the book I am reading, called “Wuthering Heights”, happens to come from a library and that what this indicates is nothing more than a token identity. So it is with the relationship between mental events and neurophysical events. The pain that I experence today may involve a particular neurophysical event and the synaptic firing of a particular neuron but the pain I experienced the day before might have involved a different neurophysical event or process. Of course , every pain involves a neurophysical event just as every copy of Wuthering Heights is a book but it does not follow that my pain must involve the same neurophysical event anymore than every copy of Wuthering Heights must be a library book We know very well that identical cognitive tasks can be performed under quite different neurophysical conditions. I can still add up 2 and 2 and arrive at 4 which I first learnt to do as as child but the neurophysical configuration of my brain is quite different now. It is this assymetry between brain states and mind states that decisively refutes the claim that the latter can be completely explained in terms of the former. That being so one is logically bound to accept the conclusion that mind – at least in its workings – has a degree of autonomy in relation to the brain despite being dependent on the brain We know also that the mind, despite being dependent on the brain , can exert what is called “downward causation”on the brain (as well as being subject to upward causation by the brain) in the form of such phenomena as psychosomatic effects etc which I’ve already touched on. There is a quite interesting discussion of downward causation here:http://www.counterbalance.org/evp-mind/downw-body.html There is another interesting piece here:We can speculate whether the relationship of the mind to the brain represents an emergent quality. Individual brain-cells have no emotion, or memory, or self-consciousness. Consciousness arises through the interactions of billions of brain cells, and once it exists, there is a downward causation: the new structural level of consciousness begins to determine the behavior of the components, as the recently discovered brain functions that are summarized under the term “neuroplasticity” demonstrate. We now know that brain functions can be re-located to new areas of the brain in case of injuries. (Stroke victims learn how to speak again, re-learn motor skills, etc.) Learning a skill will create new synaptic connections, or even trigger the growth of new nerve cells. Consciousness exists within matter, but once it exists it is no longer determined by it. The physical brain is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for consciousness. The human mind, once created, acts according to a logic of motivations, emotions, and thought processes that is no longer determined by physical processes. Rather, it acts by ordering the causal chains of physical systems – The human mind begins to function as a cause in the physical worldhttp://braungardt.trialectics.com/sciences/physics/emergence/
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Consciousness IS a material condition. Therefore to say that ideas take on an independent existence is to say that one material condition becomes independent of all others.Marx wrote:“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”If material conditions do not determine consciousness, then it has always fascinated me to find that 100% of people speak their native language. Why – if people can have ideas independent of their material conditions – didn’t one of my brothers or friends spontaneously speak Chinese or Latin? Why do we all speak English?I think what you doing here is confusing consciousness – or the capacity for consciousness – with the content of consciousness – the thoughts or ideas we entertain in our head. Its the ideas or thoughts I am talking about , not consciousness per se. An idea is not a “material condition” is it? There is no such thing as a unicorn in material reality yet people have the thought of a unicorn. Many of them think that a god exists but I wouldn’t have thought the SPGB of all people would take kindly to the thought that god is part of our material realityYou might say an idea is a ” reflection” of material conditions. It may be but equally it may not be and this is the point that I was trying to convey in saying that ideas have a certain autonomy in that sense and that human beings have a capacity to be creative , to go beyond what materially exists in and through their imaginings. To use the example of the unicorn again, we can certainly trace the various traits of a unicorn to different actually existing animals in material reality. However, in the process of selecting and assembling this montage of traits we go beyond what exists in material reality . We enter a world of surreality I repeat – yes our thought processes depends on material reality, (and quite literally on the human brain). but they are not reducible to the latter. To use again the analogy I used earlier – thoughts are not like mushrooms that grow out of the compost heap that is “material conditions”; they can, for instance grow, out of other thoughts . Reflection can lead to insights that might have never occurred to anyone before.or have never been put into material practice before Material conditions do not not so much generate ideas as filter them. I liken “material conditions” to a kind of censor that allows some ideas to grow while discouraging or banning others . Who gets to act as the censor is question of social power and the balance of forces in society. In any event what this censor does is to try to shape the overall pattern of ideas manifest on society but it does not in the literal sense of the word, give rise to ideas. : it respond to them The belief that it – material conditions – does give rise to ideas actually boils down to a kind of mystical idealism which supposes that there is such a thing as an objective rationality