On Aug 28, 3:07 am, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > It's not something physical that eludes detection, it's just a matter > > of understanding that a stem cell doesn't have any purpose on a > > chemical level in developing into different kinds of tissue in the > > body. It only makes sense from the top down, because the body needs > > these various tissues and organs. The molecules don't need to do that > > for any chemical purpose, they could just do what every other > > inorganic molecule does and just melt and freeze, crystallize, > > evaporate, etc. It doesn't need to become an esophagus. Why would > > there be a purely chemical reason to become an esophagus? > > What other reason can a stem cell have to become a mature cell?
"It only makes sense from the top down, because the body needs these various tissues and organs" > You > are invoking magic. If a cell does *anything* other than exactly what > the laws of physics and chemistry say that it will do then that is > magic. It's bad enough that you keep saying this, but it's worse that > you don't see it or don't admit it. Cells are not just physical and chemical. They are biological too. That's what you're not seeing. There is a difference. There's nothing magic about it, it's just that we have a skewed perspective on it because the biological level gets closer to our own level, so it seems less objective and mechanical to us. Subjectivity is completely ordinary and concretely real, but it can only be described in sensorimotive terms rather than the physical terms we are used to, like mass, specific gravity, size, etc. Substance monism has no choice but to accuse it of being magic because substance monism is a form of epistemological fascism. If something isn't explainable in purely physical and chemical terms, then it must be illusion or witchcraft. Who are we to dictate that cells cannot do anything other than exactly what 19th century scientists thought molecules could do? It's absurd. We know for a fact that molecules don't produce things like colors and sounds 'physically' (you don't find them in the tissue of the brain), so it's only a matter of figuring out at what point do qualia arise. To me they are likely not to arise at all, but like charge or spin are a primitive property of the cosmos. > > No, it's using the laws of physics and chemistry to accomplish it's > > own purposes. They are using each other to express the order and sense > > that they make in relation to each other; the part to the whole, with > > each whole being just a part of a larger order and each part being > > it's own whole in it's own private context. > > That may be a way of describing what happens, but it doesn't change > the fact that the biological parts do exactly what the matter within > them does following the laws of chemistry and physics. Only if there > is an immaterial soul which pushes the particles around magically > could it be otherwise. You're essentially taking the position of a priest in the Spanish Inquisition, only demanding submission to a substance monist orthodoxy rather than a theist monist doctrine. Is a song an 'immaterial soul' that pushes around ferrous molecules on a magnetic tape, or a laser's photons on a CD? Why do I have to choose between a song not existing or it being some kind if immaterial phantom in order to explain how one phenomenological text can be encoded through the patterns of other contexts in mutual supervenience? It's not very hard to understand. The same thing that makes a molecule a molecule also makes a cell a cell, and makes it out of molecules. That doesn't mean that a cell is just a bigger version of a molecule - it's radically different, just as a song is different from a pattern of bytes in an mp3 file. > > > I didn't say that the macrocosm couldn't be predicted by synthesis of > > the micro, I said it can't *always* be predicted by scaling up the > > microcosm. If you could then there would be no classical limit, and > > everything would either behave like weird probabilistic events winking > > in and out of 'existence' or it would behave like tiny indivisible > > particles clattering around the nucleus like a seeds in hollow nut. > > > All of the great scientific ideas of the last century have > > increasingly described a universe of holistic interaction and > > relativity rather than strictly linear cause and effect logic. There > > is no hard material universe of objects anymore, it's all charged > > fields and empty space...virtual particles, superposition, etc. > > Which is all part of physics, and can be predicted by physical laws. > What do you think quantum mechanics and relativity theory are about? > > >> And it supervenes on the processes of our body and brain. > > > Sometimes it does, other times the processes of our body and brain > > supervenes on our conscious thoughts and intentions. Sometimes it's > > both at once. > > If I decide to do something there is a chain of neurological events. > If our conscious thoughts and intentions can drive these neurological > events that would mean we could observe some of the neurons involved > firing miraculously, rather than because they are stimulated by other > neurons. That would make it easier for substance monism, but that's not how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-De5nOC8K0 When we do something it's millions of neurons firing simultaneously all over the brain. They aren't just causing each other to be stimulated in an endless linear chain reaction. It's not nuclear fission, it's a living organism that does what it wants and what it needs based upon the natural perceptions of that organism. You can call it miraculous if you want, but I certainly don't have ti. To me it's the ordinary and somewhat inevitable result of negentropy and sense. > > Responding is only half of the battle. A dummy responds to a > > ventriloquist, but that doesn't mean it should be able to replace him. > > If you have a brain full of artificial neurons, then it makes a > > difference if there's nothing inside that feels what it is that is > > being responded to. > > And if that were possible you might have such a brain now and not know it. No. Feeling like you feel something is feeling. I get the idea that you're trying to tell me - I do. I used to think that way too, "Since everything we experience is presented for us by the brain, then whatever the brain wants us to do will be presented in exactly the way we would need to see it to make us do that, and we would never know the difference". That's true to a certain extent. But the opposite is true as well. Even though our experience may be hopelessly solipsistic and irrelevant, it still insists that we take it seriously. Knowing that matter is all dancing webs of energy and nothingness doesn't save you if you're hit by a bus. While naive realism is of course supervened upon by materialism, the actions of our material bodies (and the structures we use them to build, etc) are supervened upon by our psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc. A beehive doesn't exist until bees create it, just like DNA creates proteins that build a cell. The larger senses and motives of the thing itself that's doing the building is as real as the lowest level physical subroutines. > > >> What if you just replace the spinal cord and each neuron in the brain it > >> directly connects with? > > > Then you would be paralyzed. With neuroplasticity you might be able to > > reimprint yourself so you could throw your limbs around with certain > > combinations of intense emotions or something, but I think that your > > ordinary access to your body would no longer be directly available. > > How would you be paralysed if the artificial neurons pass on the > signal appropriately to the upstream neurons? It's a direct > contradiction: the upstream neurons would both fire and not fire. > Which is it? You're thinking that the 'signal' is the only factor and ignoring completely that there is no such thing as a signal independent of the thing doing the sending and receiving of the signals. It's not just a chain reaction of signals - there is that too, but mainly it's living tissue feeling the feelings of other living tissues. When you replace the living tissues with plastic, then those tissues wouldn't be able feel anything themselves no matter how well they could telegraph the feelings of other tissues. I suspect that the spinal cord neurons connect to too many systems in too many complex ways to be separated like that in reality, but as a thought experiment I would think that the experience would be a profoundly dissociative state, like PCP or ketamine, where the body is experienced as a puppet with no proprietary significance but still under voluntary control. 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