A difficult puzzle..

How? It's a kind of perception, along with all the 5 senses, emotions, etc. (i.e. other emergent properties which cannot be described mathematically). With no perceiver, there is no perception.

 

Those emergent properties such as "blueness", "sharp pain", emotions, etc., are perceptions of photons of a certain wavelength, neurons being damaged in your body, activity in your brain, etc. If they were identical, we wouldn't need to say that these emergent properties were "perceptions of" anything.

Not being mathematical in nature =/= being mystical, i.e. mysterious. I understand my emotions and other sensations with emergent properties perfectly, since I experience them, even if I don't know the exact mechanisms that generate them in my brain and body.

Actually, that's yet another way of rephrasing my entire point; ancient people didn't have to know the first thing or concept of a neuron, or chemistry, let alone the entire biological mechanisms which generate emotions, pain etc., yet they understood these things perfectly since they experienced them.

Does level of organization have the be related to complexity, in the way you're using it, or only the total amount of information needed to describe something? Also, each brain is different.

 

We will see as the discussion progresses.

Again, we will see as the discussion progresses.

Any of the emotive states become recognized with the aid and support of those 'processes' within the brain. That brain is composed of matter and is essentially grouped into two primary parts which bear the idiomatic title of 'gray matter' and 'white matter'... That brain occupies space and has weight which places that brain directly within the definition of 'matter'. The 'processes' within that brain and the very thoughts are streaming through the brain also occupy space within that matter. According to Atomic Theory, even the electrons moving in and through the brain also occupy space and have mass therefore, they also fall within the scope of the definition of matter. Since the brain is the housing facility for those processes, memories, intellect, sense recognition, intuition, etc., then all of those activities of the brain must also have weight and do occupy space. Any infinitely small part of that brain will still occupy space and will have weight, therefore, the space required for the 'processes' must also have weight and therefore will be required to be called physical. See definition of 'matter'.

Those processes require space and those processes require ingredients in order for those processes to be manifested within the brain. See paragraph above.

MATTER.... see the definition of matter.

In that same vein, God "can be thought of as physical". Else, the emotions will have to be subjective. So are you really wanting to call the emotions patterns and subsequently physical, thus providing an avenue for consideration of the existence of God in the same manner as the emotions that you reference?

See definition of 'Matter'.

Well, Occam's razor just met its dulling factor. If emotions are physical, then it can be required that such emotions be weighed, measured, analyzed with all the same rigors of science as any other "matter" that has been examined by science. Else science is falling down on its job and a portion of that job is to learn all that it can about the physical world. Does the processes of electrochemical activity within the brain qualify as being physical? Yes? Do those processes form a product? Yes? Then that/those products must be identified, analyzed, categorized, etc. And they must be reproducible through lab experiments.

Physical = Matter

Your closing comment seems more like a rationalization (the making of an excuse) than it does toward having anything to do with reality.

 

Ok, in that case, emotions, being processes are physical.

Where did the energy part of your definition go?

Besides, I double checked Wiki, I find this
there is no single agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter".

Therefore, just as I said, the concept needs to be properly (if temporarily) defined. But you've done that now, so it's fine.

Yes. As a theological noncognitivist, I have no problem with allowing the existence of a god before it's been properly defined.

Some say the only necessary and sufficient condition for god is being the creator of the universe. Now, I believe the universe was created (that does not imply knowingly), and I can call whatever process created the universe God, and that God, I believe exists (or existed).

But that was not my argument. It's not the existence of a pattern that makes it work, it's the fact that the pattern works in a specific way, regardless of what the pattern actually is.

They are theoretically possible to measure and the like. The problem with that is purely practical. We can't look that closely with today's technology. Even then, some things can be seen.

Photons don't have mass, are they not physical?

It was just a side note. I use the concepts of patterns to make it possible to discuss the subject. I could discuss things on a level of every single neuron, but there'd be no additional point in that.

 

Well, as the scientists would say, 'energy cannot be destroyed', therefore it is still there; latent energy.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/matter
"matter /mat·ter/ (mat´er)
1. substance; anything that occupies space."

Cool, at least you are not arbitrarily shutting God out of the possible equations.

Indeed you can do that, but doing so does not formulate a 'factual condition'.

So does God.

And some things cannot be seen, such as the single electron.

In counter to that question, I would ask does the photon occupy space?

I suppose that would be a typical noncognitivist response to things not KNOWN.

 

What you write here is simply a version of the elementary school riddle, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" By age 8, most children have figured out that the answer is "Yes."

