Poll: Do you think that the mind is physical or not?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2362435

by solipsist • 15 years ago

12 50 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

barkmadley2• 15 years ago

The problem with Dualism, is that we have no way of determining the communication mechanism by which the non-physical part of the mind affects the physical part of the brain, so it is unlikely that one exists at all. If no communication gateway exists between a particular mind and a particular body, then it is almost impossible to say that Dualism can be correct.

solipsist3• 15 years ago

I think that comprehending the non-physical part is just as hard as comprehending the communication gateway. In other words, if you can comprehend one, you can probably comprehend the other.

acidblue• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, I believe in Physicalism. I say unfortunately because it would be awesome if there was something beyond it but, it just is what it is.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Is software physical? The computer certainly is, but what is the software?

I'd have to say dualist with reservations. Certainly the mind can't exist without the brain, but the brain is a constantly refreshing and changing thing. Eventually every cell I'm made up of will be a different cell than before...

Is a wave on the ocean water?

It seems like a lot of interesting things in reality in that the closer you look, the harder it is to say anything with certainty.

dazzawazza• 15 years ago

Of course software is physical. It comes in two common forms: electrons stored on silicon wafer and magnetic particles stored on a platter. It also exists in light form (fibre optic transmission) and ink form (but only during the 1980s).

If you think these representations are any different from humans or the mind then you've got a lot of explaining to do.

ldh4• 15 years ago

If you think these representations are any different from humans or the mind then you've got a lot of explaining to do.

I want to emphasize that last bit.

I think the last two poll options are equivalent. Either you believe that the mind emerges from demonstrable, physical, and ultimately testable properties, or you just don't know. That doesn't preclude there being "something else" on its own, but the burden is on you to demonstrate what it is that you actually believe. "I don't know, something else which I can't identify" is a position which is frustratingly common in current society but, in my opinion, completely indefensible.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

I really should learn to quit commenting on these things. They take over my entire "thread" page on HN!

You kind of made my point, the software can be represented by electrons, ink, light, gears, switches, marbles, etc. Or it can just be a loose collection of intents in my mind that I haven't quite coded yet, but it is not these things any more than a wave is just a mound of water. The mind is its own idea, so I'm saying that it might not actually exist in a strict sense.

"Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy." -Terry Pratchett

endtime3• 15 years ago

I voted for physicalism, but I don't really like this framing. I wouldn't say that, say, the Y combinator is a physical object. But I do think it's possible to implement it in hardware (or in software running on hardware). Likewise, our minds are implemented in hardware, but to say they are hardware feels slightly awkward.

Of course, I don't mean to justify dualism, which is kind of a mysterious answer to a mysterious question [1].

1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_...

parfe• 15 years ago

I understand your reasoning, but I don't think you took it far enough. If something can be implemented in hardware, than it is hardware. If your mind could exist as a machine than I could print out schematics with every switch/gate/electron position set so your mind could be rebuilt elsewhere.

YCombinator is physical because a mapping of the ram, physical storage, and CPU state would be enough to reproduce this site. Nothing about this website exists beyond our understanding of physics.

Mz2• 15 years ago

Nothing about this website exists beyond our understanding of physics.

Reputation, membership, sense of community -- none of that could be automatically replicated by replicating the "site" and all of those things play a big role in making it what it is, giving it the value it has, causing it to function the way it does.

I believe in reincarnation, so I believe our minds are separate from our bodies and go on after our bodies cease to function. I mean, what is "life" anyway? What causes a physical construct to be a living, breathing entity one second and dead the next?

Life. Magic. Pretty much the same, I think.

endtime3• 15 years ago

I can implement 2 in hardware by holding up 2 fingers. That doesn't make 2 a physical object.

endtime3• 15 years ago

>If your mind could exist as a machine than I could print out schematics with every switch/gate/electron position set so your mind could be rebuilt elsewhere.

Yep, I think this is the case.

DonCarlitos• 15 years ago

I have always viewed the mind, which extends through the CNS to fingers & toes, as a platform for cognition & memory. It is very likely that actual information is contained, processed and stored in the temporary geometric constructs created when multiple synapses fire. Think "fabric storage." So in that model, the "mind" is both.

solipsist3• 15 years ago

Functionalism is very similar to physicalism. An interesting corollary to functionalism is that mental states are "said to be realized on multiple levels." In other words, computers and other systems could have the same sense sense of identity as humans.

