Young Master Smeet
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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
Gnome wrote:This is no longer necessarily the case with the discovery in recent years of solar systems with ‘earth-like’ planets.Indeed, but there is evidence to suggest that the leap from single celled life to multi-cellular is by no means direct or automatic: so the probability is that the vast majority of these life bearing planets have nothing more than amoeba on them. Even if we suppose that a few others have made the leap to complex life, it remains unlikely that they have made the further step to intelligent life. Even if they did achieve something like intelligence, there’s no reason at all to suggest that it would be something that we could recognise or comprehend, as they would be the specific products of their own evolutionary chain.Anyway, my point in sharing the quote was that the narcisissism involved is similar to the idea of God (especially the wacky idea that a transcendant entity would have a relationship to our minds that we have to an ant, never mind any sense of reciprocity or obligation).Interestingly, Grant Allen was a proponent of the Ghost Theory of God (which early party members gave some credence to, I believe). Anyway, his interestingly looking book is available online.The evolution of the idea of God: http://archive.org/stream/evolutionofideao00alle#page/n5/mode/2upI believe it is superceded by modern anthropology, but still, it has that Victorian brio about it. Of course, part of the point of materialism is that ideas do have an origin and an evolutionary basis.
Some of this debate has put me in mind of Grant Allen’s The British Barbarians(link)please forgive the extended quote
Grant Allen, 1848-1899 wrote:Now, don’t be deceived by nonsensical talk about living beings in other planets. There are no such creatures. It’s a pure delusion of the ordinary egotistical human pattern. When people chatter about life in other worlds, they don’t mean life—which, of a sort, there may be there:—they mean human life—a very different and much less important matter. Well, how could there possibly be human beings, or anything like them, in other stars or planets? The conditions are too complex, too peculiar, too exclusively mundane. We are things of this world, and of this world only. Don’t let’s magnify our importance: we’re not the whole universe. Our race is essentially a development from a particular type of monkey-like animal—the Andropithecus of the Upper Uganda eocene. This monkey-like animal itself, again, is the product of special antecedent causes, filling a particular place in a particular tertiary fauna and flora, and impossible even in the fauna and flora of our own earth and our own tropics before the evolution of those succulent fruits and grain-like seeds, for feeding on which it was specially adapted. Without edible fruits, in short, there could be no monkey; and without monkeys there could be no man.””But mayn’t there be edible fruits in the other planets?” Frida inquired, half-timidly, more to bring out this novel aspect of Bertram’s knowledge than really to argue with him; for she dearly loved to hear his views of things, they were so fresh and unconventional.”Edible fruits? Yes, possibly; and animals or something more or less like animals to feed upon them. But even if there are such, which planetoscopists doubt, they must be very different creatures in form and function from any we know on this one small world of ours. For just consider, Frida, what we mean by life. We mean a set of simultaneous and consecutive changes going on in a complex mass of organised carbon compounds. When most people say ‘life,’ however,—especially here with you, where education is undeveloped—they aren’t thinking of life in general at all (which is mainly vegetable), but only of animal and often indeed of human life. Well, then, consider, even on this planet itself, how special are the conditions that make life possible. There must be water in some form, for there’s no life in the desert. There must be heat up to a certain point, and not above or below it, for fire kills, and there’s no life at the poles (as among Alpine glaciers), or what little there is depends upon the intervention of other life wafted from elsewhere—from the lands or seas, in fact, where it can really originate. In order to have life at all, as WE know it at least (and I can’t say whether anything else could be fairly called life by any true analogy, until I’ve seen and examined it), you must have carbon, and oxygen, and hydrogen, and nitrogen, and many other things, under certain fixed conditions; you must have liquid water, not steam or ice: you must have a certain restricted range of temperature, neither very much higher nor very much lower than the average of the tropics. Now, look, even with all these conditions fulfilled, how diverse is life on this earth itself, the one place we really know—varying as much as from the oak to the cuttle-fish, from the palm to the tiger, from man to the fern, the sea-weed, or the jelly-speck. Every one of these creatures is a complex result of very complex conditions, among which you must never forget to reckon the previous existence and interaction of all the antecedent ones. Is it probable, then, even a priori, that if life or anything like it exists on any other planet, it would exist in forms at all as near our own as a buttercup is to a human being, or a sea-anemone is to a cat or a pine-tree?””Well, it doesn’t look likely, now you come to put it so,” Frida answered thoughtfully: for, though English, she was not wholly impervious to logic.”Likely? Of course not,” Bertram went on with conviction. “Planetoscopists are agreed upon it. And above all, why should one suppose the living organisms or their analogues, if any such there are, in the planets or fixed stars, possess any such purely human and animal faculties as thought and reason? That’s just like our common human narrowness. If we were oaks, I suppose, we would only interest ourselves in the question whether acorns existed in Mars and Saturn.” He paused a moment; then he added in an afterthought: “No, Frida; you may be sure all human beings, you and I alike, and thousands of others a great deal more different, are essential products of this one wee planet, and of particular times and circumstances in its history. We differ only as birth and circumstances have made us differ.”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 universeYou 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.
