quote:

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Originally posted by Storm Saxon:
Normally, people bring up religion in other threads and you kind of snipe at them.

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"kind of"?!?!
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
The sky is also "kind of" blue (wait, I'm in L.A. -- bad example). Water is "kind of" wet; oxygen is "kind of" necessary for continued life on this planet as we know it.

And Storm, he has. Not that I agree with his arguments, but he has made them. (And I could swear you were part of at least one of those discussions, too.)


Unless the point of this thread is to provoke KoM into violating the ToS (which PJ reminded him about last night), I wonder what it's point is.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
Hey, Storm, while you're here, remember that discussion we had some time ago about legal restrictions on freedom of speech? At the time I felt like I hadn't done a very good job of explaining my position, but it came up on another forum last week and I did some more research. I was going to start a thread with your name on it, but that French legislation came up here, so I posted what I found here.

Just wanted to clarify my position a little bit is all. Sorry for the hijack.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 

quote:

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Unless the point of this thread is to provoke KoM into violating the ToS (which PJ reminded him about last night), I wonder what it's point is.

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Not at all. Sheesh.

Because as I said in the first post, I don't recall him actually making an argument, setting down his logic all at once? Like:

A. Here is what religion is
B. Here is what human beings are
C. Here is why they don't go well together
D. Here is why atheism is much better for them

If he has, when did he do this?

I've had discussion with him, but we never finished that discussion regarding the nature of religion, and it didn't progress very far.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
That wasn't meant to be an accusation -- sorry it came out that way. It was more of a reminder (about Pop's reminder) coupled with honest curiosity.

I refuse to sift through KoM's posts looking for what you are asking for, but I am still pretty sure he has posted it.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
Answering this thread at all will most likely put KoM in violation of the user agreement. While I think that's a great idea of it could finally be convincing enough to get rid of him, it's probably something close to entrapment.

It will be interesting to see if he can answer without the usual insults and condescending mockery. I suppose that experiment is worth a try.
 

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Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
 

quote:

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It will be interesting to see if he can answer without the usual insults and condescending mockery. I suppose that experiment is worth a try.

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Perhaps, as an example, we should restrain from the sort of casual, condescending mockery that you're criticizing KOM of.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
Again, I did not create this thread in the hopes of getting him banned. I think I've mentioned before that I don't really have a problem with KoM to the extent that I guess a lot of people have. Though I concede that he lacks tact on occasion, I can think of a lot of other people, past and present, that I think lack just as much tact, but whose opinions, because they are held by many here, cover that lack of tact. Heck, a lot of people here probably think I'm just as tactless as KoM.

That said, I encourage this thread to be a thread where Norwegians and Americans can come together in a fraternal spirit of carin' and sharin'.


 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
TheHumanTarget does have a point, you know.
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
A weak one. My only regret is that KoM undoubtedly enjoys the attention his remarks gain him.
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
Well, you've given him more attention than anyone in the last few days, I'd say.

A little counterproductive, don't you think?
 

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Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
 
I'll let you know.
 

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Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Can the rest of us play?

I have a long list of what's wrong with religion!
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 

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A weak one. My only regret is that KoM undoubtedly enjoys the attention his remarks gain him.

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In that respect, he is no different than anyone else on this forum, I'm sure.

Part of the reason I created this thread is that I think it will allow KoM to come up with an argument in a virgin space not in relation to anything else anyone has said, and thus, hopefully, give him a clear space to air his grievances regarding religion constructively and in general, rather than at someone, which often comes across as spiteful.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
Sure, KM.
 

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Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by rivka:
I refuse to sift through KoM's posts looking for what you are asking for, but I am still pretty sure he has posted it.

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quote:

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...But only if that post was aimed at explaining his views, and not trying to tear someone else's views to shreds.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TheHumanTarget:
There's a right way and a wrong way to make your point.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Storm Saxon:
[QUOTE]
A. Here is what religion is
B. Here is what human beings are
C. Here is why they don't go well together
D. Here is why atheism is much better for them

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I don't know about KOM, but I can give my own views on the subject. (Although I'm agnostic rather than atheist)

Sketch outline, try not to get too bogged down in sematics because we're covering some hard to define terms...also for simplicity when I say "religion" I actually mean "most Western religions, particularly but not limited to those based on the Bible".

A) Religion is a set of beliefs to explain that which one cannot (or does not want to) explain through science, where science is distingushed from religion due to its emphasis on deduction from (first) principles and verification through evidence (vs. faith and historically significant texts).
B) Homo sapiens sapiens? (not sure what you want here)
C) While on a small scale (tribal), religion can bring people together, on a large (global) scale, religion acts as a disruptive force. This is because it is pragmatically impossible to get everyone to agree on a religion (when religion inherently is based on arbitrary beliefs) and religions are usually mutually exclusive (if not inherently hostile to each other).
Historically, this means that religion acts as a force leading to conflict, oppression and suffering, similar to other divisive forces such as nationalism, racism, class conflict, etc.
D) I think atheism might be just as flawed. However, my own flavour of agnosticism is based on the principle that humans can never determine whether a god/gods actually exist. It may exist, it may not, but both views are inherently equally valid. Thus, why live (or die) based on the existence or non-existence of a god.

Without religion, one divisive force would be removed from the world. (Its hard to get people to suicide bomb while saying "Allah is great, if he exists, but if he doesn't, sorry...my bad".)

The world would not be perfect (the other divisive forces would still be present), but at least people would be deprived of one arbitrary division, and the world should suffer less conflict.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Well, really, this is not complicated. Religion is a set of stories that people tell each other to feel better about dying, and in some cases about living. They are not true. Basing decisions on untrue beliefs is a bad thing. This is particularly so when the untrue belief is a really big one like 'there is a god'.
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
The track record for that has not been good. When Europe went from being Christendom to being a collection of secular states, we got the Lenin purges (I don't know the death toll), the Stalin purges (some 25M executed), and the Holocaust (some 12M executed). The only comparable knowingly caused humanitarian disaster was Mao's agriculture-collectivization famine (some 50 M).

Don't get me wrong, I *like* states being secular, but we don't have evidence that secularism reduces violent conflict.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
You've cherry-picked your examples, though. What of Britain, the Scandinavian states, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the US, which went through the same transition without bloodshed?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I'd take a different angle on that one, KoM, which is that the "secular" states cited are "secular" only in one sense: that they did not worship a "God."

But theism is not a formal requirement for religion, and I'd argue that Leninist Russia and Nazi Germany had at their hearts the same sort of dangerous certainty that cripples many religious states.

In my opinion, that's the enemy, and it's not religion: it's Certainty, particularly certainty regardless of evidence. The idea that something is so because you SAY it's so, and that you can make it so everywhere by forcing other people to stop saying otherwise, is the enemy of rational thought.

And rational thought is just about the closest thing we have to actual virtue anywhere on this planet.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Indeed; that's where I was going. I usually prefer to take these things one step at a time, though.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
So we're not really arguing that religion is the enemy. We're arguing that rationality is preferable to faith.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
So Storm's title should have been something more along the lines of "Hey, King of Men. What's wrong with ideological fervor?"

I dunno, it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

(Your point stands, of course; I'm just being silly.)
 

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Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
 
So do you consider yourself somewhat of a humanist then? Along the lines of the philosophers of the Renaissance time?
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
So we're not really arguing that religion is the enemy. We're arguing that rationality is preferable to faith.

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quote:

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I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith.

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I would ask you to prove it.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Yes, we know you would argue that. You're wrong.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by kmbboots:
I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith. The problem is found when we confuse or conflat the different kinds of questions.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:

quote:

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I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith.

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I would ask you to prove it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by twinky:

quote:

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Originally posted by kmbboots:
I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith. The problem is found when we confuse or conflat the different kinds of questions.

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I disagree that faith is required to address this "something more," whatever it might be. For example, accounts of personal spiritual experiences often mirror my own experiences with powerful works of music. If I don't need faith to address my experiences with such works, I'm not at all convinced that faith is necessary for the other kinds.

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quote:

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Originally posted by kmbboots:
I don't think that spiritual "experiences" are a suffucient basis for faith.

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And those things that are beyond rationality are also beyond proof.

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Originally posted by Sterling:
I would tend to argue that even if religion is entirely irrational in and of itself its existence has still allowed some peoples to form a useful bond when conditions might otherwise dictate an "every man for himself" outlook, and possibly die off as a result. Consider the works of antiquity that were preserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages, without which Europe might never have emerged, for example.

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In any case, if my belief in something makes me happier, it is good, and right because the end result is that it makes me, which does exist, more gooderer.

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And if your joyful belief is that the white race is superior to all others? Plenty of people have been happy because they weren't born brown.

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Storm, honey, I can't even prove that you exist. But I like to believe so. It makes things more gooderer.

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I'm certainly not beyond rationality, I assure you.
 

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Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by King of Men:

quote:

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Originally posted by Sterling:
I would tend to argue that even if religion is entirely irrational in and of itself its existence has still allowed some peoples to form a useful bond when conditions might otherwise dictate an "every man for himself" outlook, and possibly die off as a result. Consider the works of antiquity that were preserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages, without which Europe might never have emerged, for example.

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Such as, for example, the Archimedes palimpsest, where he develops calculus two thousand years before Newton? The math was rubbed out to make room for hagiography. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

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quote:

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I'm sure we all understand that there have been plenty of dorks out there who have cheerfully scientifically 'proved' that racism and/or slavery was right and proper.

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The point of that little exercise is that at some point you have to appeal to something that doesn't exist. You can't use terms like 'better' or 'worse' in the context of a value system without appealing to something that doesn't exist.

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And rational thought is just about the closest thing we have to actual virtue anywhere on this planet.

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Then I must say you did so very clumsily; I have no faintest idea any more what your point was. Could you please be a little more explicit?

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quote:

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Huh. I would say kindness and patience are much more virtuous than rational thought.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Storm Saxon:

quote:

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Then I must say you did so very clumsily; I have no faintest idea any more what your point was. Could you please be a little more explicit?

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No, it was pretty clear.

In any case, now you're being a jerk. I refuse to converse with you in this thread any longer until you apologize.

I tried.

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quote:

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By your proof KoM is irrational.

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quote:

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I've seen ducks being kind before, and people with mental handicaps are often the least rational and most loving people around.