embedded in our material existence. So for example you get the claim made by many on the left that a socialist revolution needs to be preceded by a catastrophic economic crisis – almost as though one can automatically read into a economic crisis the need for a socialist revolution. Thats bollocks frankly because we know that economic crises can just as easily pave the way to a fascist takeover.. There is no objective rationality out there that compels us to read events one way rather than another which means that how we read events is a matter of subjective interpretation. To put it differently, it is the ideas that we hold in our head which conditions our response to material reality rather than material reality conditioning our ideas Point is that this nonsensical idea that there is such a thing as an objective rationality is directly linked to the silly dogma that ideas are simply a reflection of material reality and nothing more.Anyway, this is how I understand the materialist conception of history – not as some kind of crude deterministic model of how ideas come to lodge themselves in people’s heads but as a model which gives due allowance for human creativity and our self evident ability to surpass our material conditions. As I mentioned earlier some of the stuff Marx and Engels wrote might have lent themselves to a crude deterministic interpretation but equally some other stuff that they wrote is much more in keeping with what I think is the correct approach to a materialist conception of history .For example , thisAccording to the materialistic conception of history, the production and reproduction of real life constitutes in the last instance the determining factor of history. Neither Marx nor I ever maintained more. Now when someone comes along and distorts this to mean that the economic factor is the sole determining factor, he is converting the former proposition into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis but the various factors of the superstructure – the political forms of the class struggles and its results – constitutions, etc., established by victorious classes after hard-won battles – legal forms, and even the reflexes of all these real struggles in the brain of the participants, political, juridical, philosophical theories, religious conceptions and their further development into systematic dogmas – all these exercise an influence upon the course of historical struggles, and in many cases determine for the most part their form. There is a reciprocity between all these factors in which, finally, through the endless array of contingencies (i.e…, of things and events whose inner connection with one another is so remote, or so incapable of proof, that we may neglect it, regarding it as nonexistent) the economic movement asserts itself as necessary.(http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21a.htm)
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:RobMy last post is not a reply to your last post. I dont know how it happened but I posted before your post appeared!I reckon it was unseen mystical powers at work that forced your hand! LOL
DJP wrote:. Emergence does not seem to run counter to determinism, the formation of the patterns of snow flakes is a emergent process but I think it would seem not to make sense to say that these are formed through in-determinate means.It is fundamental to Emergence theory that you cannot “reduce” or satisfactorily account for a higher or emergent level of reality in terms of the lower level upon which it “supervenes” So for example : You cannot satisfactorily explain the workings of the mind simply in terms of the neurophysical processes that accompany it or enable it to happen. You cannot explain what goes on at the level of society as a whole simply in terms of the outlook, wants and interests of the individuals who comprise it. The basic idea is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and that certainly does seem to run counter to “determinism” which claims that the parts can explain or determine the whole (methodological individualism) In terms of the MCH, “determinism” refers to the alleged effect of the economic base of society on its “superstructure”.Determinism is only meaningful as one-way causality. Which is nonsense since clearly ” ideas” do affect the economic base in all sorts of ways which I touched on earlier e.g.. technical knowledge, innovation , production motives etc etc . There is in other words “downward causation” to use the terminology of Emergence theory which is being exerted by the higher emergent level (society’s superstructure in this case) upon the economic base upon which it supervenes In other words, in acknowledging the fact of downward causation , we are no longer talking about a deterministic model of society/history but rather one based on the notion of reciprocal influences – albeit hierarchically organized and giving greatest weight to economic factors. Influences have a determining effect, certainly, but your mistake is to infer form that that this means one is putting forward deterministic model . Not so. Rejecting determinism does not necessarily mean one is putting forward the idea of “indeterminate means” – it can mean, for example, a two way or interactive model of causality .Determinism means something much more specific and precise than the mere absence of indetermination or a-causality
Young Master Smeet wrote:robbo203 wrote:If the mind does not exist then presumably, by the same token, neither does society – in which case why are you trying to change the latter? And why are you trying to change people’s…er…minds when they say you cant change it?There is no such thing as Young Master Smeet, only society. Society exists, I don’t, I am an illusion generated by society. Or, rather, my conscious self is a by-product of the facility for language, and since language is inherently social and exists outside any given selfhood, it exists and I merely misrecognise myself through it.