Lo All,just to try a different take. The existence or otherwise of Bod isn’t a scientific matter, it is a question of a social relation.Being Savannah apes, we can only relate to entities using our theory of mind we have evolved with. Any supposedly greater being produces mental states of submission, obligation and obedience.Whether these mental relations are expressed in formal ritual or not, they are there, and we have every reason to want to challenge such mental processes.
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.
I always thnk of free-will as being something like a coin toss. That is random, unpredictable and free.As humans, we have a working theory of mind that seems to comprehend and predict the behaviour of others. Our brains are therefore not random, and are thus subject to rational processses and determination. I should add, that I don’t actually exist, I’m merely the delusion of myself created by my theory of mind and language, whereas in fact on rational examination what i call me is a series of self regulating biological and chemical processes beyond my control. To finish, fellow robots, because I’m short of time, I’ll add that my understanding of the laws of thermodynamics suggests that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The only way free will could manifest itself would be as causeless effects, which don’t happen.
robbo203 wrote:What you are saying, in other words, is that only individuals who entertain a theistic conception of god/Bob as something that intervenes actively in human affairs in contradiction to a historical materialist approach (“human beings make their own history” blah blah) should be barred membership of the SPGB . Yes?What that means, if I read you correctly, is that , according to you, people who hold a deistic notion of god ( a non interventionist freemarket kinda god) or who hold pantheistic or Buddhist views or who believe in an afterlife or even so called paranormal events (which our Mr Buick seems to be so obsessed with) should be allowed entry.No, I’m saying conscious materialists should be allowed entry. People who might believe in a creator that buggered off (and had no pre-ordained plan for its creation, no established set of values embued in its creation) and has no practical effect or value are practical materialists. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and a value laden universe. They also believe in a pre-ordained order. As I’ve said, the religious often self exclude themselves because they are unwilling to sign up to materialism.
Quote:Well, what about the compromise idea discussed earlier of allowing socialists in who hold personal religious beliefs but not those who belong to organised religions?That approach would admit William Blake, or a Southern Baptist who doesn’t go to church. The problem isn’t just organised religion, disorganised religion is a problem as well.I think a far simpler dividing line is we accept conscious materialists, who don’t think the party is doing Bob’s work, nor that socialism is divinely ordained or part of Bob’s plan.I would, though, give a possible pass to worshipers of Glycon, especially those who make their own sock puppet.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyconhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9669000/9669590.stm
Just a couple of quick points.The membership test exists to ensure that all members of the party are equal (rather than, as many other organisations do, relying on ad hoc notions of soundness).The party is a materialist party, grounded in an approach that says humans make history, and create their own institutions. this approach as a matter of course precludes any approach to the world that involves intervention by transcendent entities, be they God, D’jinn or Faeries.Now, someone who believe Bob created the universe and then buggered off and does not, cannot have any say in its workings is not necessarilly in contradiction with that position, though they may hold that there is an ideal to which the universe normitively does/should (especially should) tend and that is incompatible with a materialist approach.But, let’s not forget, that the membership test cuts both ways. We are also telling applicants where we stand, and if they feel that their religious position is incompatible with our tennets, then they don’t join. If their belief that Bob created the world is sufficiently strong that they can’t simply say: “OK, renouncing it doesn’t matter” then really they don’t want to join.The point is, in discussion, does the applicant show adherence to materialist method to such an extent that they can be trusted to vote on party policy. That is the only member benefit they gain. Else they can attend branches, speak, help out, vote for us, etc.