From Wikipedia's article on Functionalism:

"Since mental states are identified by a functional role, they are said to be realized on multiple levels; in other words, they are able to be manifested in various systems, even perhaps computers, so long as the system performs the appropriate functions. While computers are physical devices with electronic substrate that perform computations on inputs to give outputs, so brains are physical devices with neural substrate that perform computations on inputs which produce behaviors."

Just something interesting to think about...

JoeAltmaier6• 15 years ago

All well and good to decribe the process of "identifying" mental states. But we all know, being inside of a brain and thinking as we read this, that something other than behavior is involved with consciousness.

ppod3• 15 years ago

"But we all know, being inside of a brain and thinking as we read this, that something other than behavior is involved with consciousness

You shouldn't say "we all know". I definitely don't know that.

shasta2• 15 years ago

You left out Solipsism - "I believe that the physical is all in my mind"

solipsist3• 15 years ago

Irony at its greatest

shasta2• 15 years ago

Hah! I didn't notice.

hrrld• 15 years ago

And by you, you mean I.

shawndumas2• 15 years ago

Gordon H. Clark:

"If [...] a thought is a physical or chemical motion inside the brain, it can be illustrated by a pitched ball in Yankee Stadium. The stadium represents the brain or body; the pitched ball is the thought. Suppose the first pitch of the game is an inside curve. Now, since the pitch is a dated event, it cannot have happened previously to this game, nor can it be repeated in a later inning. Of course, a pitch in the third inning may also be an inside curve; but it cannot be identical to the first. The inside curve in the third inning comes fifteen minutes later; its speed is not precisely the same; and it breaks about a half-inch higher. That means that I can never have the same thought twice. If I think thought X at 2:21 P.M., I cannot have that thought again at 3:12 or ever after. Behaviorism makes memory impossible.

The most obvious answer to this is that these two pitches resemble each other so closely that one cannot tell the difference between them. Hence, though we can never have the exact same thought, we can nonetheless have a similar thought. But this reply complicates the situation. The thought that the curve in the third inning is similar to the curve in the first inning has to be a newly pitched ball (e.g. the knuckle ball in the fourth inning). Similarity is itself a chemical motion inside the brain. It is as much a dated pitch as the other two. It came five or ten minutes after the pitch in the third inning. How then can a chemical motion ten minutes after the second curve connect two motions that no longer exist? Behaviorism therefore cannot discover that any two chemical motion are similar.

There is a further complication. It is all the more obvious that none of these pitches, nor any other in the Yankee Stadium, can be the motion of a different ball in San Diego. The San Diego diamond is a different mind. Two minds can never have the same pitch. That is why no one else can have the least idea of what Skinner and Ryle mean. Nor can they themselves have any idea of what they wrote, now that the inning is over."

JoeAltmaier6• 15 years ago

Goofy thinking. Just because two things are demonstrably different instances of something, doesn't mean they can't be in all meaningful ways congruent.

The pitched-ball metaphor doesn't begin to touch memory, learning and association, which we use to compare ideas.

shawndumas2• 15 years ago

You are connecting the two different instances by use of a third thing -- what is that third thing? That's the question... The way in which they connect is (in my thinking) a Form and Forms are immaterial.

This link[1] might aid discussion.

----

[1] http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/platform.htm

aswanson• 15 years ago

How about, yes and no. Is information processing physical or a property of a physical mechanism performing a function. The question, in my opinion, is akin to asking "Is my web browser physical or not?" It runs on a physical medium and is a consequence of physical matter and laws...so again, yes and no.

aphyr• 15 years ago

The mind is a process loosely defined by functional behaviors such as communicating, reasoning, and feeling. It arises from and is nothing more than the state of a sufficiently complex physical system and as such can be said to be physical. However it is important to recognize that systems may not be "physical" in the sense that electrons are physical. :)

faitswulff• 15 years ago

You say "nothing more than physical" as if we've figured out physics.

I shall abstain from voting, as physics remains mind blowing.

Figs• 15 years ago

Unless you happen to be religious, this would seem to be more of a problem of word usage than a question about reality.

It's not entirely obvious how to classify things that exist only as representations imposed on a different medium. Others have already pointed out that you have the same problem with software. You could construct quite a number of such confusing cases -- for example, is a spoken word a physical thing? What about a football game? How about the stock market? The issue here with these sorts of things is that meaning is attached to the state of some physical matter, but the meaning is not an inherent part of the matter itself -- at least as we'd usually classify it.