This goes from bad to worse!. Or if you like, from hilarious to sidesplittingly hilarious. You’re surely taking the piss, Bill?Mrs Thatcher’s aphorism was bad enough – “there is no such thing as society only individuals (and their families)” . Now you are telling us (except that it is not “you” who is telling us since you don’t exist! LOL) that the exact opposite is true. What then does society consist of if not individuals, I wonder? What does the very idea of society imply is not a plurality of individuals that interact with each other?Your conscious self, you say, is a “by-product of the facility for language”. While I struggle to understand how a “by product “of something cannot be said to exist if it really is a by product, language itself is a form of communication and communication exists by virtue of the existence of individuals who communicate between each other.. Language itself , in other words, is a by product of interacting individuals and presupposes them. It is not some wonderful gift from the gods handed down to a speechless race of human beings While I cant believe that what you are literally trying to do is deny your existence of an empirical material entity – that would be rather odd thing for a “materialist” to do – I take it that by “you” you mean a sense of selfhood or self-apprehension. Because it is an internalised construction developed through language and socialisation, this makes it an “illusion” in your view. In short, you cant actually touch feel or taste what you call your “self”. Therefore its not real – it doesnt “exist” But, you know, precisely the same thing could be said about “society” which you say quite definitely “exists” and is also a construction in that sense. So why does society exist but not “you” in this sense? Feel free to withdraw your claim that society exists if you think this presents a conceptual problem to your whole line of argument but, I ask you again, if you were to think like Mrs Thatcher that society does not exist then what is the point of trying to change it by working to establish socialism?
I think the point is that you can cherry pick passages from Marx to fit any particular interpretation of the MCH that you want to convey: This is the problem with Marx – there is a certain ambiguity about his formulations. The definitive statement of the MCH is usually taken to be this passage from his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:”In the social production of their life , men enter into definite relationships that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitute the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which corresponds definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life, conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that that determines their being but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” This is the more deterministic Marx – the idea that consciousness is “determined” by social being and not the other way round. I think this is highly misleading because it implies the possibility of a kind temporal priority – that you could have such a thing as “social being” before you have “consciousness” which, of course, is nonsense. This same idea appears in Engel’s comments in a speech he made at Marx’s funeral – namely that because human beings must first eat, have shelter and clothing and so on before they can engage in politics art religion and other ideological endeavours, that this somehow permits one to conclude that the latter can be “explained” in terms of the former. G A Cohen has argued that this is to commit what he calls the “fallacy of equivocation”. The fact that ideological activities may be dependent on material activities does not mean they can therefore be explained by them! It the same with the discussion weve been having on mind brain interactions. Because the mind is dependent on the brain this does not mean that the mind is reducible to, or explicable in terms of , neurophysical events for the reasons I cited (incidentally though I don’t set much credence by this – I find it unbelievable personally – there are some like the British neurologist John Lorber, who claims to have encountered cases of individuals with severe hydrocephalus who effectively have “no brain” – just a head filled with fluid and lined internally with a thin layer of brain tissue. One of these was a mathematician with an IQ of 126! See this for example http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm) But to get back to the point – there is this deterministic streak in the MCH which postulates as the prime moving force in history the developing “material productive forces” to which the “relations of production” will tend to adapt to in the long run (and which in turn are said to “give rise” to a definite form of social consciousness). The question has to be asked however – What causes these productive forces themselves to develop over time? One obvious answer is technological innovation but is this not a case of technical knowledge and hence consciousness? Motives too are an important consideration behind the development of the forces of production- they don’t just develop themselves! – and these often stem from ideological bases . A classic example is the system of Stakhonovite incentives operating in the early Soviet Union which was clearly driven by ideological considerations of catching up with, and surpassing, the West. In short, if one had a mind to, one could just as easily “stand Marx on his head” (as someone once put it ) -just as Marx claimed to have stood Hegel’s on his head – by arguing that it is consciousness that gives rise to the development of material forces . Except, of course, that there are other passages from Marx like the ones you have cherry picked, which tend to redeem him and save him from the charge of being a crude determinist All of which leads to me to think that what I call ” macho-materialism” – the hard line deterministic view of society along with its denunciation of what it calls “Idealism” – is misconceived. I’ve come across this crass approach alll too often in places such as the Revleft forum. If you want to score a victory over your opponent what you’ve gotta do is call then an “idealist” and that settles the matter! Ho ho ho. As if things were that simple. This same kind attitude is I think to an extent also evident in the SPGB and shows up particularly when it comes to justifying its nonsensical policy of excluding religious minded revolutionary socialists. The world is more complex than macho materialism would have us believe. Ideas do have a life of their own and are capable of autonomous development to an extent. They don’t just arise like mushrooms out of a compost in response to prevailing mode of production as this one way model of causality would suggest.. This is what I arguing for – a materialist conception of history which conceives of the “economic base” more in terms of a filtering device in relation to society’s superstructural aspects rather than something that can meaningfully said to ” give rise to” the latter in some crude deterministic sense. Because I don’t think it does