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quote:

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Originally posted by John Van Pelt:
It was clear to me. The implication of Storm's syllogism is that to conclude (as KoM has) that the only worthy activity of humanity is that which is based on rationality, is itself the application of a value judgment -- namely that rationality is more betterer than other modes of thought and inquiry. (And in fact, universally more betterer.)

The justification for such a value judgment itself resides (necessarily) in a belief system outside rationality itself.

KoM believes that "basing decisions on untrue beliefs is a bad thing." Even if you don't change that to "basing value systems on uncertain beliefs is sometimes a bad thing" (which is a more defensible critique of organized religion, IMO), it's still just something KoM believes.

Or so I interpreted Storm.

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quote:

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I would argue that intention is at least as important as effect when determining "quantities" of kindness. I also think you're confusing forethought with rationality.

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quote:

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but he hasn't an ounce of kindness or patience that I've seen

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quote:

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Originally posted by Brinestone:
Well, how would you define kindness? To me, it's giving someone else what they need, especially in a gentle way, even if it means you don't get what you need right away (or at all).

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quote:

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The first is that having the maximum accurate information to base decisions on being a good thing doesn't really need to be defended, because we all believe this.

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quote:

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Religions make claims of fact based on the same kind of faith; and that's where I part company.

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Well, it’s a rather corny story. As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.

I’ve put that a bit glibly. When I say I realized he was talking nonsense, what I mean is this. In the years I’d spent learning History, Physics, Latin, Math, I’d learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didn’t seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments which, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and - in terms of logic and proof -just plain wrong. Why was this?

Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians - and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

So, I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn’t apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of ‘truth’. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue...) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

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Its a bit longish, but since its particularly relevant and congruent with my thoughts on the matter, enjoy
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Word games. I won't play them. Either you believe that a god exists, or you don't. Make up your mind.

quote:

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There may be certain kinds of decisions where it is better to have the maximum sensitivity to notions of goodness. There may be situations where the pursuit of maximum accurate data damages the decision, by delaying it, or, more likely, constraining the decision unproductively and limiting the role of imagination.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I'd take a different angle on that one, KoM, which is that the "secular" states cited are "secular" only in one sense: that they did not worship a "God."

But theism is not a formal requirement for religion, and I'd argue that Leninist Russia and Nazi Germany had at their hearts the same sort of dangerous certainty that cripples many religious states.

In my opinion, that's the enemy, and it's not religion: it's Certainty, particularly certainty regardless of evidence. The idea that something is so because you SAY it's so, and that you can make it so everywhere by forcing other people to stop saying otherwise, is the enemy of rational thought.

And rational thought is just about the closest thing we have to actual virtue anywhere on this planet.

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quote:

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Because there are all kinds of rational arguments for altruism.

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That's true, but ultimately they rely on the irrational* idea that it is better for an individual to work for the betterment of the society/family/culture/nation than for his own sake.

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If you grant biological imperative as an environmental reality, this is easily dismissed. And even if you don't, if you grant the concept of "betterment" as an axiomatic reality, the idea of "enlightened self-interest" is a basic derivative.

Philosophy has long since answered the question of why people should be nice to each other even if there's no God. It can't answer the question of whether someone should be nice in every situation, but that's mainly due to diagnostic difficulties related to our own lack of omniscience.
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I grant that biological imperatives are a reason for me to have an instinct to do something. I do not grant that biological imperatives are what actually make me do that thing, except for the most basic survival characteristics (eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.).

I know there are many reasons why people, biologically, might tend towards 'enlightened self-interest'. I don't think, on a purely individual level, that either biology or philosophy has 'answered' the question, "Why shouldn't I be motivated by plain old self-interest?"
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

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I don't think, on a purely individual level, that either biology or philosophy has 'answered' the question, "Why shouldn't I be motivated by plain old self-interest?"

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quote:

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That's true, but ultimately they rely on the irrational idea that it is better for an individual to work for the betterment of the society/family/culture/nation than for his own sake.

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Originally posted by MrSquicky:
Did no one watch A Beautiful Mind? There's a whole area of game theory that shows - not just rationally, but mathematically - that working for the betterment for groups like that is often better for the individual.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Bridges:
Either you believe that a god exists, or you don't. Make up your mind.

No.

After spending all this time explaining why no one should accept the existence of an unproven god -- and I'm not disagreeing -- why should I accept the nonexistence of one, just on your say-so?

Sorry, agnosticism is the only rational direction, as far as I'm concerned. You're just asking me to trade one dogma for another. No thanks.

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I love that movie. However, its presentation of game theory (both as a general theory and the specific aspects it attempted to simplify) is rather dreadful.

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I tend to believe that all of the positive things that flow from religion can be attained just as effectively by other means.

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Bravo. The only thing I would add to that is that the "secular" states under Mao and Stalin simply attempted to replace religion with a cult of personality. But anyone that is familar with the level of devotion/faith that the Red Book and the daily rituals of praising/asking forgiveness from Mao of that era required, would hardly call it anything *but* religion.

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Or to put it a different way, simply because atheism may have been present in Soviet Russia does not mean atheism is fundamentally a bad idea anymore than vodka is a bad idea because Stalin drank it.

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I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith.

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I would ask you to prove it.

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And that means, without faith in some original propositions, we have an infinite progression of propositions that can never be ultimately be justified.

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everything that has been brought up in this thread is circumstancial and quite dependant on todays majority rule and popular opinion vs singular opinions and personal philosophical ideas.

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Religion exists, and now that is exists, I think the question is to judge whether it contributes to the good of all or whether it doesn't.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:

quote:

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everything that has been brought up in this thread is circumstancial and quite dependant on todays majority rule and popular opinion vs singular opinions and personal philosophical ideas.

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I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say, here. Please elaborate...?

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I think the answer to this question is largely contingent upon whether any one religion is "true."

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However, it is time to separate the useful behaviours from the surrounding myths, because the surrounding myths inevitably cause conflict in a modern multi-religion world.

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I agree with Ginette that debating the trueness of religion ignores what 'religion' actually is in this world.

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First we would have to grant your assessment of what religion actually is in this world. If there IS a single true religion, what religion actually is may be very different from what you're asserting it is.

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There's nothing in just existing that says that a deity is going to looking out for the good of all.

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Views are not something taht can be disputed simply because it is outside onself and limeted to the scope of the person expressing them.

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You're wrong, I'm afraid. Opinions -- like yours -- can be discussed and evaluated. [/QB]

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I agree with Ginette that debating the trueness of religion ignores what 'religion' actually is in this world.

First we would have to grant your assessment of what religion actually is in this world. If there IS a single true religion, what religion actually is may be very different from what you're asserting it is. [Smile]

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Religion probably was essential for early man to co-exist in tribal communities.

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You said that in order to judge whether or not a religion "contributes to the good of all", we would need to know whether it was 'true'.

My reply was that intent doesn't matter, that what was actually done matters.

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Thus, I believe it is incorrect to debate about whether or not religion was used by early man or whether it was essential since 'religion' flows from being human. It's just the way humans think.

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I'm not getting involved in this thread, except to say I <3 Storm Saxon.

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Thank you so much for your kind words.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
I still think that looks like mooning someone.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

quote:

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So your argument boils down to this: since we require axioms to discuss logic, faith is an essential component of observation?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Storm Saxon:

quote:

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I agree with Ginette that debating the trueness of religion ignores what 'religion' actually is in this world.

First we would have to grant your assessment of what religion actually is in this world. If there IS a single true religion, what religion actually is may be very different from what you're asserting it is. [Smile]

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I think I didn't express myself very well. You said that in order to judge whether or not a religion "contributes to the good of all", we would need to know whether it was 'true'.

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At best such arguments can point to the hole left by a lack of faith.

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I disagree with this pretty strongly. It's clear that's how many, many humans think, but I don't think that allows claiming a human universal.

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The only way to accurately cover the entirety of human thought is to weaken religion pretty much beyond any useful definition to something like "believing in stuff".

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There are genuine atheists out there. There are cultures (or at least subcultures) that don't exhibit anything like what we would classify religion.

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Regression to the mean is not, to me, a good way of defining what humans are.

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The less common but still human groups are neglected by this method.

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In any case what, exactly, is wrong with how I am defining religion?

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Who is your god and how do you serve it? The answer to that question answers what religion a person is.

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I don't have a god nor do I serve it. But I'm still religious.

Defining religion as "stuff you care about" equates being a Christian with being a Packers fan or a humanist or a dancer or whatever. And yet these things are clearly not equal. There are aspects of what we recognize as religions that aren't shared by merely believing in things or caring about stuff.

If you want to postulate some underlying aspect of being human that is flows into seperate (though possibly related) channels like religion and these other things, I don't have a problem with that, but saying humans are just naturally religious isn't, to me, tenable. Religion represents an articulation of "being human" that has significant differences from these other things.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
I don't really have time to respond at length to this thread any longer. It's not that I'm angry or anything, or that I believe I am wrong and what I have said is indefensible. It's just that a) I don't really ahve time to be writing long posts at work and b) I would like to think about what's been said on this thread.

edit: I appreciate Tom and Squicky and KoM taking the time to respond to what I have written.

[ October 17, 2006, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
 

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Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Last night's football game may have been enough to convince Chicagoans that there is a God.
 

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Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
 
My faith in issues of fact is almost always tentative and subject to revision as I have new experiences and learn new things. I don't consider the fact-based issues to be the most important part of my faith.

Rather, I think that the primary role of faith in my life is to help me determine, not what is true, but what is good and what is important.

Yes, it's easy to take "people being happy is good" as an axiom, no matter what you believe. And that particular axiom is so obvious and simplistic that it makes the moral value of faith seem trite ... which is why I think King of Men was so willing to address it

But where faith and unprovable values really start to become important isn't when someone asks you, "Is happiness good?" but rather when someone asks you, "Is it worth hurting these people to accomplish this goal?" or "X and Y are both good. Should I sacrifice X for Y, or Y for X? Is there a right choice, when I can't choose both?" "What is worth dying for? What is worth killing for? Is there anything in either category?"

