How can materialism account for experience?

Materialism can describe why we see the colors green or red but it can't describe the experience of seeing green or red. I may see the color red and have a horrible experience because I connect red to a bad experience. Sometimes though, I can see red and it's a good experience. The next person will have their own experience when seeing red or green.

How can materialism account for these subjective experiences?

a reply to: neoholographic

How we experience something is via sensation, and that sensation is filtered by our past experiences, random brain processing, etc.

There are traditional senses, such as auditory, tactile, optical, olfactory, and gustation. The 6th sense is psychic, which includes sensations that cannot be properly attributed to the other 5.

Ok so you sense something, you process the information from the stimuli, then you respond to it.

This describes how we experience something, but it does not explain fully how we are a consciousness experiencing experience in real time. It is a partial solution at best.

I realize I can't address your question adequately so what I'll do is suggest you study the history of philosophy around the world from various cultures. This could take years as it's hundreds of books worth, but try to find a concise overview at the local library of world philosophy in general and start there.

Here is also a good wiki to start with and follow the links.

Experience

I will also add that I believe physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual experiences are all intimately interrelated on such a deep level that they may not actually be seperate at all, and that their division is a result of poor definitions, an illusion paradox, and a lack of refined discernment skills.

originally posted by: neoholographic

How can materialism account for these subjective experiences?

Materialism accounts for these subjective experiences similar to how a computer stores data. We store data in our brains keeping track of every experience we've ever had for the color red, and we base our perception of red based on the totality of these experiences. For example, our data history might simply look like this:

Red=Good
Red=OK
Red=Good
Red=Good
Red=Good
Red=TERRIBLE
Red=Good

What's interesting about us humans is one terrible experience with the color red can permanently change our perception of red, even if every other experience with red was good. This is because once we set the expectation that Red=Good, it turns into a habit to view red as good, so we are continually subconsciously reaffirming our view that red is good... but when we have an experience that goes against this habit, it brings our belief about the color red into our conscience, and permanently alters our perception of it.

Going back to your original question, materialism accounts for these subjective experiences through data in our conscious and subconscious memory.

a reply to: Wang Tang

Wrong,

This has been looked at extensively yet there's still the hard problem of consciousness because of subjective experience. If the answer was this simple, we can just call up the nobel peace prize committee and alert the Scientific community that you cracked consciousness.

Materialism can't account for these subjective experience because there's not a one to one correspondence of red=good or red=bad. Consciousness doesn't retrieve any "data in our consciousness" in any way that can be described mathematically. There's no mathematical description as to why I associate a memory with a certain experience. Two people can have similar experiences and one views it good while the other views it bad.

A person can connect red with a bad memory at a stop light when a person ran a red light and they got in an accident. Why not associate that memory with the green light or the yellow light or the color of the car that hit them?

The point is, subjective experience can't be reduced to the retrieval of data and like I said if this was the case, this question would have been answered 50 years ago.

The term Qualia comes to mind...

Qualia
First published Wed Aug 20, 1997; substantive revision Thu Aug 20, 2015
Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

plato.stanford.edu...


Here is the thing the quality of the experience can place the experience so prioritized to the individual hurt themselves or others towards the goal of that experience.

Also take a look in general at the Stanford Prison Experiments, Willowbrook and any other research in kind, into authority issues.

Perception of authority in relation to beliefs.


Here is access to the above YouTube link so all concerned can see the rest of the vids when you are ready.

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: neoholographic

All form, color or otherwise, is conceptual, and so it is subject to the one who translates it (it is the body of the one who translates it.)

But that is not to say there is no truth to the spirit - there is, which is why so many lifeforms translate / conceive the same thing.

Form/Body/Physicality = Jesus
Translator/Soul/Psyche = Father
Will/Spirit/Force = Holy Spirit

We are all translating our spirit / will / "forces" into the body / form.

E.g. These words are what I saw in my spirit, my will to reply to you - they are my translation of my spirit.

We (as bodies) exist in the mind of God as thought-forms (as his body / mental images.)


Like this: (click here)
[[[ body ] soul ] spirit [ soul [ body]]]

Don't think linearly though, think within.

Think about it like a concept's body is made up of forms, like a definition to a word describes a concept, and then transfer that idea over to souls being living concepts / living-thoughts / tulpas.


A psyche is made up not just of your concepts of self but of all of your concepts - it is your soul - a living concept that exists within the mind of God. And within the mind, is the body - the mental image, the image of self / the image of conception.

a reply to: neoholographic

I never claimed to have cracked the problem of consciousness, I was simply explaining how Materialism accounts for subjective experience. We can talk of consciousness as something that exists, but is not yet fully describable. In both psychology and philosophy of mind we regularly talk of consciousness and subconsciousness and make them integral parts of our theories without fully understanding what they are.

It was quite obvious to me that you were asking a question that has not been answered yet, but I gave you the Materialistic answer anyways. But judging by your response, it sounds like you already knew that your question cannot be answered yet. In this case we are both wasting our time because you are asking the wrong questions.

a reply to: Wang Tang


So what are the right questions?

originally posted by: Kashai

So what are the right questions?

That is the right question.

a reply to: neoholographic

Red is an adjective, not a thing. It is used to describe things, but is not itself a thing. You are not seeing green or red. You are seeing green and red objects and events.

