Homo Sapians: Part of Nature or Above it

[Feisty Mouse]

There goes me and my assumptions again. I guess that's the evil white patriarchy acting through me again (sorry, postmodernism is in the other thread, I know).

lmao - hey, don't worry! Most of the people on this forum are men I think, anyways. I'm glad I could blend in.

I like the work or the perspectives that Luria took, and Vygotsky took. They aren't perfect (I don't think any one theory can be perfect), but they are quite interesting. Luria published a little book - I have to go search for the title. Very fascinating, cross-cultural look at cognitive differences in people based on local education and culture. Maybe it sounds boring, but I thought it was a lovely look at how the local environment affects cognitice development - even into adulthood.
I must admit I don't know every name you've mentioned, but now my curiosity is piqued and I must go look for them!

I think maybe Thelen and Smith as well as De Waal, with evolutionary theory thrown in by E. Lloyd, would be good people I would highly recommend.

 

[heretic888]

Coolz, thanks. :asian:

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Hey HHJD

I'm a PhD student, finished with my coursework, with minors in Molecular Biology and Animal Behavior. The specific field I work in is Developmental Psychobiology.

No fancy degrees yet, but a lot of time and effort logged so far!

Or maybe a :jedi1: is more appropriate for the journey. lol

Yikes.

Someday you MUST tell me why I behave the way I do...

I'd check out that reading list you recommended, but I'm reading The Iliad right now. Smith and Thelen might be a tad too much for me.



Regards,


Steve

 

[Feisty Mouse]

*thread ganking*

I love The Iliad. I love The Odyssey even more.

*end of gank*

ETA: But after The Iliad, a little Dynamic Systems Theory might be a nice diversion from all the different characters, and the pathos!!!

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Well, I'll stick to the Iliad.

I promised the absolutely lovely woman who gave it to me that I'd read it...and I shall. I can't wait to see how it ends...I think Peter O'Toole begs Brad Pitt for the return of Eric Bana's body.

The other books...yuck. Carl Sagan is about the hardest "science" book I've ever read. If it has anything quantitative in it at all, I'm lost. Can we say "innumerate?"

Regards,


Steve

 

[Feisty Mouse]

(imagine wheedling tone) Oh no, I think you'd like DST. It's a lot of conceptual-type stuff.

Or maybe something else science-y without quantitative stuff. Hmmm....

 

[Feisty Mouse]

Forgot to say....

Someday you MUST tell me why I behave the way I do...

lol! I wouldn't presume to think I could describe all the mysterious parts and dark nooks-and-crannies of your personality! But give me 2 years, an endless supply of notebooks, some sort of grant or fellowship to live on, and access to follow you around all the time.... I'd be like one of Leakey's Angels (for those who are not geeks like I am - Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas, who Leakey mentored and sent out to study chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively)!

And I'm sure no-one would notice the woman following you around, too.

 

[Makalakumu]

I think that I'm going to have to punt on a bunch of the stuff that you guys are bringing out. I just don't have the tools to fire back or I'm not sure where your coming from. Here is an overview of things that I don't think have been addressed by the other side.

1. Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know? What happens when we cross that line?
2. If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved. Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?

I have a friend who is a professor at a local college. His field is in research design and he specializes in statistics. One of the methods he teaches is an inductive method for research design. This method is predicated on the belief that an assumption is true and is dependent on the size of the data pool collected in order to support that assumption. The statistics for this method are quite complicated, so I won't deal with them here, but the theory behind it...is it science? This model is most often used to study evolution. Many of the most influcential studies of our day utilize induction. Good or bad?

 

[Makalakumu]

We have the wiring because men have the wiring, and we all start out the same in utero.

Interesting point. I'm not so sure that you've made the distinction between a vestigial effect and something MORE though. That is what this thread is about. An orgasm happens because of biology...

You are missing the point I am trying to make. Just because we can explain a particular ant's chemical signalling or genetics, does not mean we can, from that, explain how a colony will respond in complex ways when, say, under attack from another colony, a predator, or in navigating through a forest. We understand individual ants, yes. But the group behavior "is not the sum of its parts"! Complex and sometimes unexpected behaviors happen that cannot be predicted from our understanding of each ant's individual rules of behavior.

I disagree, I think that our understanding of eusocial organisms has moved beyond the "need of telepathy" stage. We can observe that there are rules for behavior in the ant colony and we can observe that ants follow and teach those rules to their offspring. Is this any different then humans? The rules are nothing but pathways tracing through the billions of synapses in our brains. We can alter our perception of these rules with the right chemical cocktails. If this phenomenon is not the sum of its parts, how come we can alter the behavior of the entire colony by the injection of certain chemicals?

I am not trying to get into the "god of gaps" argument or draw a line in the sand about what we can and cannot know. I think that the more we know, the less we know we know. I think we *can* find out amazing things about the world. But I would like to do it through rigorous science, not through crap like most of Evolutionary Psychology. It's not science. Adaptationist stories are not science, and their popularity makes it harder for people doing good science to get their results out, because the Just So Stories sound so...easy! So nice! Of course women orgasm! They are more fertile this way! Wrong. Women who may never orgasm in their lives during, after, or before vaginal intercourse can still have 10 children and 100 grandchildren.

But isn't that last statement a "just so" story? I think the problem with the orgasm debate is the lack of good statistics. Perhaps is we studied the fertility of woman who regularly have orgasm compared to those who don't...

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Unless you are referring to old-school clinical (Jungian, Freudian) psychoanalysis, Psychology is amazingly pretty magic and mysticism free, when done by actual scientists and not quacks. Tell me how an evolutionary psychologist can run an experiment, by the way. Tell me how we can do a controlled, experimental manipulation which addresses the evolution of psychological traits, that doesn't fall into the adaptionist/Just So Stories trap, and that is a good experiment or series of experiments.

Induction. Inductive research methods exist. I assume that ev. psych people are utilizing them and that has many people in the scientific community up in arms. As far as an experiment to analyze psychologic traits goes, does behavior count? I'm not a psychologist so I don't know, but it it does...take nematodes. They have a neural ganglia that is capable of adapting new behaviors...a new way of moving or feeding...if we were to observe and breed nematodes that exhibited a behavior that we cultivated for a number of generations and then were able to show how this behavior was incorporated into the nematode's DNA, wouldn't that provide some evidence for similiar effects in humans? I would say that yes it does. In fact, much of the behavioral evolution field has been predicated off such experiments. You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...

Most of the field of Psychology is moving towards cognitive psych, neuroscience, and development. But even with amazing discoveries being made, we still are realizing how complex things are. In part, I will continue to argue, it is because we are realizing how much of human development is not preprogrammed, but changes in each individual based on the very local environment.

This does not make the distinction between our biology and the More. You are talking about behavoral evolution which happens faster then biologic evolution and is something we can test and measure...just look at martial arts fighting methods for instance.

 

[Makalakumu]

Ummmm... actually, that's not the case at all. You weren't "jumping over lots of fields", you were collapsing concepts into one another and not formulating a coherent position. Not distinguishing between "biology influences psychology" and "biology is psychology" is not being multi-disciplinary. Its being wishy-washy.

Perhaps a tad bit wishy washy, but you are still drawing lines. What can we know and what can't we know? What is special and what isn't? When we cross a line that you have drawn, what happens then? I think that a great many drug companies would disagree with you. The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.