How do you weigh others' happiness against your own when they come into conflict? How do you weigh two strangers' happiness against each other? How do you choose between two bad things? People find very different answers to all of these questions, which is one reason I think that it is very good for a community to have a clear, shared set of values that they choose to believe in through faith, because such things are inherently unprovable.

King of Men seems to think that if we eliminated religion, we would eliminate people's differences when it comes to these sorts of questions. I disagree. I think that without religion, people would become further fractured and divided about them, and that instead of some longstanding, consistent disagreements that people can learn to compromise on (Catholics and Protestants working together, etc), we would have new factions arising every few years as different political issues came into the fore.

People have proven many more times than King of Men will recognize that religions with huge rifts between them can compromise and work together rather well. Since that is demonstrably possible, I suggest that we should devote our energy toward promoting that sort of peaceful compromise, rather than trying to eliminate religion and live with whatever chaotic, irrational belief factions follow in its wake.
 

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Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
 
To springboard from that last paragraph, wouldn't eliminating religion be a bit like elminating nations? I mean, nations have been the cause of almost every major war in our history. They are clearly to blame for millions of deaths. If we simply abolish all national governments, war will abruptly end! (Of course, so will peace.)

Isn't it better to have a consistent set of players on the world stage who have the authority to sign treaties, make laws, and establish peace when they choose to? Rather than letting the world be controlled by whichever ambitious loon decides to seize power over a given region on a given day?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

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I think that without religion, people would become further fractured and divided about them, and that instead of some longstanding, consistent disagreements that people can learn to compromise on (Catholics and Protestants working together, etc), we would have new factions arising every few years as different political issues came into the fore.

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But where faith and unprovable values really start to become important isn't when someone asks you, "Is happiness good?" but rather when someone asks you, "Is it worth hurting these people to accomplish this goal?" or "X and Y are both good. Should I sacrifice X for Y, or Y for X? Is there a right choice, when I can't choose both?" "What is worth dying for? What is worth killing for? Is there anything in either category?"

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Since it has predominantly been asserted that morals and ethics are ideas and the actions that follow ideas it wouldnt seem to be singularly a genetic effect.

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if you don't think you'll be burning in hell for the next eternity because of it.

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Originally posted by ginette:

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if you don't think you'll be burning in hell for the next eternity because of it.

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Do you really think the ones commanding wars are initiating those wars because of their fear for hell?

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Originally posted by King of Men:
Considering the way the Vikings of Iceland preserved their sagas, why, I'll take them over your monks any day, thanks.

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I can accept Tom's arguments without much problem, because they allow for the possibility of the unknown. I cannot accept KoM's (at least not at present) because as others have been saying they seem to be contradictory. Saying "Belief in something that cannot be proven is wrong" is itself a belief in something that cannot be proven (or at least I have never seen a satisfactory argument otherwise).

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They're not "my" monks. The preservation they did plays a vital role in what virtually everyone in the United States is taught, to this day.

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I for one don't believe overpopulation is the problem. I think misuse of Earth's resources and poorly run or corrupt governments are the cause of lack of resources. Part of this belief comes from my religious beliefs as an LDS person, as reflected in this scripture:

"For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves. Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment (Doctrine & Covenants 104:17,18)"

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What is your logic in continually stating that the existance of God is definitively False rather than just uncertain?

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insofar as I see the existance of Santa Claus as a literal representation of popular myth to directly contradict physical law and reason then no, I would not consider a belief in Santa Claus the act of a rational man. Even given that, though, I would not categorically state that the existence of Santa Claus is False, just highly unlikely according to what I know of the world.

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I would argue though that there is the possibility of a belief in God where said belief does not contradict any physical law (in a meaningful way) or violate reason, and therefor is not necessarily an irrational belief.

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The existence of a teapot in orbit around Mars does not violate physical law, either. But I trust you would not consider a belief in such a teapot to be rational, either.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Rather than allowing KoM to change the question, why don't you insist that he answer the question you asked him?
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
In what way do you feel I failed to answer the question?
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
You have in no way answered it. You simply substituted a question that you felt put you in a more defensible position. The question is why do you speak of the nonexistence of God as a certainty when you are incapable of proving it. You could dispute the premise of the question, or you could answer it. Your question about Santa Claus accomplishes neither, and is simply intended to put theists on the defensive. Yes, well, you think they're as silly as adult believers in Santa Claus. Very good. Now: answer the original question.

Or is it that you take it on faith?
 

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Posted by TheGrimace (Member # 9178) on :
 
Ok, this does help me better understand your stance.

It does however cause me to question the further exposition about basing your beliefs on a "false" belief (reading false as highly unlikely and not supported by reason, if not disproved either) as inherently causing those beliefs to be negated or flawed or whathaveyou.

If I chose to believe that there was a teapot in orbit around mars does that negate the validity of any of my other beliefs or conclusions which do not rely on this teapot?

If I chose to be a moral person who happens to believe in God as part (but not a strictly necessary part) of my moral standing am I really worse off or just no better than the atheist standing next to me with the same end moral standing?

I acceed that there is the possibility of people being led astray and against reason by an overzealous belief in the divine, but what about those who only use him as an explanation (for now) of the unexplainable. But what about the person who believes in God because of the possibility that there is an afterlife, but doesn't let that belief interfere with reason in general?
 

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Posted by TheGrimace (Member # 9178) on :
 
Icarus, I think KoM did in the end answer my question in a roundabout way:

Q: Why do you say that a belief in God is categorically False?

A: In fact I call it "false" because I find it to be without reasonable support, and unlikely to the extent that it is useless to consider it a possibility.


and the previous post was meant to sum up: do you completely discount the potential validity of Pascal's wager?
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
Do you know any such people? Apart from that, if you had a belief in god but didn't reason from it, I suppose you would be as well off as an atheist in terms of getting goals accomplished. Such a belief strikes me as rather pointless, but I concede the theoretical possibility. I still think you'd be worse off on the other part of my 'should' statement, namely, that you have a moral responsibility not to believe things without having evidence for them.

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You have in no way answered it. You simply substituted a question that you felt put you in a more defensible position. The question is why do you speak of the nonexistence of God as a certainty when you are incapable of proving it.

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Originally posted by ginette:
Oh yes, Einstein was religious.

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Not in any of the usual sense of the word. I believe he grew up in a somewhat traditionally Jewish home, but other than the occasional mention of God (the vast majority of which were clearly jokes), I know of no evidence that he was in any way religious as an adult.
 

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Posted by stacey (Member # 3661) on :
 
Since Storm said anyone could join in I’m going to post *some* my views on what I think is wrong with religion and why I don’t think its right for me. Not that anybody is interested Haha I just feel like posting in one of the religious threads for once. You guys have all the fun. In no particular order:

1. I don’t think it’s fair that G-d gets all the credit for the good things but never gets blamed for the bad things that happen in life.

2. I don’t think it’s fair that apparently I’m going to hell because I don’t believe in G-d even though I’m a really good person otherwise. (Honest! )

3. I can’t believe in a G-d in a world where suffering is out of control.

4. I can’t believe in G-d just by reading a book/living by a book that I feel is fiction ,(great stories they may be but I still don’t think that the majority of them are true Aesop’s fables are just as effective if not more effective at telling children not to lie etc. Actually Aesop’s fables have immediate consequences that a child can relate to rather than the only consequence being that they will go to hell when they die which will probably be a long way away.). I think the morals came first and then the religion not the religion first and then the morals came from that.

5. A big thing for me is that I can’t just have faith. I need something to prove to me that there is a G-d.

6. I don’t get organized religion in that so much time is devoted to worship etc. Why can’t you just acknowledge that He/She is there and get on with life, maybe thank him every now and then, maybe ask him why? every now and then. Why do you need to devote so mich time to Him/Her?

7. I don’t know if the world would be better off without religion but I really don’t think it would be that much different. People would just be saying “ Because I think so” instead of “ Because G-d thinks so”. Which I think is better. People get to use G-d for any old argument, and it’s not fair that it just trumps everyone elses!

So, yeah that’s a few of my reasons. I am always open to revising my opinions if something someone else makes sense, but I don’t think that I could ever believe in G-d just like some of you couldn’t not believe in G-d. G-d or any other spiritual being just doesn’t make sense to me and therefore I can’t accept that He/She is real.

Cheers
 

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Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
and so to sum up the entire thread people who believe in god fall into ad ignorantium because it cannot be proven he doesnt exist, and the people who dont believe in god fall into ad ignorantium because there is no proof of a god and therefore doesnt.

next on the list

Fluffy bunnies. Is seems many people have had several bad run-ins with such creatures. Should they be allowed to exist?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I suggest that there are degrees of rationality involved in all of this that are important to make clear.

Here's a for-instance.

Many people believe in God based on personal experience. That is, that they have directly felt the action of the divine in their lives and have interpreted it as such. Direct, positive influence upon them. Now, an empiricist would say two things about this, I imagine:

1) The experiences of one person (however that person interprets them) are not relevant to the discussion. Things must be repeatable.

2) If a simpler explanation for the observed phenomena exists (i.e., one not requiring divine intervention), we would do well to accept that explanation (aka Occam's Razor, but I think for discussion we should spell out the exact principle and not use the name as short-hand).


A STRONG empiricist -- one who believes that empiricism is the only sure source of fact-based knowledge that can be relied upon for logical deductive reasoning -- would add to #2 that "there is always a simpler explanation not requiring the existence of God."

That is merely one type of reasoning. It is a particularly successful one, granted. It is the source of much that has proven good and useful in the world. It is also the source of much error because, as we learn over and over, sometimes the simplest explanations are not exactly correct, and...follow me here...there is still a need for conjecture, guess-work, and action without complete information. Without having to spell things out in more detail than a post on a BB warrants, let's just say that this brand of logic almost always leaves us taking action based on partial information. We simply MUST use our (educated) guesses about the future state of the world in order to proceed.

Let's call all of the above PART A. If you have a problem with PART A, we should resolve that first. If not, we can then move on to PART B.

PART B is this: ACTION, NOT JUST THOUGHT

Humans are capable of many, many modes of thought, and action based upon those thoughts. The modern term "rational thought" also encompasses more than just empirically-based reasoning. Part B is pretty simple in short-hand. It is the principle that people may ACT rationally even when the original thought or idea cannot be supported within a framework that could be called rational or "reasoned." Assuming we've gotten to discussion of Part B yet, I'll assume that we've come to grips with this principle -- that even within our most "rational" framework possible, actions must often be taken that are are not fully supported by the verfiable facts. Part B of my mini-treatise simple extends this to say that it is a characteristic of all sentient life that we know of to act even when we cannot fully support our choices rationally. In part because we MUST act, and in part because we are finite and impatient, and curious, and a host of other things that make activity almost a biological imperative.

