My Take on the Moral Argument

[EvieTheAvocado]

It is an emergent property of brains.

So how does completely non-conscious stuff develop consciousness?

"Intrinsic nature of matter" is nothing but woo. Matter is matter. It has no intrinsic nature.

You do realize that by saying "matter is matter" you are saying that the intrinsic nature of matter is material, right?

Instead of just barely asserting that things are "woo", when you might be strawmanning your opponent: try providing an argument against my position.

That's what I think as I say that ... but that's not quite fair of me. Because, it is at the same time, perfectly understandable for you to see my position as woo for at least three reasons:

(1) If my view is correct it's extremely counter intuitive
(2)Myself less than a year ago would have equally said such a theory was woo until I heard all the arguments.
(3)I haven't even provided you a clear argument so it's not clear what my position actually is or how wooey or not it actually is.

Here's an argument:

In contemporary philosophy, panpsychism is offered as a naturalistic solution to various problems inherent in classical physicalism[3];

1. Eliminativism denies internal existence (including qualia; such as the redness of red, or the specific taste of an apple, as distinct from the neural processes/information representing these experiences). While popular amongst some philosophers, eliminativism goes against human intuition; existing beliefs regarding the sentience of intelligent biological systems (given that the agent/"software" encoded in the brain has evolved to believe that it is conscious; see self-directed theory of mind).
2. Reductive physicalism reduces mental properties to physical properties, such as the firing of individual neurons. This prospect is becoming increasingly unlikely based on neuroscientific research concerning how information processing mapped to specific mental events is distributed across neural networks (multiple physical events).
3. Non-reductive physicalism assumes that mental reality supervenes on physical reality; that although there is a correspondence between mental and physical events, their mapping is not 1 to 1. Mental properties under non-reductive physicalism are seen to be emergent, that given the right physical conditions they will arise (see Chalmers on strong emergence). Emergent mental properties are however redundant to the evolution and function of the physical system (see Jaegwon Kim on overdetermination[9]).

Panpsychism 1. does not attempt to deny internal existence (eliminativism), 2. takes into account current neuroscientific findings regarding the distribution of information (unlike classical reductive physicalism), and 3. does not suffer from the problems (barring teleology) inherent in the emergence of redundant mental properties at specific points in space-time. It may be that we need to reconceptualise physical properties to facilitate their reduction to mental properties however (in the case of panpsychism/the combination problem), or at the very least; to reduce mental properties to physical properties (eg as probability waves; Dawkins).

 
I get that philosophers need to make up this shit so they can pretend they actually are doing something other than mental masturbation.

That's not an argument at all.

You got somewhere else it emerges from ? 

How do you think you can get the conscious from the totally non-conscious?

This isn't like a standard kind of emergence where everything can be explained by the physical or chemical parts or by biological evolution.

This is a case of us already knowing that there's at least one kind of stuff in the universe: experience ... and how exactly does it come out of non-experiential stuff? And what possible reason do you have for believing in anything non-experiential when literally all evidence that we've ever had for everything ever has always been empirical and empiricism is knowing through the senses and through experience?

Where is your evidence? Where is your argument? I'm not seeing either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_implantation

I've already addressed this. How is the experience of having a false memory not an experience? And if what the experience refers to didn't happen outside your mind, then how exactly is the non-existence of something that never happened evidence of the non-experiential?

All evidence is empirical and empiricism is experiential/sense-based. There's no way of getting around that.

Science is the study of phenomena ... so science works phenomenologically.

Many scientists found it helpful, when doing science, to postulate a totally non-experiential universe beyond the senses. But there's never been any evidence of any non-experiential world ... there's only been evidence of our experience of an experiential realm that is consistent and can be consistently tested.

You don't appear to have any evidence or argument.

I know that you're unable to provide evidence because evidence is experiential by nature. So, I'm really only asking rhetorically to demonstrate a point just like the both of us would to a theist when asking them for evidence, even when we know they haven't got any. I KNOW you haven't got any evidence for something that by definition would have to be experiential/empirical in order for it to be evidence.

But an argument? You can have arguments. A totally non-conscious and totally non-experiential aspect of the world could exist. And it's possible, I guess, that you could somehow show that an experiential world is logically contradictory or incoherent ... (although I don't see how you could do that any more than anyone could provide evidence against the existence of non-experiential stuff) ... but the advantage that an experiential realm has is parsimony. It appears to be just a total bias and a prejudice, nothing but an intuition, to assume that what the universe in which we live in is not made of an extremely reduced and much less complex version of the same sort of stuff that we are all already aware of and all already have evidence of all the time. To assume that there's the stuff we already know and experience is not difficult and all evidence points to what we have evidence/experience of ... but what of this non-experiential stuff? We kick a table and say "That isn't made out of the same sort of stuff as my experience" ... but that intuition and that premise has absolutely nothing to do with the successful history of empirical science.

You say that it's nonsense to talk about the intrinsic nature of matter ... but either matter is experiential or it isn't, right? And either the universe is material or immaterial, right?