And, also, not differentiating between philosophical reductionism and reductionistic methodology is definately not being multi-disciplinary. Its being projectionistic, putting your philosophical beliefs onto a science that does not have them.

You haven't shown me how there is a difference. I don't think that philosophic reductionism exists...

And, as for not differentiating causation and correlation?? Pssh... that's the worst of them all. An elementary mistake in science, one of the first things you learn not to do in psychology.

You talk about the burden of proof with this point and that is fine. If the burden is on me, I think that I can safely say that the cause of psychology is biology. From a developmental point of view, there was a new study done where children were measured through their formative years and their developments could be seen as both the growth in the complexity of connection and the density of brain tissue.

Because its inherently contradictory. Biology is not a subjective field, its an objective field. There are, of course, fields where the two interlap (such as anthropology or psychology), but biology is not one of them.

Please forgive me, but I have not been able to follow this part of your argument.

Chemicals are not subjective phenomena. Nor are neurons nor synapses nor neurotransmitters nor brainwaves. We experience all these objectively, "from the outside". Subjective phenomena are qualia --- they are emotions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, experience, awareness, and consciousness. I cannot objectively "see" any of those "from the outside".

I disagree. You can see an emotion flashing across your brain. You can locate the section in the brain that shows where you are attracted to a member of the opposite sex. Sexual thoughts, feelings, mathematics, we can see all of that happening and all we have to do is measure the minute flow of electromagnetic radiation through through your gray matter. To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect. We can see the parts that make them.

You also still have to explain how a subjective view that denies the validity of all subjective views could actually be "true". According to physicalism, the idea of physicalism itself is nothing but biological processes having fun and thus has no substantive reality itself. Thus, according to its very own premises, physicalism cannot possibly be a true idea because it is an idea.

Look, when it comes right down to it, this is gibberish. You are arguing in circles and avoiding reality. Where the circle breaks is with the assumption that all ideas are created equal.

You also have to explain how objective phenomena can actually exist without subjective phenomena. That's like saying all ups are true, but all downs are false. All hots are correct, all colds flawed. Its a completely incomprehensible position. Subjectivity and objectivity define one another, you cannot have the one without the other.

This is one of the areas that I'm going to have to punt. I'm not sure what bearing this has on the conversation.

Then again, you have to further explain why you are basing your philosophy on such plainly inaccurate models of reality. Your arguments just scream "the myth of the given", "truth as correspondence", and "the representational model". Reality is not a perception, its an interpretation. And you can't do any interpreting without a subject.

Basic epistomology. I don't see how I'm violoating any of this.

There's the problem, maty. You are talking about "mind" and "brain" as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are intimately related, for sure, but one cannot be reduced to the other.

Neuroscience actually hasn't told us very much about how the "mind" works. Sure, it tells us about what brainwaves or neurotransmitters or synapses are at work in conjunction with certain subjective phenomena --- but I've never experienced a neurotransmitter in my thoughts, whereas I do experience memories, feelings, awarness, and qualia on a daily basis. So, you're gonna have to do better than that.

Do you think that you can sense a neurotrasmitter firing in your brain as you type your reply? With the right instruments, we can watch the electromagentism flow over your brain as you type your reply. We can also measure and record how your brain functions when you remember something, have a feeling, or even contemplate infinite. We can even take a look at the difference between people who are disabled in some way in these areas and then compare it to how our brain works. Guess what, the two pictures are different.

I suggest you actually look into what the influential philosophers and scientists supporting physicalism have to say on the matter --- they will gladly admit that we don't have a damn clue how "mind" can possibly issue forth from a physical organism.

They are not going to say anything on the subject because they don't have the data. Take a look at some of the stuff that neurosurgeons are doing as well as psychiatrist. Also, you might want to dissect a brain and learn the parts...It is enlightening to say the least.

And, throughout it all, I still don't see any justification for how all these biophysical processes are anything other than correlates. Correlation is not causation.

I seriously don't think that it is for any lack of data. Corellation upon correllation upon correllation upon correllation eventually becomes causation and that is what we are dealing with here.

Besides, I notice you still can't explain how genuine novelty occurs in the universe, which is a rather damning hole in your philosophy.

Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above. Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.

Depends on which "parts" you are referring to. I have yet to see any hard scientist show me a microscopic slide of a memory or emotion, so you are on a slippery slide here to say the least.

Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.

Wow its late...

 

[Makalakumu]

What is your training in this, if any? I mean in the science aspect of development....

I was a career student before I decided to teach. I have a degree in biology, geology, and physical sciences. I am currently working on my Masters in Physics.

I have a minor in creative writing. Maybe that is the liberal part of my education.

 

[Feisty Mouse]

1. Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know? What happens when we cross that line?
2. If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved. Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?

I have a friend who is a professor at a local college. His field is in research design and he specializes in statistics. One of the methods he teaches is an inductive method for research design. This method is predicated on the belief that an assumption is true and is dependent on the size of the data pool collected in order to support that assumption. The statistics for this method are quite complicated, so I won't deal with them here, but the theory behind it...is it science? This model is most often used to study evolution. Many of the most influcential studies of our day utilize induction. Good or bad?

I think drawing a line between the "known" and "unknown", and then getting in a dither about it is ridiculous. We are always inching (sometimes in the wrong way) towards the goal of knowing more.

Please re-read my postings. I NEVER SAID we are "separate" from our biology. That is a ludicrous statement to make. You are making a serious error, taking "genetically-determined traits" or "adaptationist view" as equivalent to "biology".

That sounds like a perfectly fine research design. Most Ev. Psych folks use crappy statistics, violating the assumptions of the tests with their data sets. Most people are pretty dim about statistics. And most other people don't look hard into the data to call them on their statistics.

then everything that makes us who we are evolved.

Interesting wording. You are going to leap from this statement, I think, into saying "everything we are evolved, and therefore everything is an adaptation", which is completely incorrect. Yes, humans have evolved from "proto-humans". But can we say that various traits we have today are adaptations? Some things a good argument can be made for. For others, not so much. You keep falling into the fallacy of "change over time = adaptation/under selective pressures". This is not necessarily the case.

You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...

I don't know "the rule". Things don't always work by laws and rules in evolutionary biology, or in psychology, as they seem to do in physics.

I'm not so sure that you've made the distinction between a vestigial effect and something MORE though. That is what this thread is about. An orgasm happens because of biology...

Ok, you tell me what the MORE is that you are looking for. You haven't defined it at all, and my argument about female orgasm wasn't about "MORE" (whatever that is), but about good versus lousy scientific explanations, and the problems inherent in a strict adaptationist view. "An orgasm happens because of biology" is a ridiculous statement to make. How? What biology? Why? In everyone? What does it do? Those were the things we were talking about before. Did I ever say it was this non-material, magical thing? You are misinterpreting my arguments into a different frame of reference.

I said it before, I'll say it again - nature and nurture cannot be disentwined. Both are critical to our development, and I mean critical.

I think if you better define what you are looking for - what is "biology" and what is "MORE" - then we all can have a conversation about it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
There's the problem, maty. You are talking about "mind" and "brain" as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are intimately related, for sure, but one cannot be reduced to the other.