Okay...that's PART B. So far so good? I will continue to Part C because I feel like I haven't actually said anything that should cause anyone any problems, and because Part C is where the crunch comes in. Part C is this:

PART C: From Action to Thought...

"All I gotta do is...act ration'ly" (sung to the tune of "Act Naturally")

Cognitive scientists have discovered this wonderful thing called "cognitive dissonance." In a nutshell, it is the internal discussion one has with oneself when ones actions are different from ones "internal state." A simple example; smiling when you are sad sets up a "dissonance." Big deal...except...the weird thing is that people will quite often change their internal state to match the behavior rather than the other way around. So...smile when you are sad and you have a reasonable shot of internally convincing yourself that you were actually happy all along. Weird, huh?

Except that we're wired that way.

Why bring this up? Well...because I submit that what really matters is actions. That our internal monologue -- our own self-monitoring if you will -- is in charge of our reasoning capacity more than we'd ever want to admit in open court (or perhaps, on an internet forum). There are some startling implications, though. One thing that has been observed, time and again, is that every behavior we emit is somehow "rationalized" internally. And I don't mean that in the sense of "made excuses for" but rather in the sense of "I amd doing it, therefor it IS rational...and so it must be explained or explainable."

In other words, behaving as if there IS a God convinces us that God exists. It is inescapable for most humans. It is also...in the most human sense of the word, completely rational.

Now...our stalwart STRONG empiricist senses a trap. If his (or her) materialistic approach is as much a product of an internal monologue as the God-driven world-view of the most fervent of religious folks, what exactly is the thing that separates their way from my way, and vice versa?

In truth, nothing, or nearly nothing.

It is mere illusion that we act our beliefs, when in reality we are just as likely to be "believing out our actions."

Which, if you stop and think about it, is as natural as can be, and completely irrational from any point of view that would satisfy our stalwart empiricist.

And yet, there it is. We act without full data, we interpret our actions and reach conclusions that...in a neatly circular fashion, color our perceptions and help us to interpret new facts and both support new actions and color our interpretation of those actions.

NOW...I'm going to assume we will need to spend a great deal of time on Part C before (if ever) going on to the implications of all this in Part D.

I will thus use this as a convenient stopping point. Those with better minds than mine have no doubt already figured out what Part D must be if we are not to simply throw up our hands and say that "all is meaningless." If you have something figured out and want to proceed to Part D, then by all means, indulge yourself. I won't stop you.

But, I'm going to assume that...unless people just think it's too stupid an idea to even contemplate...we will need to chew on Part C first.

So...for now...I bid you adieu.
 

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Posted by stacey (Member # 3661) on :
 
So everyone is ignorant except agnostics?
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
I have an elegant little proof of part D which unfortunately does not fit in this text box . . .
 

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Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 

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Originally posted by ginette:
[Well, I don't think it is the myths that cause the problem, I think it's the 'multi' in itself: Whether you are talking about multi-cultural, multi-religion or multi-whatever, it always causes conflict. I don't know why, I guess it must be in our human nature to feel safest when everything around us is uniform, predictable.

And why would you WANT to take away other peoples myths? Even if you could (which I doubt), what would you gain by it?

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First paragraph: Its not either/or. As I stated *at length* in my very first post, religion is far from the only source of conflict. It just happens to be a particularly big and arbitrary cause, one that we can easily do without.

Second paragraph: You seem to have missed the entire point of the post. I'll try again in story form if that makes it easier.


Oog and Oogette are a caveman couple. They have children but inevitably the children die from lack of food. One day, they notice that one area is teeming with strawberries. They also notice that they vacated their bowels in that area after eating strawberries. Not understanding the connection between the seeds in their feces and plants, they decide that their feces must have pleased something nearby. They look around and notice a big pine tree. Clearly, their feces must have pleased the Pine Tree.

Several generations later, their descendents worship the Pine Tree. They crap near the tree and then their children have lots of food. Gradually, they come to the belief that if they fail to crap near the Pine Tree, then the pine tree will mutate into a giant Godzilla and crush them all.
Their religion has encoded a useful fact (crap has seeds, seeds grow into food) into a myth (the giant Oog killing Godzilla).

Several more generations later, the people of Oog have developed Kraft Dinner and Big Macs. They no longer require the plants growing near the Pine Tree to live. They no longer even crap near the pine tree. Instead, they built a grand structure around it. Inside, they perform a ritual, they place chocolate (which after a priest has blessed it, becomes metaphorical feces) near the Pine Tree. The useful fact has been superceded but the myth remains. They sit around and praise the Pine Tree for their good fortune and are eternally in awe of the power that the Pine Tree must have.

Later, a new people moves nearby. However, they *don't* worship a Pine Tree. Instead, they worship a Cactus that their ancestors happens to dump nearby. Fearful that their Pine Tree will mutate into a giant Godzilla and crush them, the people of Oog declare war on and wipe out the Cactus worshipers.
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
Gödel, Escher, Bach and Bob_Scopatz

Nice sonata Bob!
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
lol.


Actually, I just figured that since we were on page 4 of the same discussion replayed multiple times, it couldn't actually HURT to adopt a somewhat different approach and question rationality as being an especially "rational" choice, superior to all other modes of human operation.
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
About Einstein being religious: Well, ok, if you define it as having adapted a certain religion I guess you are right.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Icarus, I assume you are referring to the famous "2+2=5" proof which, while sublime, has nothing over the "2+2=3" proof, which has its own special elegance.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
There's a problem with your summation, Bob: religion (and to some extent materialism) is predictive and prescriptive. They're not just attempting to justify behaviors after the fact; they're actually attempting to recommend behaviors based on an external ethical framework. Now, it's true that people frequently look for ways to force their own current behaviors into that framework, but it's equally true that people often find themselves taking actions they otherwise would not as a consequence of that framework.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Tom...you're jumping ahead of me. WAY far ahead.

I haven't even gotten to the discussion of religion yet.

The point, so far, is that human rational thought is not necessarily reliable, or consistent across humans except in very limited spheres (such as, perhaps, engineering and judging Olympic figure skating...but certainly NOT science or religion).

Frankly, I thought the post was getting too long and that there was no point going there if people couldn't at least consider Part C to be worth discussing.

I don't think I can discuss this back-to-front though. You, for example, have assumed much to get to your critique.

If you don't mind, I'd rather see if people need/want to talk about Part C before forging ahead...

But it'll be tonight (at the earliest) before I can make any further responses anyway.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

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The point, so far, is that human rational thought is not necessarily reliable...

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Can they demonstrate a causative relationship between a hypothetical hole and an absence of faith? Can we lay out what the attributes of the hole are? Or are we first required to believe in a hole, too?

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Can they demonstrate a causative relationship between a hypothetical hole and an absence of faith? Can we lay out what the attributes of the hole are? Or are we first required to believe in a hole, too?

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The rules for evaluating thoughts might be different (in science or religion), but the processes behind the thinking are the same ones humans have always used, and probably will always use.

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Originally posted by ginette:
About Einstein being religious: Well, ok, if you define it as having adapted a certain religion I guess you are right.

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I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

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Oh?? I thought you came up with this quote yourself
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
I already said what I think about that:

quote:

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Now, there are certainly some quotes by Einstein referring to god as doing this, that or the next thing; however, I think it is clear that this does not reflect any belief on Einstein's part in an actual divinity, even a fairly vague, Deistic one, but is just a convenient way of speaking.

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
Ok, so that's how YOU think about it.
That doesn't make it right
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
So...what, you've added mind-reading to your lengthy list of talents now? Actually, I guess it would count as a seance more than mind-reading. Unless it's an involuntary mind-reading of the dead, in which case I'm not sure what the term is.

Or do you have something other than your own thoughts on the matter as to why you're right?
 

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Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
other than Einstien being raised jewish there doesnt seem to be any evidence that he supported any religion. then again having a religion and being religious are two different things
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Rakeesh, who are you addressing? Because if it's KoM, postmortem mind-reading isn't necessary. It's pretty clear from some of Einstein's personal correspondence that he did not believe in God. I tend to thing the famous quotes are him joking, rather than "a convenient way of speaking," but I confess that to be an assumption on my part.
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
It seems to me that Einstein has made enough contradictory statements about religion (and God) that it's difficult to do anything but guess whether or not he had any sort of religion. Possibly he changed his mind (back and forth) on that question himself.
 

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Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
 
Why are we arguing here the religiosity of a dead man (who cannot defend himself ) ? Is it because we consider him a great man and “each party” wants to have him on their side?

Just as it happens with any other written source (think of the Bible for example) all we have now are interpretations of what the real reasons behind the writings* were. Therefore, out of context we can quote and support any particular view. Why bother?

Why not be a great person yourself, and then explain the goodness that you do as a result of your “religiosity” (or lack thereof).

*except for those that had a personal experience of enlightenment about it.

A.

PS: I’m still compiling a list of “what is wrong/good about religion” as far as I’m concerned
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
Bob, I like your PART C, because if we hold it to be true, it follows that any belief with no strong empirical basis falls into the same category as religion.

That's actually one of the many problems I have with religion. If there is no way to show evidence for a belief, then it makes just as much sense as any other belief, and has the same value of Truth.

Why base life choices on any one particular faith then? Is there any reason to believe that Christianity is True, while Hinduism is False? Any way tho show that Satanism is Correct, while Islam is False? Or perhaps the opposite?

People of each faith have equally strong beliefs that they are correct, and they have the same ability to prove those beliefs.

It makes just as much sense to worship Unicorns, and believe that the planet Jupiter is a mighty Titan who controls all the natural laws and punishes anyone who speaks the word "chutney."

As one of the planet's faithful, it is my duty to punch anyone who says "chutney" within my hearing. Don't get mad at me, I'm only following the True Laws of the great Planet Jupiter.

