[robbo203]

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

[robbo203]

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?

[robbo203]

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.

[robbo203]

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

[robbo203]

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 state 

Yes, 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

[robbo203]

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!

[robbo203]

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 theory

Birds 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.

[robbo203]

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 irrational

This 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

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Can you please explain  how “the mind is matter”?  How is the thought that I am thinking right now that I fancy a cold beer and a pizza , “material”?  For sure it might be influenced by  material considerations – I am hungry , I am thirsty,  the weather is hot etc etc  – but does that make my thought , “matter” as such? What, for that matter,  is “matter”?  

Mind states = Brain states. We know brains are there.  We know that mind states can be altered by chemical influence on brains, and by physical interference.  We have no evidence, whatsoever, of a none material mind beyond the brain.

 But mind states don’t equal brain states!  This is old fashioned “Identity theory”  you are talking about which has long been  overtaken by “emergence theory” in the cognitive sciences – at least  since the 1970s if not earlier 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 theory Of course mind states can be altered by chemical influences but  in no way does that demonstrate  mind states = brain  states.  Causation and correlation do not in themselves constitute evidence that a mental state is ontologically identical – and, hence, reducible – to a brain state.   As Max Velmans notes: Ontological identity is symmetrical. If A is ontologically identical to B, then B is ontologically identical to A.  Ontological identity also obeys Leibniz’s Law which states that if A is identical to B then all the properties of A are also properties of B and vice versa (A and B must exist at the same time, occupy the same location in space and so on. A classic example of apparently different entities being shown by science to be one and the same are the “morning star” and the “evening star” which are just the same planet Venus (viewed in the morning and evening) (Velmans, Max, 1996 “Goodbye to Reductionism” In S. Hameroff, A Kaszniac, A.Scott (eds), Towards a Science of Consciousness: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, MIT Press, pp.45-52, 1998This is simply not the case with brain states and mind statesYour problem is that you think that if mind states do not equal brain states then somehow this suggests there must be a “non material mind beyond the brain”. But it doesn’t!   Indeed,  this is whole point about non-reductive physicalism. It is actually a monistic materialist theory – ironically enough  – that asserts that there is no mind without the brain but,  unlike identity theory , argues that the mind cannot  possibly be reducible to the brain or to neurophysical activity 

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

I wasn’t appealing to authority, just referring people following this thread to the opposite point of view.But I don’t see what your problem is. Those studying sub-atomic particles observed that this part of the universe (of everything) moves in a different way from other parts and came up with a theory to explain this (quantum physics). I don’t see how the Observer Effect is a problem, it’s just another observation to be taken into account when formulating a theory (essentially describing the pattern observed). It doesn’t mean that the universe has a mind or is a mind. That’s a hypothesis of course just as is that a god created the universe in 5 or 6 days. Whether it’s worth testing any more than the Creationist view is a matter of debate, not that I can see how it could be tested. It doesn’t seem to be taken seriously by most people involved in this research and analysis.I’m not an expert in quantum or any other kind of physics, but this is an argument about what do we mean by knowledge.

 Well, its more than an argument about what do we mean by knowledge; it is also an arguement 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 irrational We have discussed quantum physics on this thread and the religious views of physicists like Peter Russell who draws on his understanding of Physics.  Whatever you might think  of Russell’s views and whether or not they are sound, they are not irrational in the ordinary sense of the word. Russell and others like him, marshall a great deal of scientific  evidence and logic to make their case and this hardly constitutes an example of a irrational mind at work.  Maybe a deluded mind  – the jury is still out on that one – but not an irrational mind I recently came across a book by someone called Ray Percival  –  The Myth of the Closed Mind: Understanding Why and How People Are Rational.  I have not read it  but it seems that Percival ‘s argument is that people always are inevitably rational.  I think this going too far but we seem to have the opposite problem  with the SPGB which holds that religious people are irrational and justifies the exclusion of religious  people from the organization on the grounds that a socialist organisation requires a rational approach to changing society and admitting religious and therefore irrational people will undermine the socialist project.   This is false not just because socialists too are fully capable or being irrational at times  but also because  religious ideaa, whatever else they may be,  are often highly rational and sophisticated ideas. as we have seen   The SPGB needs to follow up on this insight  and come to the rational conclusion that you don’t actually need the bar on religious applicants to ensure the socialist nature of the organisation and that without such a bar you have everything you could possibly need to ensure that only socialists  can join the SPGB  – whether they be religious or not