Neuroscience actually hasn't told us very much about how the "mind" works. Sure, it tells us about what brainwaves or neurotransmitters or synapses are at work in conjunction with certain subjective phenomena --- but I've never experienced a neurotransmitter in my thoughts, whereas I do experience memories, feelings, awarness, and qualia on a daily basis. So, you're gonna have to do better than that.


Do you think that you can sense a neurotrasmitter firing in your brain as you type your reply? With the right instruments, we can watch the electromagentism flow over your brain as you type your reply. We can also measure and record how your brain functions when you remember something, have a feeling, or even contemplate infinite. We can even take a look at the difference between people who are disabled in some way in these areas and then compare it to how our brain works. Guess what, the two pictures are different.

BUT NOT EXPLANATORY. You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind".

You seem to be reifying events. Correlation does not equal causation! Any researcher who recorded neurotransmitter changes at a particular spot in the brain will have to do many many more experiments to gather evidence to support the idea that a NT release "causes" a particular change in cognition.

The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.

wishy-washy?

You can see an emotion flashing across your brain.

lol. I don't know a single cognitive neuroscientist who could ever get away with saying this. We have to be careful with our language about what we are measuring. You don't measure an "emotion" like that. You measure the release of nt's or electrical impulses, and look for a corresponding emotion reported by the patient.

To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect. We can see the parts that make them.

Seeing the parts does not mean measuring the whole and understanding it.

Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.

What am I doing, standing on my head here? Guess all that cognitive neuroscience training is pretty meaningless.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Feisty Mouse
I am not trying to get into the "god of gaps" argument or draw a line in the sand about what we can and cannot know. I think that the more we know, the less we know we know. I think we *can* find out amazing things about the world. But I would like to do it through rigorous science, not through crap like most of Evolutionary Psychology. It's not science. Adaptationist stories are not science, and their popularity makes it harder for people doing good science to get their results out, because the Just So Stories sound so...easy! So nice! Of course women orgasm! They are more fertile this way! Wrong. Women who may never orgasm in their lives during, after, or before vaginal intercourse can still have 10 children and 100 grandchildren.


But isn't that last statement a "just so" story? I think the problem with the orgasm debate is the lack of good statistics. Perhaps is we studied the fertility of woman who regularly have orgasm compared to those who don't...

It is another "Just So Story" - just as valid as the crappy adaptationist ones! However, if you really want to get into the orgasm debate (and I think you have been backing off of it), you'd have to demonstrate that 1) certain women have orgasm through vaginal penetration alone 2) these women have more surviving grandchildren (the measure of "fitness") than women who don't orgasm at all, or orgasm through clitoral stimulation.

Considering that the vast majority of women studied report orgasms through clitorial stimulation rather than vaginal penetration, you already have a problem. The "adaptation" you are looking for is extremely rare. If it's so important, why doesn't it work "right"? This is putting the cart before the horse.

I assume that ev. psych people are utilizing them and that has many people in the scientific community up in arms. As far as an experiment to analyze psychologic traits goes, does behavior count? I'm not a psychologist so I don't know, but it it does...take nematodes. They have a neural ganglia that is capable of adapting new behaviors...a new way of moving or feeding...if we were to observe and breed nematodes that exhibited a behavior that we cultivated for a number of generations and then were able to show how this behavior was incorporated into the nematode's DNA, wouldn't that provide some evidence for similiar effects in humans? I would say that yes it does. In fact, much of the behavioral evolution field has been predicated off such experiments. You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...

Tell me this rule.

Of course behavior counts - that's what most of us measure, or measure in concert with other things. But your example is simplistic. Just because a nematode can do something, or just because we know it's possible DOESN'T MEAN it's necessarily so for all human traits! You have to demonstrate it in each case. That's science.

I would appreciate it if you could define this "MORE" you want to get back to. I wasn't addressing that idea in any of my posts. Perhaps talking about emergent properties is what you meant?

I disagree, I think that our understanding of eusocial organisms has moved beyond the "need of telepathy" stage. We can observe that there are rules for behavior in the ant colony and we can observe that ants follow and teach those rules to their offspring. Is this any different then humans? The rules are nothing but pathways tracing through the billions of synapses in our brains. We can alter our perception of these rules with the right chemical cocktails. If this phenomenon is not the sum of its parts, how come we can alter the behavior of the entire colony by the injection of certain chemicals?

Well thank you very much, I never said telepathy or anything like that. But thanks for misinterpreting what I said. Emergent properties does not equal "magical"! (Ants don't teach rules, as far as I know.) And yes, ants are very different than humans. We are both cultural/social animals - but our cultures, and our development, takes a long time and is extremely complex.

You keep falling back into "study the parts to know the whole" while ignoring the concept that certain properties CANNOT be studied on the level of the individual ant or individual neuron in the human brain. There are behaviors that emerge from interactions of other parts. We are learning about them. But that means (and I know this is no what you want to hear) not everything is directly rooted in genetics or the presence of a particular chemical. It's much more complex than that. Life is messy and complicated and fantastic, and it's in the messiness when interesting things happen sometimes.

But knowing someone's DNA makeup will still never tell you what kind of person they will be or is they'll be nice to their kids. It just won't, because it leaves out the entire experiential portion of development, which is just as important as their biological background.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.

<groan!>

Yo! UPNORTH!

She's a PhD candidate in psychobiology and has minors in animal behavior and molecular biology.

I'm just guessing here but I don't think she has to go too far to get the "hard science" you suggest she look for. It sounds to me like that has been the focus of her graduate work.

WHICH would explain why she's hammering you in this debate. Sure seems to me she is, anyway. Me being a liberal arts type, I might be a tad quick in assessing this...but I do believe she's got the edge on you here.




Regards,


Steve

 

[Makalakumu]

You keep falling into the fallacy of "change over time = adaptation/under selective pressures". This is not necessarily the case.

This is where you lose me. I don't understand how it can be anything different. When I think of humans, I think of two types of evolution. One that is physical and grounded in your DNA. And one that is behavioral and grounded in your mind. There is a connection between the two, but it isn't direct in that it doesn't happen right away. A learned behavior may become instinctual over a long period of time. Some scientists have done studies on other examples and extrapolated that data to humans. The number they come up with is around 80 generations. You can do this in the lab. Try it with fruit flies.

Ok, you tell me what the MORE is that you are looking for.

The MORE means an explanation that goes beyond biology. I have posited that our parts make us who we are. I am beginning to understand how the mind doesn't fit into the above statement though. Lets me give this a try, a thought or an idea can be a thing of itself and even though it can zip across the synapses in a certain pattern, this pattern is nothing but a reflection of something very real...is that another misconception?

I said it before, I'll say it again - nature and nurture cannot be disentwined. Both are critical to our development, and I mean critical.

Can both nature and nurture evolve? I think of nature as the stuff your body is made of. I think of nurture as the things that we learn, our behavior.

BUT NOT EXPLANATORY. You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind".

Yes you can...to a certain extent. This is what drug companies do when they attempt to treat mental illness with chemicals. I don't see how this argument is wishy washy.

You seem to be reifying events.

I am attempting to learn from people who have done more research then I. I can throw my ideas into the shark pit and let you chew them up and spit them back at me and it will only help me better understand the world...I'm not so arrogant to think that every thought in my mind is gospel.

Seeing the parts does not mean measuring the whole and understanding it.