I'm working on getting some followers together, and we're going to make sure it's illegal in America to ever speak the accursed word. Once we get the Constitution changed, we'll see about starting up some wars to cleans the world of any who speak the evil name.

Who wants to join? If you do as I say, you get a magic space pony when you turn 200 and are teleported into the inner depths of the Great Planet's bowels, there to live forever among magical sausages and fruit-bearing hummingbirds who sing in the language of Ugnanboldepton.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Mighty Cow...you stopped too soon.

Part D is to examine the nature of EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE itself. What is it really? There are some facts that we can say are irrefutable. They deal with physical properties of elements and compounds, or the physics of moving bodies, etc. As we move through time and gain more knowledge, we see that those fundamental properties (of things or motions) change little -- we merely gain precision in our measurements and come up with better theories to cover all conditions.

While such facts cover a broad range of humans' experiences with the world, they don't cover it all -- not by a long stretch.

Importantly, as we get closer and closer to the subjects of the debate we're involved in here in this thread -- things like the ultimate origins of life, where physical entities came from in the first place, and so on...we have either few real facts...or NO FACTS AT ALL.

And yet, some empiricists like to claim that we do...or rather claim that empiricism will eventually discover all that there is to discover and our knowledge, through facts alone, will be complete.

They can't really know that. They are extrapolating from what turn out to be rather static and simplistic things to vastly more fluid and complex things. They are bridging chaotic boundaries with nothing but a belief in the method.

Better thinkers than most of us on this thread have opted for a different resolution than the one that leaves empiricists believing they they must either function solely in the physical plane or fall prey to the same sort "mistakes" of faith that they accuse the religionists of having. And...conversely, of leaving religious people stuck in the stupid error of denying the essential contributions and progress of science and empiricism.

It has been called "separate magesteria." And it's worth reading about. Essentially it is the point of view that acknowledges that religion and science can operate side by side because they occupy different niches, if you will. Each can borrow from the other (just as religions can update their understanding of various scriptures through the potential illumination provided by science, science can -- and always has -- take a few lessons from religion (or more broadly, religion and philosophy) like how to think in the absence of a complete set of empirically established facts. But, for the most part, they simply deal with different things. And...speak a different language. Simple words have incompatible meanings in these two languages.

In short -- dialogue between scientists and religious folks is often made difficult, but not impossible, by the definitional differences.

So...

In Part D what we have is the potential for a truce and permanent resolution to this problem. Suprisingly, it even works within a single person (such as myself -- both a scientist and an active member of an organized religion). It says that there are limits to both empiricism and to religion. That the two interface on a relatively small number of, often, unimportant or completely unanswerable and indecipherable issues -- like the REAL ultimates.

We can choose to recognize the limits and boundaries, or not. We can further choose to worry about those small areas of interface, or not. We can choose to argue ourselves into circles about what turn out to be unanswerable things, or not.

I am a scientist. I am also religious. This does work.

When I need to think about "THE ULTIMATE" I have two sets of cognitive tools to use. Not just one.

I consider this superior to either set alone. It still doesn't answer the questions -- not about THE ULTIMATE -- but I don't set out expecting it to either.

Will this work for everyone? Clearly not. There are some religious folk who demand and assert certainty in all things. There are some empiricists who demand and assert certainty as well. I consider both such groups to be mistaken. But it is not my mission in life to convince them of anything.

I can happily go on living the way I do, thinking about these things from as many perspectives as my mind can comprehend. And I can hope that others will also find this a more fruitful way to engage at the interfaces of science and religion.

Part of getting there, I think, is starting to worry less about "right" and "wrong" when it comes to the things that are just plain unknowable.

If I believe in God based on the religious side of me...my scientific side might wish for proof. But both sides know they aren't going to get it. There's no possibility (at least not now) of proving to the empiricist in me that God truly exists. And yet, the religious side of me knows without question that it is so. And has all the proof it needs, which is exactly NONE that can be a shared experience with almost anyone (some of them are shared experiences with the people closest to me, but some are just mine and mine alone).

I can't explain the certainty of my faith any more than I can prove it you all. I tried to explain a bit how human minds work (as best we can tell) and I believe that some of the explanation of faith resides in how the mind works. At least the decision procesess in the absence of real data work pretty much the same way whether it's a religious topic or a scientific one. They are pretty much indistinguishable from a cognitive standpoint.

So what are we left with but the fact of faith's existence in every realm of human thought (with very few possible exceptions). As for faith in ultimate things -- it is often foolish to try to share a conclusion based on faith, and yet people do. Why? Because we like our fellow humans and want to be around them, seems to me.


Special to Tom:
I hope this clarifies that my prior post was about something far deeper than simple "rationalization."

It's not just the human capacity for rationalization that gives rise to religious feelings and scientific leaps of theorizing. It's the human capacity for imagination, as well as the human capacity to connect the dots in interesting and useful ways. Part of what convinces a faithful person of their faith is its effect in their life. You raised the issue of predictive power. Well, from a personal standpoint, the predictive power of faith is pretty darn hard to argue with. Whether or not it predicts in the same way as a scientific prediction is meaningless. Not just missing the point, but honestly meaningless. This is one of the expressions of the separate magesteria, I suspect. But yes, if you ask ANY faithful person whether they believe their faith has a predictive component to it and whether they've experienced the predictive power to be accurate and useful, they will say yes, I suspect.

And yes, there are people who will say the same thing about tarot, and crystals and so on. All I know is that for me, those things didn't work and don't work, but believe in God does. The predictive power of the horoscope has never been good. The predictive power of my faith in God has been.

And I don't question it because I know there's no empirical test that could get at it, and no contrived experiment would convince me that it's wrong. If, somehow, it stopped "working" in my life, maybe that would show me that I had been wrong. I can't be sure what my reaction would be.

But my faith hasn't been test that way...as yet.
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
I've always found this paradox quite funny:

Suppose you have adapted a religion that says there is only one God;
At the same time, this religion says it's the only right religion;
So then you would tell people from other religions they believe in the wrong God??
You can't say that, because then it's YOU assuming there's more than one God. Ok, so then they believe in the same God, but then how to tell which religion is right?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
I tend to avoid that particular error by not telling people that what they believe is wrong.

But then, I'd make a pretty bad missionary (in the popular misconception of that term), I suspect.
 

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Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
bobs post is a fairly long way of stating that facts that follow the imperical rule are found based on deductive logic. A logic that can expand your ideas but never gets you proof. Facts are subject to change. KoM talked about the philosophical idea that the sun may not come up tomorrow. Its a popular saying in philosophy classes because it opens the peoples minds up about how many things they take for fact that are in no way provable that they will continue as so. No to mention imperical facts would suggest that they would need to be obsrved, which is why any form or origins (special creation, moonies, evolution) and any dieties are beyond the realm of any empirical evidence. No one was there for the begining, gods have not poured out of the heavens to show the people of the world their wrongdoings. In this thread alone we assert that a man named Einstein exhisted. It is beyond rational ideas and empirical data to actually know he existed since we could not ourselves see him alive.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

quote:

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It has been called "separate magesteria." And it's worth reading about. Essentially it is the point of view that acknowledges that religion and science can operate side by side because they occupy different niches, if you will.

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The problem is that this is exactly the same thing as being "a God of the gaps." But most religious people find the latter concept insulting. I suspect the word "magesteria" sounds better, and is therefore less insulting than saying "we'll let you keep your God in the places we don't have answers yet."

It amounts to admitting that religion is a form of delusion, the one "faith" -- here meaning "belief without proof, and perhaps even in the face of conflicting evidence" -- that we don't consider a sign of insanity.

"Okay," we say, "science can't yet explain what it means to love. So we'll let you believe that there's this whole special realm of things out there which can only be addressed through pseudo-mythology, provided that your obscure mythological requirements don't go stepping on my civil rights."

I find that incredibly patronizing, and am amazed that more religious people don't. It's certainly practical, since there are demonstrable sociological and psychological benefits of having mythologies when compared to actually requiring that people face up to the gaps in their knowledge. But I'd be offended if someone shrugged off the existence of my God in that way.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Not really, Tom. It's not a question of "what we don't know yet"; it's a question of what TYPES of questions can each of the two answer. And while there is some degree of overlap, I agree with Bob that there is far less than some people think there is.



And Anon, I'm one of the ones claiming Einstein was not religious. So much for "parties."
 

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Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
 
rivka, I don't know why but I have the impression that here on Hatrack the exceptions are more often found than elsewhere.
And that's a good thing, I think.

A.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

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it's a question of what TYPES of questions can each of the two answer.

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"Okay," we say, "science can't yet explain what it means to love. So we'll let you believe that there's this whole special realm of things out there which can only be addressed through pseudo-mythology, provided that your obscure mythological requirements don't go stepping on my civil rights."

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Well, in fairness, it is better than saying "Science can't explain what it means to love, so love must not really exist, or we should just leave love unexplained."
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Tom, I'm not talking about the types of types you are talking about.

There are certain types of questions -- about the whys and first causes, for example -- that science will never be able to answer. The converse is true as well.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
I guess what I don't understand is why there has to be a "why."
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

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But as science continues to make inroads into the "types" of questions it can feasibly answer, as we map the brain and locate consciousness and other such things, the realm left to religion will get smaller and smaller. Is that really what the religious want?

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Originally posted by twinky:
I guess what I don't understand is why there has to be a "why."

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Originally posted by rivka:
Tom, I'm not talking about the types of types you are talking about.

There are certain types of questions -- about the whys and first causes, for example -- that science will never be able to answer. The converse is true as well.

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Originally posted by rivka:

quote:

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Originally posted by twinky:
I guess what I don't understand is why there has to be a "why."

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I don't know that there HAS to be.

Except that if there weren't, we wouldn't be here.

Is that like the religious person's version of the weak anthropic principle?

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I've always found this paradox quite funny:

Suppose you have adapted a religion that says there is only one God;
At the same time, this religion says it's the only right religion;
So then you would tell people from other religions they believe in the wrong God??
You can't say that, because then it's YOU assuming there's more than one God. Ok, so then they believe in the same God, but then how to tell which religion is right?

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Instead, pretty much everyone I know has faith in some set of beliefs and values that they take on some degree of faith - whether they call it religion or not.

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Yes. That pretty much says it all
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
I went over to Wikipedia to see if they had referenced summations of the WAP. The entry is hilarious: WAP, SAP, FAP, and CRAP!