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

As a layperson  I do find  phenomena such as the Observer Effect,  which seems to be an established fact in quantum physics to be somewhat troubling.  How can the mere fact of a person observing a laboratory experiment actually affect the result – in this case when  a beam of electrons is emitted?  I cant  get my head around this one .  If this is indeed the case what does it imply?  .  Can you explain that to me in simple plain terms becuase it is precisely phenomena like this  that people like Russell see as providing providing scientific proof  for their theories of the universe

You had me worried for a second there that I had misunderstood the observer effect, but a quick cross check to Wikipedia: “In physics, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.” Seems simple to me, in experiments, measuring can change the state of things being measured.  At a macro scale, most often not a problem, but at the micro and below, this is significant.

 Well yes I understand the point you are making but – and here I might be qute wrong as I am not a physicist –  I thought that the “observer effect” entailed more than just what is called the “measurement problem” – the influence of  some measuring instrument on what is being measured.  After all,  to determine whether there has been effect at all you surely have to measure both before and after  the event  which suggests that what is being measured is the effect of the presence of the human observer  independently of the measuring intrument itself and not the effect of this measuring instrument as such.  At any rate, thats how I understood it. The more wacky interpretation of this is that it is the actual “thought wave” or “force field”  of the observer that is somehow interfering with the behaviour of the electrons. But then what do I know.  Perhaps what we we need on this forum is a competent physicist who can puts us all out of our misery! Anyway for what its worth I came across this at Belief.net  (which means it will probably go down like a lead balloon on this forum!):In the late 1920s, scientists-led by Neils Bohr–were convinced, based on observations of their data and mathematics, that our reality was dependent on an “observer effect,” an interplay between how our reality manifests and how we observe it. It became known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, Albert Einstein’s followers, by far the majority of physicists at the time, disagreed, and spent the next 40 years searching for the “hidden variable” that would explain quantum mechanics and enable them to do away with the Copenhagen interpretation.Finally, in 1964, physicist John S. Bell came up with a mathematical theorem, known as Bell’s inequality (or theorem), which, for the first time, made it possible to physically test which of these two views was the correct one. Henry Stapp, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley and an authority on the implications of Bell’s theorem, believes that all the strange concepts we have learned to adjust to since Einstein–where time goes slower as we goes faster; where the mass of the sun bends space such that earth travels in an ellipse while also going in a straight line through space; the atom bomb; quantum tunneling; and the like–are merely the tip of the iceberg. The heavy-duty, bottom line all along has been, “Is the observer effect real?”The first experimental test of Bell’s theorem was conducted eight years later, in 1972, by Professor John Clauser at UC Berkeley. Clauser conceived his experiment in 1969 while at Columbia University, and completed it in 1972 at Berkeley using calcium atoms. The results were that reality is based on an observer effect. In 1973, Holt and Pipkin repeated the experiment using mercury atoms, which was repeated by Clauser in 1976-and both showed conclusively the observer effect is real.In 1975 scientists at Columbia repeated a 1974 experiment done in Italy, again confirming the observer effect. In 1976, Lamehi-Rachti and Mittig at the Saclay Nuclear Research Center in Paris carried out another experiment, which again confirmed the observer effect.The final bit of evidence came in a March 1999 article in Nature by Alain Aspect from the University of Paris-South, in Orsay, France. He announced the conclusions of his team’s experiment, which closely aligned with the requirements of Bell’s theorem. Again, the results were in favor of the observer effect.So here we are, faced with the most startling discovery in the scientific history of mankind, and very few people know a thing about it. Recall that when we were faced with the discovery that the earth goes around the sun, it took the general population well over a century to adopt this as fact. We still speak of the sun rising and setting.Now we are faced with the notion that there is an interplay between our local space-time reality and human consciousness. Worse yet, it means objects are not really solid. Here I will summarize points made by Evan Harris Walker, writing in his book, The Physics of Consciousness: Strained by the conflicts between Einstein and Bohr over the ultimate meaning of quantum mechanics, subjected to further stress in Bell’s theorem, and finally ripped through in recent tests, the whole cloth of the materialistic picture of reality must now be rejected. We must now recognize that objective reality is a flawed concept, and that consciousness is a negotiable instrument of reality.We stand at the threshold of a revolution in thinking that transcends anything that has happened in 1,000 years. Now the observer, consciousness, something self-like or mind-like, becomes a provable part of a richer reality than physics or any science has ever dared to envision.Why hasn’t this incredible discovery reached the front cover of Time magazine? Give it a couple of decades. We have yet to figure out how to handle it.http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Pagan-and-Earth-Based/2003/12/Shamanic-Healing-Why-It-Works.aspx?p=1

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

However, I dont know if I would go along with the rest of what Russell is talking about  but whatever else one might think of this point oif view, one thing is certain –  I dont think you can can reasonably come away from it with the dismissive  notion that this is just  some sort of irrational mubo jumbo. It is a highly thoughtful attempt to make sense of reality whether in the end  you agree with it or not.