It does in many other fields, though. That is what the field I am studying is all about in fact. Seeing the parts, measuring them, figuring out the laws that dictate how they work. I think that the laws that describe how the parts of a human work are going to be incredibly complex and we may not even have the language to express them. Yet I do believe that their are laws that govern the parts of a human and that if we see them work and measure them working we can understand the whole.

What am I doing, standing on my head here? Guess all that cognitive neuroscience training is pretty meaningless.

I did not mean to come of as arrogent here. I respect your work and the grasp of the subject you have.

It is another "Just So Story" - just as valid as the crappy adaptationist ones! However, if you really want to get into the orgasm debate (and I think you have been backing off of it), you'd have to demonstrate that 1) certain women have orgasm through vaginal penetration alone 2) these women have more surviving grandchildren (the measure of "fitness") than women who don't orgasm at all, or orgasm through clitoral stimulation. Considering that the vast majority of women studied report orgasms through clitorial stimulation rather than vaginal penetration, you already have a problem. The "adaptation" you are looking for is extremely rare. If it's so important, why doesn't it work "right"? This is putting the cart before the horse.

I can only pass on some of the stuff that I've learned. I am backing away because I see your point. So, let me get this straight. You are saying that the orgasm is a reflection of what happens in a male? I understand that both the clitorus and penis start out the same way in a developing fetus and that the absense of a certain hormone allows the clitorus to remain unchanged. To say that the orgasm, or the clitorus for that matter, is not an adaptation seems incorrect to me. At the very least it a reflection of an adaptation.

Of course behavior counts - that's what most of us measure, or measure in concert with other things. But your example is simplistic. Just because a nematode can do something, or just because we know it's possible DOESN'T MEAN it's necessarily so for all human traits! You have to demonstrate it in each case. That's science.

That is not practical. You just can't test some things with humans because its either immoral or it would take too long. Therefore you HAVE to use proxies. That is Reality. It may not be the best situation, but its the best we can do. I don't know how you feel about animal research, but the whole purpose of animal research is to provide a substitute for humans. Unless you are studying the animals themselves...

And yes, ants are very different than humans. We are both cultural/social animals - but our cultures, and our development, takes a long time and is extremely complex.

Ants and humans are not totally dissimiliar though. We can learn somethings about ourselves by observing ants. Ants can serve as proxies because of the difficulties you mentioned. Namely the time factor. Sometimes seeing a less complex social structure helps us understand the general nature of social structures...the general rules of social structures in nature. If you can compare these "rules" with other organisms, you may be able to extrapolate this data, to a certain extent to humans.

You keep falling back into "study the parts to know the whole" while ignoring the concept that certain properties CANNOT be studied on the level of the individual ant or individual neuron in the human brain. There are behaviors that emerge from interactions of other parts. We are learning about them. But that means (and I know this is no what you want to hear) not everything is directly rooted in genetics or the presence of a particular chemical. It's much more complex than that. Life is messy and complicated and fantastic, and it's in the messiness when interesting things happen sometimes.

But knowing someone's DNA makeup will still never tell you what kind of person they will be or is they'll be nice to their kids. It just won't, because it leaves out the entire experiential portion of development, which is just as important as their biological background.

I have never thought of a thought as a thing before. In order to understand what you are saying, this is essential. I think that I am gaining a better understanding of behavior and genetics from this discussion. Thanks. :asian:

upnorthkyosa

 

[Makalakumu]

I'm just guessing here but I don't think she has to go too far to get the "hard science" you suggest she look for. It sounds to me like that has been the focus of her graduate work.

WHICH would explain why she's hammering you in this debate. Sure seems to me she is, anyway. Me being a liberal arts type, I might be a tad quick in assessing this...but I do believe she's got the edge on you here.

Yep, I'm getting slapped around big time. I guess I'll take my lickings and learn from it...just like any good martial artist. I'm also using a little tai chi principal called yeilding... :asian:

I'll take the tiger to the mountain.

 

[Feisty Mouse]

Lets me give this a try, a thought or an idea can be a thing of itself and even though it can zip across the synapses in a certain pattern, this pattern is nothing but a reflection of something very real...is that another misconception?

I think that this sounds like what I've been trying to say - yes, that a thought in and of itself is a thought. We can try to access a thought in multiple ways - neurochemistry, electrophysiology, questionnaire/verbal assessment, behavioral studies - but we cannot "capture" a thought, or point to something and say, "See here? This spike in the EEG = thinking about Mom." They may be correlated, but they are not the same thing. Some of the most careful language has to be used in cognitive neuropsychology.

I understand that the field you are training in is looking for general laws, general priniciples, and that if you observe an event occuring in, say, a particular particle, you can then try to generalize to all particles. (This is a vague example, but the last time I took a physics class was in college, so please bear with me.) The same is not always true of evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology. We can try to understand some general principles - is there genetic drift? what happens to island species and extinction rates? how quickly can we see the effects of artificial selection in the lab? - but the stumbling block is then applying an idea too broadly.

Another difference is that, aside from very short-lived species with quick sucessions of generations, we cannot watch evolution (which encompasses both adaptation, as well as other genetic changes such as genetic drift) directly. We can see (possible) consequences of selective pressures, or environmental changes, but it is very hard to actually perform a controlled experiment.

Can both nature and nurture evolve? I think of nature as the stuff your body is made of. I think of nurture as the things that we learn, our behavior.

Interesting question. If you are interested, pick up a copy of The Ape and the Sushi Master. Dr. de Waal addresses this question with far more experience and eloquence than I can, I think. My short and awkward answer: yes, but in concert. Often behavior leads in changing before genetic changes, as you have mentioned before. There's a good paper or book out on that, but I have to look it up.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Feisty Mouse
BUT NOT EXPLANATORY. You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind".


Yes you can...to a certain extent. This is what drug companies do when they attempt to treat mental illness with chemicals.

This is true. I was referring to more specific "mind" events - where the individual weirdness come out. We are learning general principles about, say, dopamine levels in the brain and their effects on perception and behavior. What we can't do is go to a certain person, inject dopamine into a particular part of the cortex, and accurately predict their specfic behavior(s) after that. Personality, individual experience, past experiences with dopamine injections, all color what will happen to the person.

I would not argue with the point that we are learning some things that we can try to generalize - like the average response to increased dopamine levels. But what I am trying to say is that we don't have a clear-cut system of rules for exactly what happens in the body (brain) and mind of the person experiencing the increase, because everyone is "set up" slightly differently. Again, different from your field - there's a lot of messiness in studying people because of our massive neural development, our varied upbringings, even the different chemicals in the water each of us drinks when growing up. We are constantly being "tweaked" by our own experinces of the world.

You are saying that the orgasm is a reflection of what happens in a male? I understand that both the clitorus and penis start out the same way in a developing fetus and that the absense of a certain hormone allows the clitorus to remain unchanged. To say that the orgasm, or the clitorus for that matter, is not an adaptation seems incorrect to me. At the very least it a reflection of an adaptation.

Um, sort of. A female orgasm, I would say, is not a reflection of a male's orgasm - it is her own individual experience (psychologically as well as physiologically).