In any case, I like the M-W WAP as referenced in Wikipedia: "Conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist." That's basically the version I espouse -- if the universe wasn't the way it is, we wouldn't be here talking about it. I don't really think the relative likelihood of the universe being as it is -- insofar as that can even be estimated -- matters much at all given that the univers is, quite clearly, here.

If the universe being as it is is improbable, well, that just makes the fact that the universe is as it is that much cooler. There is no probability threshold below which I would consider the unlikeliness of the universe being as it is to support the proposition that it was created by a deity.

I still don't think I understand your parallel. The existence of the universe is obvious even to people who espouse different premises; the existence of a purpose is not.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by twinky:
"Conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist."

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Yup. And a condition that I observe in the universe is the why we were discussing.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
Oh, okay. I see the parallel now. Of course, it only holds in the context of that premise, whereas I think the weak anthropic principle holds, period.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
And I think it doesn't mean anything, as I said before. Completely parallel.
 

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Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
 

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
These areas are beyond the scope of science's powers, not just because we haven't advanced to that point yet, but rather by definition - science defines itself in a way that limits it to the objectively and physically testable.

And that is a big part of the danger of losing religion. If we were to attempt to rely solely on science to answer the above questions, we would almost certainly conclude that there is no morality, that there is no consciousness, and that there is nothing to the universe beyond what we can physically and objectively test. This would be a horrible mistake - if for no other reason that it eliminates any and all understanding of meaningfulness. Looking at the world ONLY through a scientific lens, nothing has any value whatsoever because value is a subjective, nonphysical, untestable thing.

I'd hate to think what sort of decisions society would make if it failed to possess an understanding of what is worthwhile and what isn't. My suspicion is that they'd end up following only very basic impulses and instincts instead - pursuing whatever "feels good" in a hedonistic sense.

Fortunately, I don't think we have to worry about that quite yet. Although there are lots of people who claim that we should all act purely rationally and follow only science, I don't really know anyone who actually acts that way. Instead, pretty much everyone I know has faith in some set of beliefs and values that they take on some degree of faith - whether they call it religion or not.
[emphasis added]

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Tom, as consciousness is not the same as the soul, and is at least partly a physical quantity, I don't see why it matters.

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Not everything that exists and has an effect is physical. Or even quantifiable.

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if we are to actually come up with an explanation for consciousness we need a serious paradigm shift.

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Originally posted by King of Men:

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Not everything that exists and has an effect is physical. Or even quantifiable.

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Well, it comes back to the same question, then. What possible reason do you have for believing this, apart from "I wanna"?

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:

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if we are to actually come up with an explanation for consciousness we need a serious paradigm shift.

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I'm willing to accept the idea that consciousness doesn't have a hard border, and that it's actually a sort of process. From this POV, consciousness doesn't actually require explanation, as any process of sufficient sophistication would by definition achieve some degree of consciousness.

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:

quote:

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It has been called "separate magesteria." And it's worth reading about. Essentially it is the point of view that acknowledges that religion and science can operate side by side because they occupy different niches, if you will.

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The problem is that this is exactly the same thing as being "a God of the gaps." But most religious people find the latter concept insulting. I suspect the word "magesteria" sounds better, and is therefore less insulting than saying "we'll let you keep your God in the places we don't have answers yet."

It amounts to admitting that religion is a form of delusion, the one "faith" -- here meaning "belief without proof, and perhaps even in the face of conflicting evidence" -- that we don't consider a sign of insanity.

"Okay," we say, "science can't yet explain what it means to love. So we'll let you believe that there's this whole special realm of things out there which can only be addressed through pseudo-mythology, provided that your obscure mythological requirements don't go stepping on my civil rights."

I find that incredibly patronizing, and am amazed that more religious people don't. It's certainly practical, since there are demonstrable sociological and psychological benefits of having mythologies when compared to actually requiring that people face up to the gaps in their knowledge. But I'd be offended if someone shrugged off the existence of my God in that way.

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Originally posted by King of Men:

quote:

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Not everything that exists and has an effect is physical. Or even quantifiable.

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Well, it comes back to the same question, then. What possible reason do you have for believing this, apart from "I wanna"?

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Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz:

quote:

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Originally posted by King of Men:

quote:

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Not everything that exists and has an effect is physical. Or even quantifiable.

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Well, it comes back to the same question, then. What possible reason do you have for believing this, apart from "I wanna"?

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I've already answered that.

And it's a reason that an empiricist should love:

Personal experience.

It works.

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There will still be the soul, and the infinite/ultimate out there which science cannot touch.

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Consciousness has no hard boundaries:
As I read it, this would mean that everything that constitutes the universe has consciousness in manifest or unmanifest form.

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*Suppose* whatever constituted the beginning of creation (say Big Bang) had no consciousness. For e.g if strings are the elementary constituents of everything then, an individual string is incapable (even latently) of consciousness. Then, is there a process by which some configurations can be conscious of others and themselves?

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How does a randomly generated protien suddenly replicate itself without having a previous replication gene? How does a protien make others to form the amino acid, how do amino acids become structured to a cell? How does that cell spark life? None of that is quantifiable and yet evolution hinges on it.

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well, for starters if something cant be quantified it cannot be explained, since that is part of the definition of quantify so asking to describe something non quantifiable will not get anywhere even if it exhists.

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Originally posted by King of Men:
Ridiculous. These things are highly quantifiable, we call it "chemistry". Just to start you off, any crystal can replicate itself, given the right environment. I mean, duh.

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Word games. I might just as well assert that it can't be experienced, either. In fact, I think I will. [/QB]

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what is remarkable about consciousness is that I can say with absolute certitude that *I* am conscious

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Crystals are not protiens or amino acids or cells, all of which have a special part of them that gives them the information on how to replicate, and what to replicate with. Where does the first protiene, cell, amino acid develope this and how? And it still doesnt answer the question of how life can start.

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its not about the process that is known to date, its about what starts those procecies.

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Similarly DNA and self replicating protiens are not "life" as science defines it, neiter are viruses. As far as simple life goes no one really knows what life is in order to find the key to how it starts.

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people and a few "higher" animals seem to be able to function mentally even without instincs and stimuli and yet the concious is not actually weighted with the electrical currents that denote thought.

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Please read my post again. I suggested a way in which such a process might start.

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Sez you. This scientist is quite prepared to accept any self-replicating molecule as life. As for vitalism, it was discredited in the nineteenth century. Tell me, what magic barrier do you see that prevents a crystal from becoming a bacterium, through a sufficient number of steps?

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How do you know?

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i fail to see in anyway how its explained how a self contained cycle got started from a homogeneous mass of molocules to the enrgises organised system of DNA.

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You can do this with simple crystals; if the seed starts off variant X, all the copies will likewise be shape X. Start off in shape Y, copies are shape Y. Start off with pollutants A and B that only fit into the holes in X and Y, and mix 'em up - voila, a two-valued DNA.

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unless i was quite misunderstanding of the definition of life (entirely possible) crystals and individual protiens are not considered life in the biological terms by any scientists

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that question doesnt do anything as far as the discussion since it will require of me an answer that you deem sufficient, not one that answers the question or that anyone else might find credible.

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Originally posted by King of Men:
As a total aside, would you mind using the shift key and some punctuation? Your writing style is really annoying.

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i fail to see in anyway how its explained how a self contained cycle got started from a homogeneous mass of molocules to the enrgises organised system of DNA.

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You can do this with simple crystals; if the seed starts off variant X, all the copies will likewise be shape X. Start off in shape Y, copies are shape Y. Start off with pollutants A and B that only fit into the holes in X and Y, and mix 'em up - voila, a two-valued DNA.

quote:

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Please tell me what problems you see with the scenario.

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As i stated protiens and molocules that are placed together without a pattern to follow for replication in most cases becomes just a blob of molocules as the ones that Sydney Fox made in his tests. The idea that protiene and DNA replication is different from crystal structuring is because it completes a thermodynamic cycle that is not aparant in evey molocule or evident in groups of random protienes or molocules that are placed in the same area. There is energy added to it to start the replication process, this energy then gets repeated in subsequent replications. During the first synthesis of enzymes and DNA the energy and the information of how one is to replicate is created. The infromation process would carry on in all future generations though. My point was to bring up the external energy, not just in source but also in how energy is transferred from source to information used my DNA. And also to point out that DNA and cells follow a particular pattern given to them in information by the replication enzymes. Its not about random DNA and enzymes hooking up, its that they are needed as a part of the replication cycle

quote:

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unless i was quite misunderstanding of the definition of life (entirely possible) crystals and individual protiens are not considered life in the biological terms by any scientists

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No, but that's not what I said. I said "sufficiently complex, self-replicating molecules." A crystal-based structure could easily qualify.

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that question doesnt do anything as far as the discussion since it will require of me an answer that you deem sufficient, not one that answers the question or that anyone else might find credible.

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Well, if you really believe that I will automatically dismiss anything you say about the functioning of the brain, why are you talking to me at all? I mean, you must have some kind of reasoning for saying that consciousness is not encoded in the electric activity of the brain. (I paraphrase; if this is not what you meant, please say so.) If you're just saying so because you believe in some kind of soul, then that's just what we are discussing, and you can hardly produce it as evidence of your position! If not, well, what is your reasoning?

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Dude. Please. Would you like to reconsider that post, or would you like me to rip it to shreds for you? I do like to feel that my opponent has actually thought through his position.

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Originally posted by Ecthalion:
actually i thought you were postulating what i put down so i was attempting to see how you could come up with that. i took part of that statement as you were ready to believe that a crystal or random group of molocules could be life.

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hower a thing that seems to seperate tehm is crystals do not seem to hav ea drive to survive. They do not psess the "selfish genes" as it were.

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Not only is there no current model for this, but that there seems to be no possible way this could happen.

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But what I'm saying is that the very existence of a "soul" or an "infinite" is a question in play. You're taking the existence of these things as givens and saying that science cannot explain or even touch them; I'm asking why, if we cannot touch them, we can assume they exist.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
And I can observe that the experiences I am having do not fit the criteria for "physical thing".

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Arguably, if these experiences can be described by some of the chemical reactions that are happening in your brain, then they do.

