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Is human behavior biological?
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2018-02-17 at 7:42 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2018-02-17 at 7:42 PM UTC
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2018-02-17 at 8:09 PM UTC
Originally posted by Captain Falcon I'm really fucking hungover so I'm going to be brief: rationally, I lean more towards your first option.
I simply see no reason to believe that our "qualia" exists separate to our physical being, and lots of reasons to believe otherwise.
What are the physical properties of qualia then? Does perception of the color red have mass or position? You might say "experience of the color red is just a labeling of a collection of physical states" but if so why do we have subjective experiences at all? If we view the mind as a mere description of physical configurations then there need be no subjective experience at all, the brain could receive electro-chemical input and produce the appropriate output without ever giving rise to the experience of consciousness. A color blind person could be the world leading expert on the neurology of color perception, know exactly how the visual system processes colors, but still never actually have experience the color, even hypothetical totally exhaustive study of experience leaves one in the dark as to the subjective quality of the experience itself. I don't that as like some fable about the value of lived experience, the point I'm trying to make is there exists information about experience that is inaccessible by any conceivable physical analysis, which no tool of the empirical sciences could ever yield. How can we call a thing purely physical if it exists entirely outside the realm of what is physically modelable?Let's take the example of drugs: you normally have a specific set of experiences from a set environment and stimuli, you smoke weed, then you have a different (sometimes radically different) set of experiences from the same environment and stimuli.
Presumably, the drugs also have some set of effects on your physical state that can be described physically (with enough information, you could say exactly how they affect your neurology). So presumably we can make some kind of link between the physical properties of your brain and the drug, and your experiences. IMO this at least process that there is some kind of "upstream" link between the physical world and your "mind". If you can attribute your behaviours to your mind, then there is a downstream link too. At that point I don't see any reason to believe that this phenomena called experience cannot be physically described.
Sure, there's certainly no denying that physical-chemical events cause profound changes in our experience. Indeed, I would say that our experience is purely a function of physical facts. But one thing being causally dependant on, or determined by, another does not make that thing a kind of the other. In this case minds being contingent on physical conditions does not make minds physical. You're into physics stuff yeah? Gravity is a field that's generated by mass, but that doesn't mean a statement like "what is the mass of this gravitational field" are meaningful. We can say gravity supervenes on mass but gravity is not massive. Likewise does it seem immediately unreasonable to say the same of minds? That subject experience or qualia supervene on physical configurations of brains but are not fully reducible to brains? -
2018-02-17 at 8:16 PM UTCcan you measure how much of a faggot i think captain falcon is?
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2018-02-17 at 9:15 PM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny What are the physical properties of qualia then? Does perception of the color red have mass or position? You might say "experience of the color red is just a labeling of a collection of physical states" but if so why do we have subjective experiences at all? If we view the mind as a mere description of physical configurations then there need be no subjective experience at all, the brain could receive electro-chemical input and produce the appropriate output without ever giving rise to the experience of consciousness.
Well I don't know, I don't think anyone really does yet but perhaps we just don't fully understand the purpose of its existence properly. My theory is that this is pretty much our operating system, that this is a part of how we produce those appropriate electrochemical responses for more abstract tasks. It seems like it's just the intermediary process between input and output.A color blind person could be the world leading expert on the neurology of color perception, know exactly how the visual system processes colors, but still never actually have experience the color, even hypothetical totally exhaustive study of experience leaves one in the dark as to the subjective quality of the experience itself.
I had a thought on my last acid trip about the nature of being and nonbeing. What does it mean for something to be or to not be? And I think that the fundamental nature of all of existence, matter etc is simply information. Additionally my hunch is that the only true, perfect informational description of a ball, is the ball. So if the scientist were to have a perfect informational representation of the experience of seeing a colour, I think he would be able to see the colour. Similarly, you could probably write all the information about the physical properties of a ball, but you still couldn't kick it.I don't that as like some fable about the value of lived experience, the point I'm trying to make is there exists information about experience that is inaccessible by any conceivable physical analysis, which no tool of the empirical sciences could ever yield. How can we call a thing purely physical if it exists entirely outside the realm of what is physically modelable?
Idk I'd call that more of a shortfall of our understanding than an actually unknowable or inaccessible or indescribable information. I don't see why it couldn't be modeled, it just hasn't.
Sure, there's certainly no denying that physical-chemical events cause profound changes in our experience. Indeed, I would say that our experience is purely a function of physical facts. But one thing being causally dependant on, or determined by, another does not make that thing a kind of the other. In this case minds being contingent on physical conditions does not make minds physical. You're into physics stuff yeah? Gravity is a field that's generated by mass, but that doesn't mean a statement like "what is the mass of this gravitational field" are meaningful. We can say gravity supervenes on mass but gravity is not massive. Likewise does it seem immediately unreasonable to say the same of minds? That subject experience or qualia supervene on physical configurations of brains but are not fully reducible to brains?
Ehhhhh, I'm not sure that example works. We don't really know if gravity is necessarily a field that's generated by mass, we haven't really found a convincing causal link on a quantum level yet. The fact that both are always in the same place by the same ratios could really just be a correlative link. But I understand the point of your comparison. My thinking is that since there obviously some kind of interface between the physical world or physical phenomena and the "experiential" realm, it seems obvious that we're not making some kind of leap "of kind" here. In my mind, if it interacts with the physical world, it is a part of the physical world and can be somehow measured. I'm not saying that's a 100% bulletproof assumption, but it holds up pretty well and if we start from that assumption, it seems easy to say that it is either caused by our brain or at the very least correlatively linked to our brain. I don't know how but I just don't see any good reason to think it isn't. -
2018-02-17 at 10:21 PM UTCSome of it, but the vast majority of it is inherited behavioral exposure.
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2018-02-18 at 12:28 AM UTCthe social aspect of the human psyche is fascinating. its like have you ever been in a group of people and everyone starts laughing and you laugh with them as well, even tho you're not even sure what everyone's even laughing at? like wtf makes us do that? just an inherent desire to fit in with the group. that's how laugh tracks on comedy programs manipulate you and dictate to you what you find funny. you hear laughing and you automatically feel the urge to laugh as well.
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2018-02-18 at 3:07 AM UTC
Originally posted by NARCassist the social aspect of the human psyche is fascinating. its like have you ever been in a group of people and everyone starts laughing and you laugh with them as well, even tho you're not even sure what everyone's even laughing at? like wtf makes us do that? just an inherent desire to fit in with the group. that's how laugh tracks on comedy programs manipulate you and dictate to you what you find funny. you hear laughing and you automatically feel the urge to laugh as well.
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Usually it's me laughing about something and everyone looking at me weird thinking like "wtf is wrong with him? That's not even a bit funny". -
2018-02-18 at 4:30 AM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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