(for a funny aside, check out http://img.tapuz.co.il/forums/20208414.htm)

The orgasm is an adaptation in the male - selective pressures exist and existed in the past for male ejaculation to work effectively. (The adaptation argument here is pretty hard to argue against, I think.) For a female human, is it NOT an adaptation - there are no selective pressures on her (as far as we can tell - but this is what hopefully more scientists are working out) for her to be able to orgasm, in terms of her fertility.

We have to be pretty strict when calling something an "adaptation". We have to be able to, with a fair amount of certainty, point to a trait and explain the selective pressures for that trait, historically (i.e. for thousands of generations, in the past of human history), its function, and that it is related to increased survivorship and/or increased fitness (reproductive success, usually measured as number of grandchildren produced).

That is not practical. You just can't test some things with humans because its either immoral or it would take too long. Therefore you HAVE to use proxies. That is Reality. It may not be the best situation, but its the best we can do. I don't know how you feel about animal research, but the whole purpose of animal research is to provide a substitute for humans. Unless you are studying the animals themselves...

I study the animals themselves, actually. Most evolutionary work studies the species for themselves. I completely agree we can't take a couple representatives from human races and put them on an island and put different selective pressures on them. (Also, it would not work because it would take way too long to see any changes.) But we have to be exceptionally careful about our human evolutionary arguments. Once someone purports a trait to be an "adaptation" or "selected for", that usually means that people will attribute quality to that trait. So if I make up a nice story about colicy babies being able to survive better (although there is actually an interesting study on fussy babies in countries with high starvation rates surviving better - but anyways, back to my Just So Story), parents will start to attribute value to this trait - people will brag about how "strong" their baby is because he can't sleep through the night and cries all the time!

A slightly ridiculous example, but hopefully my point comes through. As humans, we will place more value on a trait labelled an "adaptation". And simply because a trait may have been an adaption in our history, does not mean it's being actively selected for now. In part because of our changing social structures and technological advances, I would argue that selection pressures may be changing. So something that, in the History of Mankind was adaptive or an adaptation, may no longer be under selective pressure, and may even at some point start to be detrimental.

Example - say that ancestral humans felt the need to have a large, relatively unpopulated territory. (I have no evidence for this - just an example.) They may have found benefits, possibly nutritional, in covering large areas every day. If that was an adaptation then, and we still have that vague drive, what will happen when a modern-day human moves to Hong Kong, where the density of the population is extraordinary? Is this past adaptation now maladaptive in the new environment? Will the person go, for lack of a better word, bonkers?

Ants and humans are not totally dissimiliar though. We can learn somethings about ourselves by observing ants. Ants can serve as proxies because of the difficulties you mentioned. Namely the time factor. Sometimes seeing a less complex social structure helps us understand the general nature of social structures...the general rules of social structures in nature. If you can compare these "rules" with other organisms, you may be able to extrapolate this data, to a certain extent to humans.

Again, we can learn a lot of things from ants, I don't disagree at all. In fact, I wish more people would be interested in non-human organisms to learn about the world! (It's a big world.) But all social structures are not necessarily additive. This is where my "emergence" argument will flare up again. Because we understand one kind of social structure does not mean we will be able to then just "add on" a layer of complexity and understand another social structure. Resulting social structures may have emergent properties from the interactions of different kinds of parts.

I have never thought of a thought as a thing before. In order to understand what you are saying, this is essential. I think that I am gaining a better understanding of behavior and genetics from this discussion. Thanks. :asian:

This is true - in Psychology, in Biology, we have to be careful about distinguishing between someone's internal experience, which we cannot ever directly access, with the things we can measure about them.

(One of my favorite philosophical papers on this kind of thing is Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" About knowing (or not) other minds.)

I hope this has been an interesting discussion for you and, maybe, for others as well. I think perhaps one of the main differences is between the kinds of thought different fields encourage - physics is "all about" universal laws. But no-one is even attempting to construct a universal law of biology - there is too much variation, and too much we haven't even looked at yet. That's one of the amazing things about all the species and ecosystems on this planet - the diversity is absolutely incredible and awe-inspiring, I think. Each new system adds more "messiness", rather than confirming an overarching law.

 

[heretic888]

Sorry this took so long, guys, but I have been quite occupied as of late. I shall only address the comments directly pointed at me...

1. Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know?

Good question --- unfortunately, it isn't one particularly relevant to the discussion at hand.

Y'see, the main contention here is not that humans will never know this-or-that. Rather, it is that humans will never know this-or-that using this particular methodology --- and that seems to be the contention that you have the biggest problem with here.

The main problem you seem to be having, upnorthkyosa, is that the sciences you have pledged allegiance to are not actually the Omniscient Source of All Wisdom. You seem to have a huge problem with the very notion that the human psyche is understood through dialogical, introspective, and phenomonological means --- as opposed to monological, external, empirical-analytic means. Namely, you seem to have this desire to make your favored approach to knowledge as the only valid approach to knowledge.

Which really brings us back to the original issue at hand here: the reductionist claims that if his science(s) or field(s) can't see it, then it doesn't exist. And I'm not just talking about "atomistic" reductionism here either (extreme cultural constructivism and the "subtle" reductionism of some systems scientists suddenly come to mind). All of this strikes me as a whole lot of academic and professional hubris.

Now, don't get me wrong --- I think studying things like linguistics, biology, or the systems sciences can greatly aid and complement our understanding of the human psyche. But those are indirect means --- they mostly tell us correlative data about the subject and not causative data. The actual contents of an individual's mind or intentions or whatnot are discovered through introspective phenomenology (among other things), not through prodding at his/her neurons with a microscope. The psyche is, and has been, directly studied by fields like psychology. That is their forte, their turf, their backyard.

What happens when we cross that line?

Then we cross it. Its happened before, and it will happen again undoubtedly.

The fact remains, however, that we humans will never know everything in the universe --- namely because the universe is constantly changing and evolving. New data and information emerges too quickly for us to categorize and classify, making any real "Theory of Everything" ultimately futile. But, hey, we can always give it our best shot.

2. If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved. Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?

Because "evolution" and "biology" are not synonyms.

Evolutionary principles have their origins in certain "Neoplatonic" philosophies, most clearly elucidated by the German Idealists (Hegel, Schophenhaur, Schelling, etc). These priniciples were not applied to the natural sciences until quite a few decades later. And, even today, many sciences and fields employ evolutonary and developmental principles --- including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and especially philosophy.

Perhaps a tad bit wishy washy, but you are still drawing lines.

That's an interesting accusation, coming from someone that claims that all subjective phenomena aren't "really real".

What can we know and what can't we know? What is special and what isn't? When we cross a line that you have drawn, what happens then?

I haven't drawn any lines on what we can or cannot "know", and I'm not entirely certain what you mean by "special" either. I think you may be projecting some common contentions against materalism onto my arguments, contentions which I never made.

The only contention of import here that I have made is that there are different means of acquiring knowledge, and not all of these means can study the same phenomena (I can't "know" a molecule's chemical makeup using introspection, nor can I "know" a subject's motivations using empirical-analysis). What I'm essentially making is a call for a more multi-disciplinary, holistic, cross-cultural, and integral approach to knowledge --- not an exclusivistic, monopolar, reductionistic model. I don't think that's that unreasonable.

I think that a great many drug companies would disagree with you.

Drug companies can't think. Individuals can.

The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.

Gee... talk about being wishy-washy.