We have the biography of Haywood in the library. He was the leader of the Mineworkers union in the States, and also a big noise, IIRC, in the IWW. He was serially tried for murder during the violence that accompanied the typical strikes in the US mining fields, and eventually emigrated to the USSR where he lived out a quiet life, and IIRC died of alcoholism (he was an orthodox CPer by that point). Just double checked his Wikipedia article… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haywood
Hud955 wrote:They can do it because every loan creates a deposit. (So far so good).And herein, like says law, is the Achilles heal. Why does a loan create a deposit? What if I draw my loan out as cash? A certain percentage of loans will go out into cash and will not come back into the banks but will continue to circulate.
On the question of secondary exploitation, I had a half remembered quote, which I’ve managed to find.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm
Engels’ On the Housing Question wrote:The distribution of this surplus value, produced by the working class and taken from it without payment, among the non-working classes proceeds amid extremely edifying squabblings and mutual swindling. In so far as this distribution takes place by means of buying and selling, one of its chief methods is the cheating of the buyer by the seller, and in retail trade, particularly in the big towns, this has become an absolute condition of existence for the sellers. When, however, the worker is cheated by his grocer or his baker, either in regard to the price or the quality of the commodity, this does not happen to him in his specific capacity as a worker. On the contrary, as soon as a certain average level of cheating has become the social rule in any place, it must in the long run be leveled out by a corresponding increase in wages. The worker appears before the small shopkeeper as a buyer, that is, as the owner of money or credit, and hence not at all in his capacity as a worker, that is, as a seller of labour power. The cheating may hit him, and the poorer class as a whole, harder than it hits the richer social classes, but it is not an evil which hits him exclusively or is peculiar to his class.Again, if generalised personal debt becomes the norm, in order to make up for falling wages, that is in a sense the employer outsourcing a part of their exploitation, a wage of £x becomes a means to servicing a debt of £y, and the employer need only lose the surplus value of the interest to the lender (which may, through share ownership, be the employer, themself again).
DJP wrote:By the 17th century trade, mercantilism & money lending had grown and developed in Europe but these by themselves did not undermine the foundations of feudal society. The mere existence of commodity production, wage labour, merchants capital and money lenders capital are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the full development of capitalism. ‘Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc. would have ended their history with free labour and capital’ (Marx, Grundrisse p 506 )So it becomes a question of looking at what specific historical factors come together to create a rupture with the old social relations.ISTR the story goes: Plantagenet kings ran up war debts, and had to find cash to repay the Lombard money lenders. their route to this became the export of Wool and Wool products. This attracted persecuted Flemish weavers, and also drove an impetus to clear peasants from land to be replaced by sheep. The value added character of this leads on (truncatedly) to capitalist mode of production, and provides part of the impetus for the revolutionary wars of the 17trh century (particularly the strains within craft guilds regarding the limitations on apprentices, later to become proletarians).
I think the simplest way to approach this is to ask: why are banks different from any other firm?You can do the “Bank creating money” story for any sort of business. A retailer could extend credit to customers (and buy its stock on credit, or even future options on not-yet existent stock), but this simply wouldn’t be creating money. Thus: I have £100 (of my own capital). I’m a good salesperson, I buy £90 worth of stock and sell it all (on credit) and keep £10 cash in till. I then buy another £90 worth of stock, on tick, which I then sell on credit for £90. I then sell another £90 worth and then place the order with my wholesaler (and arrange credit for myself). By this point I’m owed £270, so can extend my order to the retailer by another £90; but I’d better start getting some cash in soon or I’m in trouble. The only qualitative difference is that banks are hooked up, ultimately, to a mint.