"Blueness" is not a "kind of perception." It is simply the label we assign to our experience of a certain wavelength of light. It has been fascinating to watch you wallow in language and ignore the simple objective reality. At least unlike Incorporeal you generally do not do so with deliberate intent to mislead.

Every single external reality of which you are aware reaches your perception via the same machinery; that of the brain. Feeling pain is no different from feeling a granite counter top, hearing a Bach concerto, tasting a grape or seeing a car crash.

If you and I were to both see the same car crash from a distance we would have different personal experiences of it. But no matter how different the experiences, we would have still seen the identical actual thing. if there was some detail you had noticed that I had not, it doesn't change the actual detail. It only makes our experiences of the same event different.

If you experienced first hand the same car crash that I only saw on video, one of our experiences becomes even further removed and even more different than that of the other. But that car crash is still the same actual thing. Our perspective to the phenomenon being perceived makes a great difference to what the perceiver experiences... but no difference at all to the phenomenon itself.

Your feeling or emotion is a completely ordinary material event... just like a car crash. I can see it, measure it, count the neurons involved and map the sequence and pattern of their firing. I can time the event and identify its beginning and end. I could even cause the event with a well placed electrode and a battery. Like the car crash, my experience of that "thing" will be different from yours. But you and I will both be experiencing the identical actual thing.

There is nothing "intangible" or mysterious about blueness. It is a discrete and objectively measurable (quantifiable) phenomenon. There were blue things before there were any living things to perceive them. The sky was not colorless before the first amphibian crawled from a lagoon and looked up.

Blue light has a wavelength of 450-495 nm. It exists whether we see it or not. Our biological mechanism can distinguish between different wavelengths of light, and our first hand experience of that discrimination is something we have chosen to label "blue" when discussing it with others.

Objective reality is independent of perceivers or perception. And the evidence is that everything that is objectively real is physical/material/capable of being described with mathematics.

 

What nonsense. Even if they were identical they would still be perceptions. You are again drawing a non-existent distinction.

Alas... you are contradicting yourself here. How could they have "understood these things perfectly" if, as you acknowledge, they were completely ignorant regarding their mechanism or cause? It was specifically that ignorance that generated the entire framework of superstition that surrounded them and that you continue to embrace. Like every other completely ordinary physical phenomenon they explained them with magic and mysticism and the action of gods or ghosts or demons or angels.

You seem to forget they did the same thing with completely ordinary phenomena that even you would admit are "mathematical." Lighting was caused by Zeus hurling bolts from the top of Mount Olympus. The cycling of the seasons were caused by Demeter's deal with Hades, sending her daughter Persephone to the underworld for half the year. Ancient people (by your standard) "understood these things perfectly' too. It was simply that their understanding was false. Just as their understanding of feelings and emotions was false... attributed to a non-material soul and resident on the wrong organ... the heart.

Just as your understanding is false. You are hanging onto the superstitions of ancient men in this one area, even as you have abandoned those same superstitions in other areas. It is the unfortunate conundrum of religious people in a scientific age confronted with the fact as scientific knowledge continues to advance there is progressively less and less for God to do.

Of course level of organization is related to complexity. And of course each brain is different.

 

A tree falling in the woods, and pressure waves moving through air, are mathematically describable and not perceptions. The "sound" that you hear is a perception made by parts of your brain. Other such emergent properties are perceptions.

Which makes it a perception. Otherwise we wouldn't "assign" anything to anything in this context.

A perception pretty much is explicitly definable as a thought or feeling.

Different parts of the brain that work in slightly neurologically different ways, but none of this is relevant.

I.e. different perceptions of the same event. But the perception =/= the event.

If you never felt an emotion you'd never know what they really were. An emotion is a perception. All perceptions are arguably "events", but that doesn't mean that a perception is an objectively observable event, and even if they were, that wouldn't defy the point that feelings etc. are emergent properties.

 

Perceptions =/= the event which is perceived, though.

Because they felt them. If you feel a feeling, you pretty much understand it perfectly. The brain's actions are only the mechanisms which generate said emergent property.

Actually they would only disagree on the mechanism which generated said emergent properties, not on the emergent property itself, e.g. how it felt.

Lighting, cycling of seasons, activity in the brain etc. are mathematically describable mechanisms, but feelings are not; they're emergent properties.

If you had a lot of, or an infinite number of, particles arranged randomly in an enormous dust cloud, it would take a lot of information to describe that system exactly because you'd have to mention all points in space that each particle was, since there was no pattern to describe them. In contrast, the exact same number of particles arranged in an enormous cube, would require very little information to describe.

 

Finally! Good for you. The boy can be taught!