No, the drug companies do not make money off of the presumption that "biology is psychology". They do make money off of the presumption that biology influences psychology --- that there is some kind of relationship between your exterior and interior states and well-being. But collapsing that correlative relationship (which has been "proven") into a causative relationship (which has not) is nothing short of bad science.

As for the famed placebo effect, that seems to help my case a lot more than it does yours.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, also, not differentiating between philosophical reductionism and reductionistic methodology is definately not being multi-disciplinary. Its being projectionistic, putting your philosophical beliefs onto a science that does not have them.
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You haven't shown me how there is a difference. I don't think that philosophic reductionism exists...

I suggest you research the subject, then. This philosophy had been known in a long time in the West as "materialism". The modern hijacking of science to support materialism is now generally referred to as "scientism", a position you seem to be supporting.

Its really not that difficult a concept to understand. Not all "hard scientists" are materialists, period. They don't make assumptions, in the laboratory or elsewhere, that only material phenomena are "really real". They don't make assumptions that material, externally-observable qualities are the only "real" components a particular object (or subject) is made up of. Many natural scientists (including physicists), for example, believe in souls. And God, for that matter.

In short, they don't make the reductionistic assumption that just because their science or field cannot percieve a particular phenomena or quality, that that phenomena or quality does not exist.

There is an obvious difference between the scientific method and "scientific materialism" (i.e., "scientism") --- hell, psychologists use the scientific method all the time and they most certainly don't think the mind is just a hallucinatory side-effect of neurotransmitters. The same goes for anthropologists and worldviews, as well as sociologists and social systems. Collapsing concepts does not change any of this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, as for not differentiating causation and correlation?? Pssh... that's the worst of them all. An elementary mistake in science, one of the first things you learn not to do in psychology.
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You talk about the burden of proof with this point and that is fine. If the burden is on me, I think that I can safely say that the cause of psychology is biology. From a developmental point of view, there was a new study done where children were measured through their formative years and their developments could be seen as both the growth in the complexity of connection and the density of brain tissue.

Well, first off, I could question your claim here and request a citation of some sort. However, your account basically coincides with what I know of neurophysiology, so we can for argument's sake just agree that what you stated above is probably true.

In any event, kyosa, all you've "proven" in the above account is your continued inability to differentiate causation and correlation. There is absolutely nothing above that "proves" that the changes in brain tissue actually caused those developmental changes in the psyche. All it "proves" is that changes in brain tissue accompanied these changes in developmental cognition.

In other words, correlation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Because its inherently contradictory. Biology is not a subjective field, its an objective field. There are, of course, fields where the two interlap (such as anthropology or psychology), but biology is not one of them.
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Please forgive me, but I have not been able to follow this part of your argument.

Its quite simple: biology does not study subjective qualia. It studies external quantities that can be observed from the "outside". They are completely different ways of acquiring data here, due to the completely different natures of the data in question.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Chemicals are not subjective phenomena. Nor are neurons nor synapses nor neurotransmitters nor brainwaves. We experience all these objectively, "from the outside". Subjective phenomena are qualia --- they are emotions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, experience, awareness, and consciousness. I cannot objectively "see" any of those "from the outside".
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I disagree. You can see an emotion flashing across your brain. You can locate the section in the brain that shows where you are attracted to a member of the opposite sex. Sexual thoughts, feelings, mathematics, we can see all of that happening and all we have to do is measure the minute flow of electromagnetic radiation through through your gray matter. To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect. We can see the parts that make them.

I'm sorry, kyosa, but I suggest you look up the meaning of "emotion" in the dictionary. It will not say "a blip of color that registers on the electromagnetic field".

Yes, there are objective correlates that ground subjective qualia. No one is contending against this. But your claim that these correlates are somehow what "makes" the qualia is one devoid of any grounding or evidence whatsoever.

Your rather dubious claim above would be like me saying that the theory of evolution is "a feeling of incredible intellect and analysis, and nothing more". I would, in essence, be using a rather dubious and extremist version of psychology to reduce all objective phenomena to the subjective qualia we feel whenever we experience them. That is exactly what you are doing with biology --- you are attempting to deny the validity of subjective qualia in their own terms to make your favored approach to knowledge the One Great Truth of the universe.

In either event, it is very, very bad science.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
You also still have to explain how a subjective view that denies the validity of all subjective views could actually be "true". According to physicalism, the idea of physicalism itself is nothing but biological processes having fun and thus has no substantive reality itself. Thus, according to its very own premises, physicalism cannot possibly be a true idea because it is an idea.
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Look, when it comes right down to it, this is gibberish. You are arguing in circles and avoiding reality.

Nope, sorry. I can understand your desire to want that to be true, because then you don't have to contend with the rather obscene contradictions of your own position. But, let's look at it logically...

Your materialism claims that no subjective phenomena is "really real", that they are essentially hallucinatory side-effects of neuronal activity in the material brain. The contradictory part is that this philosophy, this claim, this point of view, this position itself is a subjective phenomena. Thus, by its very own criterion, it is not "really real" and has absolutely no substantive validity.

Thus, according to the philosophy of materialism, the philosophy of materialism cannot be true.

What all this really boils down to is the "myth of the given". You are making the rather naive assumption that the objective world is just sitting out there, given to us in a pure sense, without filtration from the subject itself. The actual truth, however, is that we only percieve this objective world, including neurons, through our subjective contours.

The myth that Western scientists and philosophers clung to for centuries is that the observer, the subject, can somehow observe objective reality in some pure, unfiltered sense --- which ended up with philosophies like materialism, which naively claim that therefore subjective phenomena don't matter, or don't exist. Increasingly in the late 19th century and on into the 20th century, with individuals such as Nieztsche, Wittgenstein, Heiddeger, and so on, we learn that the subjective (and intersubjective) spheres profoundly influence our perceptions of the world. This included everything from linguistics to cultural worldview to the subject's very own individual intentionality.

Sorry, man, but your "object only" view of the world died out about 100 years ago. Nobody buys into that stuff anymore, especially not with the Theory of Relavitiy looming in the background.

The simple truth is that both objective and subjective phenomena are equally valid and important.

Where the circle breaks is with the assumption that all ideas are created equal.

Sorry, again, but no. That position is a plainly hypocritical and contradictory stance (because, once again, it is a type of reductionism and all reductionisms are inherently self-contradictory). Namely, because although it says that "all ideas are created equal", this is based on the assumption that that idea itself is, in fact, superior to all ideas that say otherwise.

Put succinctly: "all ideas are created equal, except for the idea that all ideas are created equal".

Ummmm. Gotchah.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
You also have to explain how objective phenomena can actually exist without subjective phenomena. That's like saying all ups are true, but all downs are false. All hots are correct, all colds flawed. Its a completely incomprehensible position. Subjectivity and objectivity define one another, you cannot have the one without the other.
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This is one of the areas that I'm going to have to punt. I'm not sure what bearing this has on the conversation.

Quite a lot of bearing, actually.

You cannot have "external observation" or "objectivity" unless there is a subject, an interior reality, to contrast and compare it to. Darkness means nothing without any light to give it substance and definition.

These kind of arguments seem to be the ones you have the most problems with, kyosa. Namely, because they directly point to the contradictions of your position in a straightforward way --- as opposed to ironing out little details (like what dopamine does to our minds).