I think probably the best thing to do with something like this is just to acknowledge it as a semantics issue and move on; I don't think you'll get much more insight into the subject of interest (thought, software, language, football, stocks, or whatever...) by worrying too much about its classification status as "physical" or not -- unless you're actually studying it for the point of studying the meta-issue of "problems relating to the attachment of meaning to physical things".

dasil0034• 15 years ago

Although the nuances of the debate are interesting, I'm always a little disappointed when hackers and scientists lean towards physicalism. If you are of an analytical mindset, it's tempting to be drawn to explainable phenomena and to reject pie-in-the-sky and intractable philosophical questions.

I think that just displays a disappointing lack of imagination, a fear of the unknowable, or both. That's why I had to opt for the neglected third-option.

I just don't feel like we have sufficiently solid axioms to even approach such a question with any reasonable degree of certainty. Physicalism vs Dualism, for instance, hinges on the definition of physical, which might be conveniently defined as phenomena within the current physical subsystems we are aware of. In that case, what is defined as Dualism today could become Physicalism tomorrow as physics evolves. Or indeed, there may be dimensions of reality that are incomprehensible by us consciously due to the very nature of our meat brains, but which nevertheless we have some connection and effect on our brains but which will never be comprehensible due to limitations of our reasoning which has evolved under the constraints of meatspace. The idea that predictable behavior implies determinism will never be credible in my mind because we will never be able to observe anywhere near enough of the universe and crunch all the numbers to be sure that there aren't unobservable inputs that we've missed. There is no microscope or telescope powerful enough.

edit: I don't normally complain about downvotes, but a driveby downvote on something this carefully written is a truly cowardly act. Why not step up and actually justify your kneejerk reaction?

Udo3• 15 years ago

That's odd, I'm always disappointed when hackers or scientists lean towards an esoteric view of consciousness, mainly because we should be supremely well suited to realize that the mind is not a concept that somehow requires supernatural augmentation to be feasible. Dealing with both information processing and the nature of reality every day, I feel there is really no excuse for hackers and scientists to evoke the metaphysical. I also think postulating a supernatural component to consciousness prevents an observer from really noticing the phenomenal beauty of the natural processes involved.

dasil0034• 15 years ago

> That's odd, I'm always disappointed when hackers or scientists lean towards an esoteric view of consciousness, mainly because we should be supremely well suited to realize that the mind is not a concept that somehow requires supernatural augmentation to be feasible

See, that right there betrays a misunderstanding of my entire point.

Why must we be only focused on what is required for something to exist? Why the obsession with cause and effect at all levels? I agree this stuff is fascinating, fun, and an epic quest unto itself. But if you try to invoke Occam's Razor after your girlfriend dumps you, you're going to be as clueless Eisenberg's fictional Zuckerberg was in that situation.

To distill all the nuance, joy and sorrow of the human experience into that which can be analyzed, measured, quantified and recorded in a canonical model is a sad existence. It is as if you are content to never taste fresh fruit because frozen fruit contains all the same constituents.

prodigal_erik• 15 years ago

Take a sand castle. The sand clearly exists here and now, as do the bonds holding it together. But I see no reason to presume some (undetectable) layer of reality in which the castle would really exist in the same sense the sand does. The castle is just our rolled-up perception of how the bonded sand happens to behave until the tide returns.

hfinney• 15 years ago

The problem with functionalism is the difficulty of unambiguously determining whether a given system implements a given calculation. This is inconsistent with the need to say that a given system definitely either is or is not conscious.

jasonzemos• 15 years ago

Consider a synthesis of the two -- and then perhaps this is the wrong question to be asking. The mind may appear physical in the ways we can observe it, even if we were to record and analyze every single neuron and synapse and draw accurate conclusions on thought. This is the same as if you were to write a 3D game called 'medschool' and have doctors in training, who are also programs inside that program, dissect brains to see how they operate -- yet the code is running elsewhere. Is that mind, which is just a rendering, considered physical?

The dualist argument appears akin to the Bergsonian Élan vital. It seems to imply there is a hypostasis where physical matter meets this otherness matter. Consider that, according to that theory, if the brain were to be fully observed in the manner stated above, there would be no conclusions able to be drawn from its actions. What a flaw in the universe! I do not believe this system which has been so elegantly designed would have such a gaping hole. Physicalism++

RuadhanMc• 15 years ago

I'll let you know in about 100 years.

marssaxman• 15 years ago

The question is poorly formed. What other kind of matter is there than "physical matter"?

Poll: Do you think that the mind is physical or not?

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