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Not really. "Can be described by a physical thing" does not equal "Being a physical thing."

[ October 20, 2006, 11:39 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
A: "I'm in love!"

B: "Really? I don't think I've ever been in love before. How does it feel?"

A: "Well, check out these diagrams of my brain. That should tell you."

B: "Oh, wow. That explains it completely!"



 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

quote:

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Arguably, if these experiences can be described by some of the chemical reactions that are happening in your brain, then they do.

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No, not really. "Can be described by a physical thing" does not equal "Being a physical thing."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
A: "I'm in love!"

B: "Really? I don't think I've ever been in love before. How does it feel?"

A: "Well, check out these diagrams of my brain. That should tell you."

B: "Oh, wow. That explains it completely!"

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quote:

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My point is that if you do a thought experiment with some of the various possibilites you can think of, at a certain point, it becomes obvious that not only are some models inadequate but that all future models are inadequate as well, provided you maintain a certain paradigm.

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quote:

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A: "I'm in love!"

B: "Really? I don't think I've ever been in love before. How does it feel?"

A: "Well, check out these diagrams of my brain. That should tell you."

B: "Oh, wow. That explains it completely!"

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Would you agree that *if* "awareness" does exist in the way we commonly understand it, it needs an explanation and that no normal model would suffice?

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Susan Blackmore suggested a model of consciousness -- that it is like looking into the refrigerator to see if the light is on. So, if we pop the question "Am I aware?", the answer is always "Yes". What happens in the interim is that it is "dark" inside, and we are non-aware. Is this similar to how you think about awareness currently?

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Replace "check out" with, say, "play back," and yes, it would.

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But I can tell you that you would not understand what "love" feels like to me from any series of brain diagrams, whether checked out or played back.

Unless, of course, you had already experienced it yourself and knew.

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My assertion is that were your experience of love "played back" to my brain, I would experience it myself, insofar as our brain structures were similar enough to permit this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

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Replace "check out" with, say, "play back," and yes, it would.

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I don't know what you experience - perhaps you don't have qualitative experience. But I can tell you that you would not understand what "love" feels like to me from any series of brain diagrams, whether checked out or played back.

Unless, of course, you had already experienced it yourself and knew.

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But if it IS possible, or if it IS possible to remap them, then I think it's a foregone conclusion.

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I don't know one way or the other, but if it does, then these things you call qualitative would indeed be "physical."

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
This is not true. That'd be like trying to argue that if eating lots of candy gives you a stomach ache, and that eating lots of candy also gives me a stomach ache, then eating lots of candy must be the same thing as having a stomach ache. That logic simply doesn't follow. Being caused by X doesn't make something identical to X. Being caused by something physical would not make something physical.

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And I can observe that the experiences I am having do not fit the criteria for "physical thing".

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Based on that, I'm suggesting that candy can cause a stomach ache without being a stomach ache...

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You (the royal "you") can believe that they don't fit those criteria, but you can't even support that belief with evidence, let alone consider it self-evident through direct observation.

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If your stomach hurts, is it fair to say that you have a stomachache?

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Out of curiosity, would Tres consider a candle flame to be a 'physical thing'?

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ask, because when I was religious, I felt that I was on a path to knowing, and figured that other religious people were on their own version of the path. Now that I'm not religious, I wonder how other people feel in regards to their version of True, and other people's version.

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I suppose an additional question, should anyone care to answer, is how do you feel about Atheists? Are they sinners? Simply strayed from the path? Foolish people who have turned away from God?

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

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You (the royal "you") can believe that they don't fit those criteria, but you can't even support that belief with evidence, let alone consider it self-evident through direct observation.

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Why can't I consider it self-evident through direct observation? It is! On the one hand I have a set of experiences that I observe myself having. On the other hand I have the criteria for being a physical thing. All it takes is then observing that the former experiences don't fit the latter criteria. It is as self-evident as the fact that a circle is not a type of square.

What do you think the criteria for being a "physical thing" are?

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A good approximation would be that physical things are composed of molecules.

You experience things and observe yourself experiencing things through a series of molecular interactions that occur in your nervous system -- messages from your various sensory inputs are carried to your brain, where, in the course of being processed by way of a series of chemical reactions, "you" perceive them. If that's all there is to it, then these experiences and sensations are indeed a "physical thing."

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The same way you know that Beethoven's 5th Symphony is not made up of stone bricks.

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Beethoven's 5th is basically a bunch of frequencies strung together. You could use bricks to create these frequencies, and indeed your experience of the 5th would be the same -- whether via bricks or MIDI instruments or kazoos -- as long as the frequencies were identical and the other components of the listening experience were kept as similar as possible.

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Originally posted by King of Men:
I don't understand the distinction you are making. Which part of the bacterium has the 'need' to reproduce?

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Let me stop being gentle : You are completely mistaken. There is no need or desire to reproduce; there is only chemistry. Bacteria split and DNA copies itself when the chemical conditions are right; this differs from crystal copying only in complexity.

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You should please note that I am not suggesting that a crystal is genuinely alive, as one of your posts seems to imply.

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Rather, I am suggesting that a crystal is a plausible first step towards life, which is what you were asking about

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To answer your other objection, about adaptability, DNA doesn't adapt either, it just copies itself or not.

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The adaptability of life comes from the huge network of interactions from 3.7 billion years of evolution; but this is not what we are discussing.

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We are discussing the origins of life, and they are bound to be very simple. Forget adapting to circumstances - change the chemical conditions even slightly, and proto-life dies the proto-death. Forget sophisticated error-checking mechanisms; most copies are flawed, and die.

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Forget, in fact, anything except the bare ability to reproduce a pattern. That's all you need to start, which, as I apparently need to remind you, is what you were asking about.

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Molocules and protienes that are created with no previous information to replicate themselves come undone. This is even in a controlled enviroment where sufficient energy is created to structure the random protiens, and even to sustain it. Remove the energy source and they fall apart. Leave them in the enviroment they were created by and they fall apart. Seperate them from the enviroment, sustain them with the energy, then add all the necisary molocules to reproduce itself and nothing happens. This is the unquantifiable part of life that i am talking about.

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once again, patterns dont start out of nowhere, there is a difference in molocules aligning t othe rigidry of their bonds forming a crystal and a protien making exact copies of itself and DNA making exact copies of itself that hold all of the traits from the parent DNA and yet allow for change, mutation and adaptability of the life form it sustains.

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You asked for somone to describe something unquantifiable ( paradox in its own right). I attempted to come as close as i can to describing these things using what we do have the ability to quantify.

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once again you miss the point. The crystal may be a step, but as you , me, or any other scientist has failed to define what exactly constitutes life's begining. It is as i asserted in the first post, un quantifyable.

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um.. well the part of the bacterium that wants to live.... this ones a given if the first bactirium dies there are no subsequent bacterium....

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Originally posted by King of Men:
You are apparently not aware of the experiments where people build up a virus molecule by molecule; these virii are perfectly viable, and there's nothing in principle preventing you from doing the same with a bacterium. So, in fact, the experimental evidence contradicts you. But even ten years ago, you'd have been talking nonsense; an inability to synthesise something doesn't mean that we haven't got the right magic words to say, it just means our technique isn't good enough.[/qb]

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Well, actually, there isn't. Patterns do start out of nowhere, if you shake up random stuff for long enough. I see I did not really describe my crystal-formation theory very well, because I assumed that anyone who would discuss abiogenesis would be familiar with it. I will try to do better now. Consider a crystal which comes in at least two forms, say right- and left-handed; there are many such crystals. Let's say the crystal unit is five or so atoms lying in a plane. The cells can join up laterally by one kind of bond, so the whole thing would still lie in a plane, or vertically by another kind, forming a tower. Graphite is a lot like this. Now, you can get a whole plane of right and left units, RRLRLLLLRRLRRRRRLLLLRR and so on, and in two dimensions. (The notation should remind you of something.) The thing is that while lateral joining ignores handedness, tower-building does not. So on top of the initial layer, you get another plane of the same RRLRLLL... configuration. And, as with graphite, this top layer could flake off, to land elsewhere and copy itself again. There would be mutations, since what I said about vertical copying being exact isn't quite true; there would be patterns that were stable, and patterns that broke apart easily; there would be patterns easily copied, and pattern that bred slowly. In short, you'd have natural selection and evolution! Now, is this not life, or the start of it? What is missing?[/qb]

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You asserted "X is not quantifiable, because it's like life, which is magic." I don't find the first assertion very interesting, so I attacked the second one. If you did not wish to discuss the origin of life, by all means say so.[/qb]

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Do you mean to tell me that you are not arguing about whether abiogenesis without divine intervention is possible, but rather just saying that we can't find the exact point at which it has occurred? Sheesh. That point is so totally uninteresting, it didn't even occur to me that anyone would make it. What's next, an assertion that porn is defined as "I know it when I see it"?

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Right, and if my crystal fails to reproduce, there is no subsequent crystal. What's your point?

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Tres, what then is a song? I submit that a "song" is a pattern of varying tones, produced in whatever manner. It's made of tones, which can be made by bricks or kazoos or human voices or random car accidents.

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Experience isn't the same thing as the instrument from which it arises, but it IS the same thing as the mechanism that permits it to happen.

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Tones can be made by bricks, but they aren't made out of bricks.

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Babies arise from sexual intercourse, but they aren't the same thing as sexual intercourse.

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Nothing in the brain is even remotely identical in all ways to the experiences I have.

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This is exactly what I'm arguing, Tres: that the experiences you have are identical to the sensations they cause in your brain that make you aware of them, insofar as you're able to be cognizant of any difference.

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The difference is easy for me to tell, regardless of what my brain is doing.

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Tres, what then is a song? I submit that a "song" is a pattern of varying tones, produced in whatever manner. It's made of tones, which can be made by bricks or kazoos or human voices or random car accidents.

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Whooaaaa there. A song is something you sing. A peice of music is what you're describing. Important if you want to use your vocabulary effectively: A song is colloqually known as any short peice of music, however "song" is also something sung, and it describes a certain musical form (which can be followed with an instrument making it a "song" without words, ala Mendelssohn).