Sure, it could be two kinds of stuff. But I'm sure that you would at least agree that dualism is sillier than monism.

I mean, look at it this way, when consciousness is simplified to the very base level it's almost completely indistinguishable from total non-consciousness ... but why and how would it it ever reduce to an absolute zero? Why would there be two kinds of stuff? Don't you see dualism as a problem?

If there's only one kind of stuff ... if monism is true ... then either everything is conscious or everything isn't... right? The difference is purely a matter of being on a spectrum. If you say there's both conscious and nonconscious stuff ... don't you fall into the traps of dualism? Doesn't that make you a dualist? That's not very scientific.

If there's one kind of stuff it's ultimately either all down to experientiality on some level or it's ultimately all down to non-experientiality on some level (that's a true dichotomy) ... and in either case there is a clear spectrum. The idea that there's both and a sudden shift from one to the other ... or even a gradual shift from one to the other ... radical emergence from two kinds of fundamental substances is *totally different* to the normal kind of emerge whereby it's just a case of the evolution of one kind of stuff.

I mean, ultimately, scientists are breaking down reality down into smaller parts seemingly forever. Down to atoms. Then down to protons and electrons. Then down to quarks, etc. No matter how far down we go ... we just keep getting further down ... these are all parts of something, right? Reality itself right? So we know that at least some of reality involves consciousness/experience ... so where's the argument or evidence for ANYTHING non-experiential when all evidence is already by definition empirical and therefore experiential?

There doesn't seem to be any sort of rational, logical or scientific response to this. "Philosophy is rubbish" is neither argument or evidence. At the end of the day you just have to deal with the fact that not only did philosophy give rise to science in the first place ... but evidence is by very nature empirical and experiential and no one has ever nor can they ever give evidence of something that by very definition would require knowledge through the senses in some way, whether directly or indirectly. Do you not see the problem there?

[SteveII]

If God creates all and is omniscient, we cannot have free will.  All free will is illusionary.  God could create a world where John is evil and damned and does evil acts.  Or a world where John does no evil acts.  John has no choice in what world God will choose to create and what his fate will be.

God has a choice.  Create a world where Hitler is laughed out of politics in 1927 or where Hitler becomes chancellor in 1933.  You cannot in choice A. here choose to join the Nazi party and become an evil murdering Nazi.  If John joins the Nazis and is evil, God decides that is what John will do.

Basically, the idea of a God that creates all and is omniscient means free will is illusionary.  John cannot step out of God's created reality and make a choice that matters.

Theological Fatalism has been a theological problem since the days of the Stoics.

That's solved with a doctrine called Molinism first developed by Luis de Molina in the 16th Century (I keep saying there are no new objections to Christianity that have not been discussed for centuries). It solves the problem by proposing that God does not know the future because he has seen it happen, he knows the future because he can predict with accuracy what people will freely choose to do in any event (including counterfactuals) when and if that event ever happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molinism

Molinism claims God is absolutely omniscient.  In any possible world, God will know what a sentient being will do, because God is for a fact omniscient and knows the future with perfect accuracy.  The problem with all of this is when we combine this perfect omniscience with God's creation of the world.  From any initial starting point God chooses, God knows how everything from that point will happen.  Again, hard determinancy.  There cannot be free will at all.  In it's day, Molinism was one of the most hotly disputed theological claims of it's day.  The debate got nasty, and disruptive.  So disruptive the Pope finally commanded the theoogians to stop debating the issue. Molinism was found to be neither heretical or orthodox.  The only choices were to abandon the orthodox dogma of God's omniscience, or man's free will.  Neither choice was appealing.  No theologian has ever found a persuasive way to harmonize the issues.

Your confusing knowledge of what someone will freely choice with determinism. Just like I know my wife will choose chocolate over strawberry ice cream every time when given the choice in no way affects her choosing chocolate tonight if I present her with those flavors. Libertarian free will only requires that you had the ability to choose other than what you chose. Here is a very tight definition of libertarian free will:

"A personal explanation of some basic result R brought about intentionally be person P where this bringing about of R is a basic action A will cite the intention I of P that R occurred and the basic power B that P exercised to bring about R. P, I and B provide a personal explanation of R: agent P brought about R be exercising power B in order to realize intention I as an irreducible teleological goal." (Moreland, Blackwell's Companion to Natural Theology. p 298)

In a nutshell, libertarian free will is choosing an action that is not causally determined by factors outside of ourselves. Molinism supports both free will and God's omniscience.

[EvieTheAvocado]

In a nutshell, libertarian free will is choosing an action that is not causally determined by factors outside of ourselves. Molinism supports both free will and God's omniscience.

I'm not sure whether we should take this to my free will thread or not?

What makes you think that determinism is relevant to free will?

And could you respond to this argument?



"Premise 1: You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.

Premise 2: To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects.

Premise 3: But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.

Conclusion: So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do." - Galen Strawson