The very plain and direct truth is that you cannot actually adequately formulate how materalism could feasibly be true in the first place --- you cannot explain how objects can exist without subjects. And this is why you are often forced to resort to tactics like "that's gibberish" or "that's not relevant" without even giving an explanation as to why.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Then again, you have to further explain why you are basing your philosophy on such plainly inaccurate models of reality. Your arguments just scream "the myth of the given", "truth as correspondence", and "the representational model". Reality is not a perception, its an interpretation. And you can't do any interpreting without a subject.
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Basic epistomology. I don't see how I'm violoating any of this.

Because you are claiming the subjective isn't real or valid. That's a pretty damn big violation, and absolutely screams myth of the given.

Do you think that you can sense a neurotrasmitter firing in your brain as you type your reply? With the right instruments, we can watch the electromagentism flow over your brain as you type your reply. We can also measure and record how your brain functions when you remember something, have a feeling, or even contemplate infinite. We can even take a look at the difference between people who are disabled in some way in these areas and then compare it to how our brain works. Guess what, the two pictures are different.

Yes, which I agree with completely. But all you've talked about is the material brain. I was talking about the subjective mind. A little less on the collapsing concepts, pelase.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
I suggest you actually look into what the influential philosophers and scientists supporting physicalism have to say on the matter --- they will gladly admit that we don't have a damn clue how "mind" can possibly issue forth from a physical organism.
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They are not going to say anything on the subject because they don't have the data.

Its quite funny how someone can even vaguely claim his position is "scientific" when he admits we "don't have the data". Unless you think you know something that neuroscientists do not??

Take a look at some of the stuff that neurosurgeons are doing as well as psychiatrist. Also, you might want to dissect a brain and learn the parts...It is enlightening to say the least.

Been there, done that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, throughout it all, I still don't see any justification for how all these biophysical processes are anything other than correlates. Correlation is not causation.
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I seriously don't think that it is for any lack of data. Corellation upon correllation upon correllation upon correllation eventually becomes causation and that is what we are dealing with here.

Nope, sorry again. Correlation upon correlation upon correlation does not eventually become causation. I suggest you open up a basic pyschology book (a subject you seem to have very little knowledge of) and read up on the actual differentation between the two.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Besides, I notice you still can't explain how genuine novelty occurs in the universe, which is a rather damning hole in your philosophy.
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Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above. Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.

Which is a fundamental inadequacy in your philosophy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Depends on which "parts" you are referring to. I have yet to see any hard scientist show me a microscopic slide of a memory or emotion, so you are on a slippery slide here to say the least.
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Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.

Okay, then I'll ask someone in my college's cultural studies department to tell me about how gravity works!! *laughs hysterically*

You see the problem here?? You're attempting to make your field the Center of the Universe, the One Great Truth, the Theory of Everything, the Only Way to Know. Pure academic hubris.

Nothing you mentioned above references the "mind". It was all squishy brain data which, as important as it is, is not going to tell me a person's motivations for murder or their level of moral development or anything else of qualitative importance.

Sorry, man, but no dice.

Laterz.

 

[Makalakumu]

The fact remains, however, that we humans will never know everything in the universe --- namely because the universe is constantly changing and evolving.

What is your evidence for the claim in italics?

Because "evolution" and "biology" are not synonyms.

True. But everything biological evolves.

No, the drug companies do not make money off of the presumption that "biology is psychology". They do make money off of the presumption that biology influences psychology --- that there is some kind of relationship between your exterior and interior states and well-being. But collapsing that correlative relationship (which has been "proven") into a causative relationship (which has not) is nothing short of bad science

I would say that asserting that you can prove anything is bad science. A scientist can prove nothing. They can only provide support. And in many cases, the support for their ideas ends up being correllations. A good example of this is paleontology. How do we really know anything about dinosaurs? Many of our theories are based almost entirely upon correllation. This also holds true with psychology...

As for the famed placebo effect, that seems to help my case a lot more than it does yours.

I'm playing with both sides of this argument in my mind as we speak. I don't have my mind made up on this particular issue.

Its really not that difficult a concept to understand. Not all "hard scientists" are materialists, period. They don't make assumptions, in the laboratory or elsewhere, that only material phenomena are "really real". They don't make assumptions that material, externally-observable qualities are the only "real" components a particular object (or subject) is made up of. Many natural scientists (including physicists), for example, believe in souls. And God, for that matter.

Where is your evidence that the subjective exists? If I am suppose to believe that objects are more then their externally observable qualities, should I be given a reason? The burden of the proof falls on you for making this assertion.

There is an obvious difference between the scientific method and "scientific materialism" (i.e., "scientism") --- hell, psychologists use the scientific method all the time and they most certainly don't think the mind is just a hallucinatory side-effect of neurotransmitters. The same goes for anthropologists and worldviews, as well as sociologists and social systems.

Which is why I think that many psychologist wallow in pits of spiritualism that filter their observations. I would say this is one of the big reason there is no overarching theory for the mind that is comparable to biology...that and the sheer complexity of the minds parts...

Yes, there are objective correlates that ground subjective qualia. No one is contending against this. But your claim that these correlates are somehow what "makes" the qualia is one devoid of any grounding or evidence whatsoever.

What is evidence? Can a corellation be evidence? Is there any worth to a correllation at all?

In any event, kyosa, all you've "proven" in the above account is your continued inability to differentiate causation and correlation. There is absolutely nothing above that "proves" that the changes in brain tissue actually caused those developmental changes in the psyche. All it "proves" is that changes in brain tissue accompanied these changes in developmental cognition.

You can't prove anything. This correllation/causation is darn fine...especially considering the fact that we can see synapses forming and gray matter developing when developmental changes occur.

Its quite simple: biology does not study subjective qualia. It studies external quantities that can be observed from the "outside". They are completely different ways of acquiring data here, due to the completely different natures of the data in question.

What are you studying when you come in from the inside? I can see how a thought can be a thing of itself, but I view this more as a reflection in a mirror. The image you see is something that exists, but it nothing that you will ever be able to touch.

Your materialism claims that no subjective phenomena is "really real", that they are essentially hallucinatory side-effects of neuronal activity in the material brain. The contradictory part is that this philosophy, this claim, this point of view, this position itself is a subjective phenomena. Thus, by its very own criterion, it is not "really real" and has absolutely no substantive validity.

What is a subjective phenomenon? Where is your evidence that these things exist? You claim that my position is a subjective phenomenon...ok...sure...if it exists then you should be able to isolate it in the universe. If you say that something exists, then you need to support the position that it does exist and you need to show it in a way that anyone can see. Even people who don't believe you.

Sorry, man, but your "object only" view of the world died out about 100 years ago. Nobody buys into that stuff anymore, especially not with the Theory of Relavitiy looming in the background.

Uhhh, so now you are making a correllation between the Theory of Relativity and the position you posited... :idunno: Wasn't this bad science?

Nope, sorry. I can understand your desire to want that to be true, because then you don't have to contend with the rather obscene contradictions of your own position. But, let's look at it logically...

That may be true...here is rather large hole in your argument though...The simple truth is that both objective and subjective phenomena are equally valid and important. You have no evidence for this assertion. It is nothing but a belief that you hold.

The very plain and direct truth is that you cannot actually adequately formulate how materalism could feasibly be true in the first place --- you cannot explain how objects can exist without subjects. And this is why you are often forced to resort to tactics like "that's gibberish" or "that's not relevant" without even giving an explanation as to why.