Young Master Smeet wrote:robbo203 wrote:Logically that commits you to the view that a particular mental event can have only one neurophysical correlate . Are you willing to defend this manifestly indefensible and unscientific position?As I have repeatedly said, a computer can perform identical operations using different disk sectors and different parts of the chip. I see no fundamental difference. But each given operation is itself and no other.Just as a C can be played on a guitar string or a on a flute, identical results may come from different routes.
robbo203 wrote:Also, if there is no mind then there can be no such thing as a mind exerting downward causation.I see no problem in brain states causing further brain states.I’m quite happy to say my brain doesn’t exist, and that I don’t exist. i’m just a process or matter and fundamental particles.
You could have fooled me! I distinctly remember meeting you once or twice and Im kind of disappointed to learn now that these responses that appear to come from you are just some kind computer generated spam or whatever… LOLAnyway since you are quite happy to announce to the world that you do not exist then can I assume you are equally happy to endorse Mrs Thatcher’s sentiment that there is no such thing as society?. Would care to explain in that case why you belong to an organisation that ostensibly seeks to overthrow the existing form of society? Society is after all an emergent property of individuals just as the mind is an emergent property of the human brainIf the mind does not exist then presumably, by the same token, neither does society – in which case why are you trying to change the latter? And why are you trying to change people’s…er…minds when they say you cant change it?
ALB wrote:robbo203 wrote:The emergence paradigm which I am advocating here and which I suggest the Party would do well to consider is something that gets round the kind of intractable problems thrown up by a reductionist deterministic model of society.Why? Why does the Party have to commit itself to a particular non-idealist theory of the relationship between mind and matter or between mind and brain? Let a thousand flowers bloom except for the weeds that want to bring some supernatural being into it.
Firstly I didn’t say “commit” – I said “consider”. That means something quite different in my dictionarySecondly , you don’t understand what I’m getting at. Emergence theory is a metaparadigm. Its application is not simply restricted to brain-mind interactions in cognitive science. Its is equally applicable for example to the individual-society interactions in sociology in which society is viewed as an emergent property of individuals that both depends upon and reciprocally influences individuals The point about emergence theory is that it allows you to think about society in non deterministic or non reductionist terms and yet is still in keeping with a materialist conception of history. Thus, it acknowledges that people are creative agents and develop or pursue ideas, even those quite out of sync with their material conditions or material interests – in short, that ideas too have a life of their own and an impact on history – but these ideas are sifted through the material infrastructure of society which determines which survive and prosper and and which fade out and die.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Or, simply put, there is no mind, only brain.So just to be clear – you are collapsing the notion of mind into brain. You are, in other words, putting forward an identity theory of the mind-brain relation. Logically that commits you to the view that a particular mental event can have only one neurophysical correlate . Are you willing to defend this manifestly indefensible and unscientific position? Also, if there is no mind then there can be no such thing as a mind exerting downward causation. There can be no such thing as psychosomatic effects, placebo effects or biofeedback effect whereby , for example, meditation has been scientifically shown to induce lowered heart rates Also if I might be a bit tongue in cheek – if there is no mind how did you come to know this? Did your brain inform you? What you are saying is the exact equivalent of Margaret Thatchers rash statement that there is no such thing as society – only individuals and their families. I could just as easily retort in your case that there is no such thing as the brain – only molecules and their families. No doubt someone else would chip in to say, no, there are no such things as molecules only sub-atomic particles. And so on and so forth. Where will it all end I wonder? Point is that all this follows naturally from your rejection of the notion that higher emergent levels – like the mind, for example – of reality actually exist and are not reducible to lower levels upon which they supervene or depend. The great problem for you then is when you come to explain the existence of these lower levels of reality when we know that below them there are even lower levels of reality so to speak in relation to which even your brain can no longer be said to exist following the logic of your argument….. By claiming there is no such thing as mind you have effectively rendered explanation inexplicable
Young Master Smeet wrote:robbo203 wrote:A particular mind state is a token identity of a particular brain state or neurophysical event but it does not depend on that particular brain state or event in order for that tought to be thought. It does however depend on some brain stateYes, and the some brain state is the same as the mind state in that instance. That’s all I was saying. There are no thoughts separate from the brain. As I said, a computer writes to RAM it will use different hard disk sectors, that doesn’t mean that there is no computer process without hard disk states.