Well, having looked at his CV, his website and what others have said of him, I’m afraid I’m inclined to the opposite conclusion: that, as someone has put it, he’s just spouting “New Age nonsense pseudo- scientific babble”. One of many who have misconstrued quantum physics as a repudiation of materialism and a confirmation of idealism, mysticism and religion. Not our cup of tea.For an opposite view to “quantum mystics” like Russell see:http://www.csicop.org/si/show/quantum_quackery/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism

 It might not be your “cup of tea” but it does not mean the guy is not attempting to put forward a rational argument to support his thesis and that surely is the point.  His thesis may or may not be correct but that doesnt necessarily make it “irrational” I really dont know what to make of Russell’s argument.  I’m not a physicist, and neither, I think,  are you,  but I would be wary of just  dismissing someone as spouting ” New Age nonsense pseudo-scienttific babble” without fully understanding the arguments.  – though I note that the references you provide don’t make any mention of Russell and it is not clear  to whom you are attributing this quote.   Appealing to authority may well be a source of comfort and a means of reaffirming one’s prejudices but it is not a substititude for rational argument and only goes to show that you, like me – indeed like everyone else – has an irrational side. As a layperson I do find phenomena such as the Observer Effect,  which seems to be an established fact in quantum physics to be somewhat troubling.  How can the mere fact of a person observing a laboratory experiment actually affect the result – in this case when  a beam of electrons is emitted?  I can’t get my head around this one .  If this is indeed the case what does it imply?  .  Can you explain that to me in simple plain terms because it is precisely phenomena like this  that people like Russell see as providing providing scientific proof  for their theories of the universe

[robbo203]

TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:

How can mind be anything other than matter? What is wrong with determinism? The case for socialism depends on it? Without ‘crude determinism’ there  is no science. In fact without ‘crude determinism’ we wouldn’t have the confidence  to move or get up out of bed. The attack on ‘determinism’ is a defence of capitalism. 

 Well no  – I would have thought it was exactly the other way round. It is the belief that our future is not  predetermined that give us hope that there can be an alternative to capitalism. Otherwise what you are advocating is teleology and this is specifically what Marx rejected.  Thus  he welcomed Darwin’s Origin of the Species  precisely because “it deals a death blow to teleology in the natural sciences” (Marx’s letter to Engels , January 16, 1861 Selected Correspondence Moscow 1975).  In The German Ideology he dismissed the notion that “later history is…the goal of earlier history” as a “speculative distortion”.Of course things are “determined” in the sense that something  happens because of something that happened before.  But “crude” determinism purports to explain the total picture and not just individual events. This is why I recommended Castoriadis’ text – because it has some rather useful things to say about determinism and its scope.  A rejection of teleology does not mean a rejection of causality as such and this is perhaps where the confusion arises. ThusContrary to what the idealist philosophers said , history is the area par excellence where causality makes sense to us for it assumes there at the very outset, the form of motivation.  We can  therefore understand the “causal concatenation” in it, something we can never do in the case of natural phenomena.  An electric current makes the bulb glow.  The law of gravity causes the moon to be in such and such a place in the sky at such and such a time.  These are, and for us, will always remain , external connexions: necessary, predictable , but incomprehensible.  But if A treads on B’s toes, B swears at him, and A responds with blows, we understand the necessity of the links even if we consider them contingent”  (History as Creation p.14-5)However when comes to consider history in general terms, unpredictability or indeterminacy expresses itself as  “an emergence or creation of which cannot be deduced  from what was there before, as a conclusion which exceeds the premisses or  positing of new premisses” (ibid p.17).  Hence , my  suggestion that we need to think instead in terms of emergence theory.  David Graeber, in summing up the broad outlines of Roy Bhaskar’s “critical realist” approach, alludes to emergence theory thus:Reality can be divided into emergent stratum: just as chemistry presupposes but cannot be reduced to physics so biology presupposes but cannot be reduced to chemistry, or the human sciences to biology.  Different sorts of mechanisms are operating on each. Each, furthermore, achieves a certain autonomy from those below: it would be impossible to even talk about human freedom were this not the case, since our actions would simply be determined by chemical and biological processes.(Graeber D, 2001,  Towards and Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, Palgrave p.52-3)You might want to ask yourself – if our actions were simply determined by chemical  and biological processes what then would become of the Marxian claim that “men make their own history” albeit under conditions not of their own making.  Is it rather that chemical and biological processes make history and human beings are just means by which they do so?The point is not only that different sorts of mechanisms operate at each stratum of reality but  also most and especially in the case of society, within society.  There is not just one “master mechanism” that  determines how we think and pushes society in a given directionThere is a great quote from Carolyn Merchant  which kind of sums up rather well how I see the relationship between the ideas people hold and the nature of the society they live in.  Note that at the individual level the ideas are not strictly predetermined by society – “crude determinism”  – as a whole but rather it is that at the aggregate level that a “determined” pattern begins to emerge:An array of ideas exists available to a given age: some of these for unarticulated  or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not.  Some ideas spread; others die out.  But the direction and accumulation of social changes begin to differentiate between among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery.  Out of this differential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particular social conditions, cultural transformations develop (The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific Revolution,  Harper and Row 1980 p.xviii)