I don't think anyone connects the color red—or any color—to this or that experience. Maybe the color blue to drowning? I don't get it.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


What about the Devil as opposed to Santa Claus?

a reply to: Kashai

I've only seen men dressed as the Devil or Santa. Red clothes and red accessories seem to be involved.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Belief is also involved in relation to meaning in so far as people are concerned.

In example, "I think you are wrong about everything you think is possible".

What is your response?

originally posted by: neoholographic
How can materialism account for experience?

The theory of 'materialism' is long obsolete.

Some interesting reading about the death of 'materialism/physicalism';

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study

www.telegraph.co.uk...

The End of Materialism

www.newdualism.org...

Why Neural Correlates Of Consciousness Are Fine, But Not Enough
Rüdiger Vaas

cogprints.org...

6:26 PM 6/13/2011
Death of materialism and classical physics


In The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra, said in 1982:
“I now believe that the world view of mystical tradition is the best and most appropriate philosophical background for the theories of modern science.”

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 69;
“even if one supposes that the physically significant variables actually exist with sharply defined values (as is demanded by classical mechanics) then we could never measure them simultaneously, for the interaction between the observing apparatus and what is observed always involves an exchange of one or more indivisible and uncontrollably fluctuating quanta.” (Large nail in the coffin of 'classical physics!)

Furthermore, in quantum physics the observer participates in the system of observation to such an extent that the system cannot be viewed as independent. That meant, at least in the quantum context, au revoir to the Cartesian notion of an external universe, independent of cognition. Most significantly, it had been discovered that the energy we call an electron may become manifest both as a wave and as a particle, depending on the measuring conditions.

In the famous (idealized) two-slit experiment, we are asked to imagine a wall seen from above, with two holes spaced apart. In front of the wall is an electron gun and behind it, a detector. When a single electron is aimed at the wall, the pattern displayed on the detector indicates wave interference. This extraordinary phenomenon suggests that the electron has gone through both holes at once, in the form or function of a wave, and interfered with itself.
The electron “knows” that both holes are open. Yet, if observed, an electron is seen to go through one hole or the other, and is registered on the detector as a particle. It is as though the electron experiences or even creates a parallel world in which it is in two places at once—a process that can never be observed directly, for the moment an attempt is made to do so, the wave function immediately collapses. The particle “knows” it is being watched! It also behaves as if it knows what other particles are doing. In this context, objective knowledge of a supposed material world is simply impossible.

We are currently unable to know how an electron particle can suddenly function as a wave and what, if anything happens in between. In the words of Professor John Gribbin: “It is interesting that there are limits to our knowledge of what an electron is doing when we are looking at it, but it is absolutely mind-blowing to discover that we have no idea at all what it is doing when we are not looking at it.” -John Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, 161.

Moving right along...

Back in the 40's and 50's psychiatric facilities throughout the world practiced with an adherence and emphasis upon conservative science.

The whole thing failed miserably.

a reply to: Kashai

"I think you are wrong about everything you think is possible"

Sounds like a statement of fact. Whether it has any justification or not is another matter, and on its own, it is unconvincing.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope



An issue would be the extent it was to me to defend this position and how important it was to you that I change my mind.

This issue of qualia presents that the value we place upon our beliefs is not predictable given what we today understand about psychology, in relation to what is understood biologically about the human experience we ca;; consciousness.

We can train wild animals and of course domesticated animals but when it comes to people training requires their cooperation statistically to a greater extent than it does wild or domesticated animals.

This was a problem in relation to psychiatry and psychology when Skinnerian and Pavlovian models where the norm.

As in discovery these treatment models lacked the ability to alter behavior consistent with what these models offered.

To be clear there is a certain subtlety here when it comes to psychiatric as well as psychological patients. That being that thoughts experienced by such tend to interfere in a valid way to them. To the type of training, consistent in general with conditioning from the frame the models in question.

a reply to: Kashai

An issue would be the extent it was to me to defend this position and how important it was to you that I change my mind.

This issue of qualia presents that the value we place upon our beliefs is not predictable given what we today understand about psychology, in relation to what is understood biologically about the human experience we ca;; consciousness.

We can train wild animals and of course domesticated animals but when it comes to people training requires their cooperation statistically to a greater extent than it does wild or domesticated animals.

This was a problem in relation to psychiatry and psychology when Skinnerian and Pavlovian models where the norm.

As in discovery these treatment models lacked the ability to alter behavior consistent with what these models offered.

Skinner's Behaviorism was too limited, as Chomsky proved. But the cognitive revolution, with its computer analogy, is turning out to be equally as limited, and misleading. Several issues have arisen that have set philosophy of mind and "consciousness" back. One thing that is missing from both is the role that the human body plays in consciousness and mind, and their development.

a reply to: namelesss

I don't think we can quite call materialism obsolete just because of the spooky results of our experiments in the quantum realm. No matter how contradictory our experiments are to our current knowledge, we cannot discount the fact that we may conduct a future experiment that explains everything in a different way. Think of how sure we used to be that the earth was flat. Our knowledge of the quantum realm is just as shortsighted as those humans who once were sure that the earth was flat.

Materialism as a metaphysical view is inherently an inductive, not deductive, view. No matter how much we discover about physical reality, we can never know with certainty that materialism is true, because there are realms within physical reality that we do not have the capability to experience. This does not make materialism any less valuable as a worldview. Mystical worldviews may try to claim with certainty that their view is true, but it is inevitable that their premises will be invalid in some way. So take your pick, either with a mystical worldview that has invalid premises that you must accept on faith, or a materialistic worldview where you reluctantly accept that nothing you "know" is certain.