No, again, this is quite wrong. You cannot say the brain state is the same as the mind state in that instance because, as I explained earlier, this is a claim about type identity and you would therefore be advancing Identity theory in that case. The mind state in question cannot possibly be the same as, or reducible to, the brain state in question because that very same mind state can happen still in the case of some other brain state. Therefore they cannot be “the same”. Read the quote on Leibniz law that I posted earlier which will clarify matters I know what you are trying to say but you are formulating it incorrectly . You are saying that for every mind state there is a brain state which is quite true but you cannot deduce from that that the mind state and the brain state in question are one and the same. They are not; they are contingent
Young Master Smeet wrote:So what if you can’t? If you can show any neurons firing, at all, when someone is thinking of a cold glass of beer, that is a brain state. Just because we don’t understand how it works (yet) doesn’t mean that isn’t the case.No Bill you are still missing the point! The point is NOT that the thought of a cold glass of beer depends on a neuron firing somewhere in the brain . Nobody is disputing that. Emergence theory is physicalist in that it fully accepts that the mind depends on the brain . What it disputes is your claim – identity theory – that mind states equal brain states, that you can map one on to the other exactly. This is nonsense and as I say, easily disproven (as I have done with my few examples) Citing evidence such as that the brain is subject, for example, to chemical influences in no way constitute proof of Identity theory which argues for something much much stronger and precise. Emergence theory posits – instead of a type identity between brain states and mind states – something that is called a token identity. A particular mind state is a token identity of a particular brain state or neurophysical event but it does not depend on that particular brain state or event in order for that tought to be thought. It does however depend on some brain state but not any particular precise one. You can reasonably associate certain mind states with certain parts of the brain but thats about as far as you can go. Linking a thought with particular neurophysical event such that it could not happen without that event is absurd and easily disproven as I have said. I think it is important that you grasp the difference because you are confusing these things. What emergence theory says is that while the mind depends – or ” supervenes” – on the brain it is not reducible to the brain . To use the technical jargon , when we experience something like , say, “pain” it is an experience that is “multiply realisable” through a variety of neurophysical events or states which moreover, may be “wildly disjunctive” in the sense that these different “supervenient bases” may have little in common and may not necessarily be related to one another in any law-like fashion. All this may seem a bit remote and technical but it actually ties in very well with the theme of this thread – materialism and determinism . If mind states are not reducible to brain state this opens up the possibility of what is called “downward causation”. – that thoughts can actually influence brain states and that it is not just one way traffic we are talking about. There is a huge amount of pretty solid scientific evidence to support this in the form of psycho-somatic effects. Perhaps the best known of these is the placebo effect where mere belief in a remedy, such as a particular drug, is sufficient to cause that “remedy” to be effective. Researchers conducting double-blind studies on subjects have been able to verify that such an effect does indeed exist. Not only that, biofeedback studies and the like have shown that certain biological processes previously thought to be autonomous or involuntary (such as heart rate, vascular responses and sympathetic discharges) are capable of being brought under conscious control. All of which suggests that as far as the relationship between the mind and the brain is concerned causality cannot simply construed as a one way process. The emergence paradigm which I am advocating here and which I suggest the Party would do well to consider is something that gets round the kind of intractable problems thrown up by a reductionist deterministic model of society. To deny the theoretical possibility of downward causation exerted by a higher emergent level upon a lower level upon which it supervenes would be to commit