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Yeah but then you are only assuming what you need to prove – that there is only one kind of  “stuff”. I’m saying this with my devil’s advocate cap on but how would go about  proving that  ” mind is  matter” – as opposed to, say, mind is influenced by matter?

I don’t think you could solve the monism (there is one kind of stuff) / dualism (there are two kinds of stuff i.e.. mind and matter) debate empirically, it has to be done logically.If there are two completely separate realms that follow different laws how can these realms meet and interact with each other?If the realms do meet and interact with each other are they not one after all?This is the classic argument for accepting a monist viewpoint, probably stated quite badly.Once we accept everything is ‘one kind of stuff’ we can either take an idealist view, everything is mental. But this poses the problem of other minds…Or, we can take the materialist viewpoint, everything is matter and minds are at least an effect of matter…But then we have the problem of consciousness, the ‘Hard Problem’ as it is known to some.Perhaps ‘Panpsychism’ is not such a silly idea after all?Anyone read A.N Whitehead?

 Hhmmm  The problem is that again you are making assumptions that  appear to undercut your own argument.  (incidentally, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your argument  but am just engaging in a bit of “devils advocacy” to try to get a bit closer to the truth, whatever that is). You say the monism/dualism debate cannot be solved empirically but only logically.  How so, logically? The classic argument for monism,you say, is that if the  the realms of mind and matter meet and interact they must be one and the same thing,  But why “must ” they be?  Logically if you think about it,  if they ” meet and interact” this presupposes their separateness to begin with,  not their oneness.  Something cannot meet itself and interact with itself.   So you cant exactly use the meet and interact argument  to make the case for monism .  Which means the logical argument for monism  does not seem to be anymore up to scratch ]than the empirical approach Also, going along with this line of argument could be said to make your argument vulnerable to the claims of idealism   You say idealism poses the problem of “other minds”..  However that is an empirical problem  and you’ve  just agreed that you cannot solve the monism/  dualism problem empirically.anwyay.  All of which means you are left with material or idealism (and nothing in between ) with no reliable means of choosing between them.  Each has to be considered just as legitimate as the other Personally I think the only way of out this dilemma is emergence theory  which is monist in the sense that  it takes mind to be dependent on matter  but at the same time does not seek to reduce mind  to matter.  In other words you can only hold on to a monist viewpoint  at the expense of a deterministic  viewpoint

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

 I think it may be easier if I rephrase: “If there is only one kind of stuff and this kind of stuff follows deterministic laws then minds must follow these laws as well. Therefore ‘free will’ as traditionally concieved cannot exist.”Maybe that answers some of your other points?

 Yeah but then you are only assuming what you need to prove – that there is only one kind of  “stuff”. Im saying this with my devil’s advocate cap on but how would go about  proving that  ” mind is  matter” – as opposed to, say, mind is influenced by matter?Incidentally, would the converse be true  – is matter , mind?    This seems to be the position held by Peter Russell who I mentioned on the religion thread and who holds that consciousness is immanent in the universe (see the “Observer Effect” proof) and is not dependent on the brain but is , rather  “amplified”  by the brain

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