I can and I have. You have asserted that I am incorrect. You have claimed that subjective phenomenon are real. I demand evidence or it nothing but gibberish.

Nope, sorry again. Correlation upon correlation upon correlation does not eventually become causation. I suggest you open up a basic pyschology book (a subject you seem to have very little knowledge of) and read up on the actual differentation between the two.

I suggest you take a look at paleontology and read a few theories that based entirely upon correllation. Much of psychology is organized in the same way. I have a question for you, from a psychologists point of view, what is causation?

Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above. Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.

Which is a fundamental inadequacy in your philosophy.

I agree...but it doesn't mean that my initial proposition is any less correct.

Nothing you mentioned above references the "mind". It was all squishy brain data which, as important as it is, is not going to tell me a person's motivations for murder or their level of moral development or anything else of qualitative importance.

Nothing you do qualitatively will tell you the motivations for murder or their level moral development either. You might get close by correllating different physical observations...and you might not...that is all we can do right now. Get close. My point is this, if I were to ask you to give me an observation that is not physical, you couldn't do it. Even 2+2 is connected with reality. The concept of two is nothing but a reflection of two objects. Real like an object in the mirror but nothing that you will ever be able to manipulate unless you make it physical.

 

[heretic888]

What is your evidence for the claim in italics?

"We humans will never know everything".

Namely, because "knowledge" itself is continually expanding and growing at a rate too fast for human beings to categorize and classify. Whether it be new cultural modifications, a new star being born on the other side of the Milky Way, new neuronal connections in our brains, or even an entirely new plateau of consciousness --- the universe is just too dynamic and too quickly changing for us to "know everything".

True. But everything biological evolves.

I wouldn't argue that, but the point I was trying to make is that evolutionary principles are by no means exclusive to biological sciences.

I would say that asserting that you can prove anything is bad science. A scientist can prove nothing.

That was why, you will notice, that I put the word proven in quotation marks.

And in many cases, the support for their ideas ends up being correllations. A good example of this is paleontology. How do we really know anything about dinosaurs? Many of our theories are based almost entirely upon correllation. This also holds true with psychology...

I don't know enough about paleontology to give you any kind of adequate answer, and your comments about "theories" and "psychology" were too vague to give a response. I will say, however, that --- provided all of what you claimed is true --- that this does not give one a free license to start collapsing correlation and causation. The differentation of the two remains a very important scientific principle.

I'm playing with both sides of this argument in my mind as we speak. I don't have my mind made up on this particular issue.

I see.

Where is your evidence that the subjective exists? If I am suppose to believe that objects are more then their externally observable qualities, should I be given a reason? The burden of the proof falls on you for making this assertion.

Well, this all boils down to what you take as valid "proof" and "evidence" to begin with. The simple truth is that there is just as much "proof" for the existence of the subjective as there is for the existence of the objective --- in the simple realization that we directly experience both. We have no more basis for denying the existence of the mind than we do for denying the existence of the body.

Which is why I think that many psychologist wallow in pits of spiritualism that filter their observations.

An unfounded and arrogant claim with absolutely no basis outside of academic hubris. Its about as mature (or relevant) as saying something like "biologists are just a bunch of pencil-necked geeks that can't see their own psyches coloring their observations of protons".

I would say this is one of the big reason there is no overarching theory for the mind that is comparable to biology...that and the sheer complexity of the minds parts...

I was unaware there was an "overarching theory" for biological principles.

What is evidence? Can a corellation be evidence? Is there any worth to a correllation at all?

I would argue that "evidence" is any form of raw datum whatsoever, including those outside the observations of empirical-analysis. I also feel correlations are important (and are indeed "evidence"), but that was not what I was criticizing before --- I was criticizing your lack of evidence in assuming objective correlates somehow "make" their subjective counterparts.

This correllation/causation is darn fine...especially considering the fact that we can see synapses forming and gray matter developing when developmental changes occur.

In some instances, the delineation between causation and correlation can be fine. This is not one of them.

There is no reason, for example, to presuppose that the developmental changes in the psyche are what caused the neuronal connections. Likewise, there is no reason to presuppose that the neuronal connections caused the developmental changes in the psyche. There is no evidence of a causative relationship whatsoever.

That is when you have correlation --- when a phenomena accompanies another phenomena, but doesn't seem to have any direct or observable cause-and-effect relationship.

What are you studying when you come in from the inside? I can see how a thought can be a thing of itself, but I view this more as a reflection in a mirror. The image you see is something that exists, but it nothing that you will ever be able to touch.

You are studying the interior domains of consciousness (i.e., qualia). And, no, you cannot "touch" them. They are studied via dialogue, introspection, and phenomenology. Its an entirely different methodology than what you are used to.

What is a subjective phenomenon?

Anything experienced from "within", so to speak --- such as emotions, memories, thoughts, awareness, and so on.

Where is your evidence that these things exist?

Human experience.

You claim that my position is a subjective phenomenon...ok...sure...if it exists then you should be able to isolate it in the universe.

I think you missed my point --- unless you're now claiming that your point-of-view is an objective "thing" that you can point to.

The central issue is this: materialism claims that subjective phenomena (like thoughts) don't "really exist". Your point of view, the philosophy of materialism, falls into this category. Thus, according to your own criterion, it does not exist and has no valid reality.

That is what you call a performative contradiction.

Uhhh, so now you are making a correllation between the Theory of Relativity and the position you posited... Wasn't this bad science?

Nope. One of the central elements of relativity, as I understand it, is that the act of observation directly alters the nature of the object of observation (i.e., time and space are "relative" to the observer). This blows the notion of any "pure observation" of objective phenomena completely out of the water.

That may be true...here is rather large hole in your argument though...The simple truth is that both objective and subjective phenomena are equally valid and important. You have no evidence for this assertion. It is nothing but a belief that you hold.

Correction: you claim I have no evidence. This does not make it so.

I can and I have. You have asserted that I am incorrect. You have claimed that subjective phenomenon are real. I demand evidence or it nothing but gibberish.

I'm sorry, kyosa, but I suggest you re-read your arguments. What you called "gibberish" was my revelation of the contradictory nature of materialism --- apparently for no other reason than you didn't want to bother to come up with a logical refutation. The "evidence" for subjective phenomena was not being discussed in that context at all.

And, as a side note, there is just as much "evidence" for subjective phenomena as there is for objective phenomena.

I suggest you take a look at paleontology and read a few theories that based entirely upon correllation. Much of psychology is organized in the same way. I have a question for you, from a psychologists point of view, what is causation?

I believe I already explained this above.

Nothing you do qualitatively will tell you the motivations for murder or their level moral development either. You might get close by correllating different physical observations...and you might not...that is all we can do right now. Get close.

I'm sorry, but you are very wrong here. In fact, you evince a decided ignorance of psychological methodology.

My point is this, if I were to ask you to give me an observation that is not physical, you couldn't do it.

"I am aware." Gotchah.

Even 2+2 is connected with reality.

But unreal numbers are not.

Real like an object in the mirror but nothing that you will ever be able to manipulate unless you make it physical.

*raises eyebrow* I don't know about you, but I manipulate non-physical phenomena all the time. That's how I keep my Hulk-like rage in check.

Laterz.