oneself to a frankly absurd and untenable position. For example, how would I account for the actions of a robber who decided to break into a jewelers shop? As a thoroughgoing reductionist, I would have to disregard the state of mind of this robber and merely consider the neurophysical processes at work inside his brain. But why stop there? One could further break down this whole complex event – from the robber raising the brick to throwing it with sufficient force required to break the window – by visualising it simply as a complex sequence of molecular activities. Indeed, such an explanation at the molecular level could be rendered superfluous by reducing it still further to an atomic – or even sub-atomic – level of analysis. In fact, it is theoretically possible to imagine a process of infinite regression whereby a perfectly reasonable explanation for what the robber did would constantly evade us where, had we had the good sense to apply Occam Razor, we might have simply concluded that it was motivated by the desire to steal that tray of wedding rings on display! This is the reductio ad absurdum argument in favour of downward causation. If you reject the possibility of downward causation then you are in effect saying, for example, that society can have no influence on the individual. In emergence theory society is an emergent property of individuals. There can be no society without individuals just as there can be no minds without brains However, society can no more be reduced the level of the individuals than thought s can be reduced to brain neurons. If you reject that then what you are effectively saying is that the society we have exactly accords with the psychological make up of the individual – just as mind state can be exactly mapped onto brain states. In which case there is not a hope in hells chance of ever achieving socialism!
Young Master Smeet wrote:robbo203 wrote:It is pretty easy to refute the proposition that there is a “type identity” between brain states and mind states. For example, identical cognitive tasks can be performed by different individuals – whose brains may not be exactly identical in their biochemistry and neuro-anatomical make-up – even using different parts of the brain to perform these tasks. Similarly, identical cognitive tasks can be performed by the same individuals at different times in their life despite the neurophysical re-configuration that would have occurred in the process of aging. I could go on piling up many more examples which would completely undermine the case for identity theoryBirds and bats have different shaped wings, but wing states equal flying states, and similar effects in general can be achieved through different means.We know in this day and age that CAT scanners can see the response to stimuli in the brain, and we can even have computer interface technology that can ‘read’ to a certain extent the minds of the users.http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134682-hackers-backdoor-the-human-brain-successfully-extract-sensitive-data
This is completely irrelvant, Bill, and you must surely realise this. The link you provided does not demonstrate what you claim. What it proposes, if I have read it correctly, is a procedure or algorithm whereby you can progressively arrive at the truth – rather like a game of charades – using something called a P300 response to point you in the right direction You cannot map a particular thought -say, the thought of a cold glass of beer on a hot summers day – onto to some particular pattern of neuronal firing such that for this thought to re-occur requires the exact repetition of that particular pattern of neuronal firing. That is what I mean by brain states not being identical to mind states. Yes CAT scanners can as you say read ” to a certain extent ” the responses to stimuli in the brain just as lie detectors can make a reasonably accurate quess as to whether you are telling the truth or not but that is a world away from substantiating the position taken up by identity theory Your analogy of birds and bats is inapt anyway and precisely for the reason you offer that “similar effects in general can be achieved through different means” . This is what I was trying to tell you with my various examples refuting identity theory. Thus “identical cognitive tasks can be performed by the same individuals at different times in their life despite the neurophysical re-configuration that would have occurred in the process of aging.”. Quite so. Which means there can be no one-to-one mapping of mind states onto brain states. Which means Identity theory has been refuted.