Sigh... you still don't understand emergent properties at all. Regardless of how they are generated, they are still ordinary physical things.

The claim that anything is understood perfectly is simple foolishness. You even yourself have previously set up perfect understanding as a straw man to attack.

All cognitive capacities are emergent properties... but of the brain, not of the events being perceived.

They are still ordinary physical phenomena.

Actually... the amount of information in both are exactly the same. Both can on one hand be described with simple rules. Or both can on the other hand be described by noting the location and direction of every individual particle. There is no actual informational difference between them.

 

And everything described here is a perfectly ordinary physical phenomenon, describable mathematically.

No. I wouldn't. And if I never saw a sunset I'd never know what they really were either. What is your point again?

I should never have taught you about emergent properties, because you are proving to have been a poor student. They are ordinary physical phenomena.

A perception is an objectively observable event as proven by the simple fact that we can and do objectively observe them.

 

If ancient people could feel something and if this feeling were identical to the neurological mechanisms which generate said feeling, then feeling those feelings would reveal to them the neurological mechanisms which generate said feelings, but it certainly did not and could not, because they aren't identical.

The entire theory of entropy is based on the idea that organization/patterns decrease the amount of information needed to describe a system, and that these patterns deteriorate over time unless energy is used to maintain said patterns.

 

If you knew the biological mechanisms which produce said feelings, you'd still never know what they were unless you felt them.

You can't "observe" someone else's thoughts and feelings unless you're a mind reader.

 

So what?

I can say the same thing about the sun.

Or unless I had the proper tools that could help with the required math.

http://pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/

 

Here's an example of my trust being broken as to human theories of physics-the contents of this thread:

http://www.politicalforum.com/latest-world-news/217651-european-scientists-faster-than-light-finding-still-holds.html#post4727238

 

You could understand the sun because it's a mathematically describable entity; you wouldn't need to feel anything to understand it. You could be a robot and understand it.

If you weren't a conscious feeling creature, you would just be a machine that didn't understand any feelings. Even if you could compute said things.

 

That's just stupid.

I again could say the same thing about the sun.

Wrong. Entropy may have been used by researchers in other fields as an analogy, but it has nothing actually to do with information. Entropy is an extensive property of physical systems, specifically energy divided by a temperature.

Further, you seem about 30 years behind in your understanding of chaos theory, partly explaining your persistent misunderstanding regarding emergent properties. A human being is far more complex than a rock. But guess what? A human being also contains vastly more entropy than a rock of similar weight. Highly entropic systems are often also highly complex and organized.

You should pick up the old volume Order Out of Chaos by Ilya Prigogine. I have a well thumbed copy sitting on my bookshelf given to me in 1982. You have some catching up to do.

 

Right... your trust is broken because of tentative and controversial results in an ongoing experiment having nothing to do with the discussion.

This is merely another straw at which you grasp to defend a theory for which you have no evidence.

 

Only to the same exact extent I could do so with feelings and emotions.

There is no difference.

Only to the same exact extent I could do so with feelings and emotions.

There is no difference.

 

If you knew the mathematical mechanisms behind the sun, you'd understand the sun. If you knew the mathematically describable biological mechanisms behind the brain, you would not understand feelings; that's just B.S.; you can't understand a feeling until you've felt it.

A complex object can have high entropy, but disrupting the patterns which make up a system (and making it to where less patterns exist to describe the system) increases it's disorder.

 

The whole point is that the only way you can concoct such mathematical physical theories, is if you perceived them using feelings.

Actually, even if you could ascertain that this indirect observation wasn't a problem (which it is), you still are using inductive assumptions that these physical laws can't be broken; i.e. you're using "it's a rule until I see something that proves otherwise" logic. Which isn't logically entirely sound because it's an assumption. For practical reasons this is valid, but not for certainty.

 

No difference between what and what? Between the perception of something and that something? Yes there is.

 

A meaningless point worthy of little more than the single syllable, "Duh."

The operation of the universe has never depended for a nanosecond on the ability of any person to "concoct... mathematical physical theories."

Yet again... an excruciatingly pointless observation.

I have repeatedly been explicit that the origin of my position is entirely via empirical observation. But the conclusions of empirical observation are just that, conclusions rather than assumptions. Science has proven to be the single most productive and pragmatic human enterprise in all of history not because of the logically unassailable premises under which it operates, but because it actually works.

"Certainty" is a luxury available only to those who do not care what is true.

 

No... between the perception of an emotion and the perception of the sun.

 

Emotion itself is a perception, so you're talking about the perception of the perception of something, when you discuss emotions and feelings. The sun is not a perception, but a mathematically describable object.