ALB wrote:robbo203 wrote:Well, its more than an argument about what do we mean by knowledge; it is also an argument about what we mean by rationality. I hope that it is now clear and apparent to all that the notion that you can call one group of people who hold religious beliefs as irrational and another group who are socialists as rational is an utter absurdity. . It is absurd not only because it is entirely possible for a religious person to want and understand socialism and therefore be a socialist but also because there is no such thing as a person who is not both rational and irrationalThis is a bit of a caricature of our position. I don’t think any member says that all religious people are irrational or that all socialists are entirely rational. What we are talking about is taking a rational attitude, i.e. one based on tested and verified evidence, to the evolution of the Earth, of life, of humans and of society but, more importantly, about social change, ie accepting that humans make history and that gods don’t intervene in this.I don’t think even you would be in favour of admitting every religious person who agreed with socialism (and getting it through majority democratic political action) whatever their religious views, would you? Take this lot for instance:http://www.paradism.org/Some good stuff there about a world without money.Then there’s this, which is not bad either, which reveals who they are:http://www.raelpress.org/news.php?item.274.1And who are the Raelians? What do they stand for? According to the wikipedia entry on them:
Quote:Raëlism, or the Raëlian Church, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 byClaude Vorilhon, now known as Raël. The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human and when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans they made, they previously misinformed (on purpose) early humanity that they were angels, cherubs or gods. Raëlians believe messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others who informed humans of each era. The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism )Over to you, Robbo. Rational or irrational? Acceptable or not?
I think it is certainly implied in the Party’s position that individual’s with religious beliefs cannot be admitted, no matter how sympathetic to the socialist cause, because they cannot be trusted to stick to the party case. The suggestion is made that if such individuals were to be admitted they might in time become a majority and thus by a process of boring from within – entryism – subvert the Party and what it stands for. This is an essentialist view of religious minded individuals . You are not just talking about the need for “taking up a rational attitide” You are saying that religious people cannot take up such a rational attitude because they are religious, this despite the fact that Ive shown that religious ideas can be highly rational in that sense. Saying something is rational is NOT the same thing as saying it is sound and you constantly tend to confuse these two things. Do you know what “rationality” is? In any case, you forget that membership of the SPGB depends on many things not just (currently) on a rejection of religion. The membership application form, if I remember correctly, asks applicants for their views on such things as what is capitalism, what is socialism, class struggle , reformism , leadership and the need to democratically capture state power to abolish capitalism amongst other things So my answer to your question is that someone who is a Raelian cultist is: 1) probably very unlikely to want to even apply for membership of the SPGB so you are worrying about nothing . The process of “self selection” would take care of your concernsand2) Even if he or she did apply his or her Raelian views on all these other much more important aspects of the Party case would presumably soon or later reveal themselves in the very process of applying for membership and so would lead to rejection of the applicant. You don’t need to screen out Raelians on the basis of their religious beliefs – a sufficiently dense screen or barrier already exists to ensure that such people do not get into the Party. One other thing that is often overlookied is that membership of a relgion does NOT imply acceptance of everything that that religion stands for. Most , or many, catholics, for example, reject the Church’s teachings on contraception, sex before marriage and abortion. So you have to look at the individual religious applicant on a case by case basis and not just assume what he or she thinks on the basis of his or her religion The problem with the Party – and this is where is shows its irrational side too – is that it cannot seem to see that if you explicitly incorporate opposition to any and every form of religious beliefs into this “protective screen”, you effectively screen out all sorts of people who are as much socialists as you but who just happen to have certain religious beliefs that in no way interfere with their socialist convictions. People like Northern lights, for example. This is just absurd. There is no rational justification for doing this and in fact it makes the SPGB itself look like a religious cult itself in competition with other religious cults: “we are the pure ones, we are the chosen people”. Bollocks to that. I want socialism and therefore I adopt a hands-on pragmatic view to getting socialism which means getting as many people as possible to join the cuase and as quickly as possible. I have no interest in dogmatically displaying my “socialist purity” If someone’s religious ideas were ever going to interfere with their socialist convictions then this would come out “in the wash”, so to speak, and show itself in one form or another – perhaps in the form of advocacy of some form of political leadership and the abandonment of a democratic approach to politics. Fine – if that happens, then expel the individual on those grounds but don’t presume that the religious applicant to the Party is going to develop those ideas, automatically . That is a prejudiced and irrational position to take but it is one that the Party unquestionably does take. One could just as easily say that because 99% of atheists are non socialists and some of these are enthusiastically pro capitalist – that one should therefore ban atheists from joing the party Thats nonsense but so is the party’s attitude to religious applicants