A song is not however, the same thing as a waltz, trio, minuet, sonata, mazurka, prelude, fugue, theme and variations, aria, strophe,, or other musical form. To call any of these things (or countless other forms) songs is innacurate, and misleading. It is accepted colloquially, but IMO, it should not be, and it definetly hasn't been until recently (thanks itunes).
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
My brain doesn't "perceive" anything. My brain just reacts physically to stimuli. "I" am the thing that perceives experiences.

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What's this "I" you're talking about? I'm not understanding what you mean. Is this your soul? The metaphysical sum of your experiences? The wave state of your brain's electrical activity?

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Well, that's just ridiculous, because plainly your brain is not doing the same things in these two cases. This difference is so gross that we can even see it in MRI!

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It may be true that brain states each correlate to one and only experience, but that wouldn't by any means prove that experience is built out of brain states.

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I would like to participate in the discussion, but I feel that I need to understand the specifics of your point before I can address it.

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Tres, you are the one claiming that experience exists independently of perception. I'm asking you to prove it.

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No, you are the one claiming that my experience is made up of particles in my brain. I'm asking YOU to prove it.

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As I said, I don't usually get cold symptoms without having a cold virus. But that doesn't mean the cold symptoms ARE the cold virus.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
Keep in mind that the whole purpose of this tangent was to point out that science and pure reason alone was not enough to prove everything we need to know about the world.

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If you've got some compelling argument for the independent existence of "experience" without necessitating the quality of "perception," or any argument that perception without actual experience would be distinguishable from the alternative, let's have it.

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What IS self-evident to me is that I have experiences and that those experiences do not consist of physical particles.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
That which experiences my experiences.

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What IS self-evident to me is that I have experiences and that those experiences do not consist of physical particles.

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What I'm not seeing is where this self-evident non-physical component you're proposing comes from. I don't see how anything other than the event itself and the process by which it is perceived and acted upon is needed to fully encapsulate the experience.

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Why don't they? What about your experiences is non-physical?

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I would argue that this is your brain, or rather, the current active state of all the chemical and electrical processes happening in your brain. That is what all current science that I am familiar with leads me to believe.

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Saying "That which experiences my experiences" is less persuasive and meaningful than claiming that a magical bologna sandwich orbiting Pluto is what is REALLY experiencing the things that happen around you.

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Do you think that just by looking at those brain scans, they will understand what red looks like, without ever having seen red themselves?

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The question is - do you think a physical thing can experience nonphysical things?

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If you scanned their brain when they were experiencing the color of ultraviolet light, do you think you would fully understand what it looks like to them?

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I don't quite understand why you think "looking at a brain scan" is equivalent to sensing red. That's like saying that reading a book about skydiving is like feeling the wind on your face.

What seems to be holding you back from understanding this is the idea that our senses are just symbols for some underlying experience, in the same way that a printout of a brain scan is a symbol for a brain's underlying electrical traffic. But that traffic is the important thing, not the scan itself; reading a scan is no more "direct" than glancing at a piece of sheet music and hoping to hear Handel's "Messiah."

What you feel is a direct result of specific brainwave patterns. I know you're a big fan of the utility of language, but you clearly accept that language is insufficient to encapsulate experience; it shouldn't be hard for you to understand that no one here is talking about using any form of symbolic language as a substitute for experience -- except you.

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I first need to know what you mean by "thing," before I can even accept that "nonphysical things" exist.

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So you can only understand it if you experience it yourself. That's what I was saying.

Whereas if it were physical, you would not need to stimulate your own brain in the same way in order to experience it yourself.

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Yes, but if you stimulate your brain in the same way, yet failed to have the experience, you still would not understand what ultraviolet looks like.

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We must mean different things by "the experience of seeing ultraviolet light." I mean what happens when an ultraviolet image is projeceted at the eyes of a person who can perceive it -- that is, they see it. Under the materialist view, (1) the light is projected by a physical process (a source and lens), (2) perceived by a physical process (the eyes, ocular nerve, and visual cortex), and (3) interpreted by a physical process (electrical and chemical changes in various regions of the brain). What part of this chain of events is non-physical?

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What you feel is a direct result of specific brainwave patterns.

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We must mean different things by "the experience of seeing ultraviolet light." I mean what happens when an ultraviolet image is projeceted at the eyes of a person who can perceive it -- that is, they see it. Under the materialist view, (1) the light is projected by a physical process (a source and lens), (2) perceived by a physical process (the eyes, ocular nerve, and visual cortex), and (3) interpreted by a physical process (electrical and chemical changes in various regions of the brain). What part of this chain of events is non-physical?

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Only the sight, feel, smell, sound or other experience of something is not representable in symbolic language. Can you think of any physical aspect of something that is unrepresentable in the same way?

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Another is dealing with what I think about the color red. In there somewhere is the memories I have with the color red, and with the perceptual gestalt I am experiencing. And maybe I'm thinking about how I think about the color red. And so on. It's a far more complex process, even without admitting a non-mechanical component, than you are presenting.

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The point is that all of those steps are mechanical components; there's no reason to believe that a perfect recreation of the same physical process within the same brain wouldn't recreate the same experience.

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What I'm talking about as "experience" is what ultraviolet light would actually look like to me.

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But I do know that I can at least imagine having the sensation of seeing red without (1), (2), or (3) occurring.

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As I understand Tres's position, he's saying that, while this is true, it is not a complete explanation.

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Because of consciousness, mere mechanical perception does not fully describe a person's reaction to a stimulus.

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The point is that all of those steps are mechanical components; there's no reason to believe that a perfect recreation of the same physical process within the same brain wouldn't recreate the same experience.

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Even if you imagine seeing the colour red, electrical and chemical changes will still occur in your brain.

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How do you know that?
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
edit: Okay, dueling edits. The statement I was responding to was completely changed, so I'm changing my response.

Tres,
People imagining red have near universally been observed to trigger patterns of activation in their brain. Knowledge of things like this should be in your background if your are going to responsibly consider these issues.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
Edit: If that last exchange doesn't make sense, it's because I changed my last post while Squicky was replying... Sorry!

Edit 2: And now he has edited his post!
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

quote:

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Tres,
People imagining red have universally been observed to trigger patterns of activation in their brain. Knowledge of things like this should form your background if your are going to consider these issues.

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My point is that we can't know it is always true. It is possible, at least logically, that somewhere out there there is someone who is experiencing red without having anything physical go on in their head.

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I've been down this road with you before and, as I mentioned, I have little time for it now. Let me then say that what you are saying is obviously, absurdly wrong.

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It is logically possible that there is a planet out there on which gravity does not "work" -- if by "possible" you mean "can be imagined," and not "can actually exist."

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By logically possible, I mean doesn't logically contradict itself. Being able to imagine something is an approximation of this. I admit that this doesn't absolutely prove it is logically possible, but as I said, I can't prove my position. It must be observed. My hope is that you will be able to see the same thing I have if I point you in that direction, somehow. (I've found that method to be not so successful, though.)

Note that you have still ignored the same questions I keep asking you - and you have still not given me a reason for your belief that experience is a physical thing. I answer your points, but you don't answer mine.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
By the way, for those who don't trust me or for those who'd like a better explanation, here is a wikipedia article on Qualia. Qualia is essentially what I'm talking about when I talk about why experience can't be physical. There is a discussion there about the "red" example I used earlier.

And here is an article on Philosophical Zombies, which is another argument for the existence of non-physical experience that I have referenced. I like it in part because zombies are cool.

Note this part in the first article:

quote:

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Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. According to these, qualia are:

1. ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.
2. intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
3. private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
4. directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness; that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.

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Dennett's argument revolves around the central objection that, for qualia to be taken seriously as a component of experience—for them to even make sense as a discrete concept—it must be possible to show that

a) it is possible to know that a change in qualia has occurred, as opposed to a change in something else;
or that

b) there is a difference between having a change in qualia and not having one.
Dennett attempts to show that we cannot satisfy (a) either through introspection or through observation, and that qualia's very definition undermines its chances of satisfying (b).

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Note that you have still ignored the same questions I keep asking you...

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The thing is, Tres, I believe my answers have answered the questions you've asked me. If there are specific components that you don't think have been resolved, let me know.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

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Tres,
People imagining red have universally been observed to trigger patterns of activation in their brain. Knowledge of things like this should form your background if your are going to consider these issues.

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Yes, sorry. My point is not that it hasn't been observed in the past. My point is that we can't know it is always true. It is possible, at least logically, that somewhere out there there is someone who is experiencing red without having anything physical go on in their head.

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Note that you have still ignored the same questions I keep asking you - and you have still not given me a reason for your belief that experience is a physical thing. I answer your points, but you don't answer mine.

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...it suggested something did not exist that I could plainly see existed.

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That isn't an argument. I can "plainly see" that qualia don't exist. There, problem solved.

Heck, from the very first paragraph of your link:

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Whether qualia exist is a hotly debated topic in contemporary philosophy of mind.

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In other words, "I can plainly see it exists" is obviously insufficient.

-------

orlox, I've been reading some of your links as you post them. I was especially interested by the interview with the neuroscientist and the notion of the brain as a community.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
He makes the devastating point that consciousness is soluble in anesthetic or even water.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

quote:

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Before I do that, I'm curious what you "plainly see" that Dennett does not plainly see.

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quote:

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I can "plainly see" that qualia don't exist.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

quote:

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I can "plainly see" that qualia don't exist.

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If that were true then you shouldn't believe in qualia.

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Apparently you failed to experience the winky in my post. I am qualia-agnostic, being unconvinced of both their existence and their nonexistence.

My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong. Consider the following hypothetical conversation:

A: "You're wrong!"

B: "Why?"

A: "Because you're wrong!"
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

quote:

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I experience qualia every day.

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Like...?

Seriously, I'm curious how you know you're "experiencing" qualia.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
The redness of red.
 

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Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
 

quote:

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He makes the devastating point that consciousness is soluble in anesthetic or even water.

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My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong.

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Life is beautiful.

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I'm going to be honest - and that means telling you that it all rests on an observation I make.

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But your observation is that things are red. I make the same actual observation, and yet don't believe in non-material qualia.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
How do you know that your red is the same as his red?
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
I don't see how there are any non-physical experiences. Red is a wavelength of light. It excites particular receptors in the eye, which send a particular signal to your brain, which you understand as the color red. There is nothing magical or non-physical going on here.

You cannot give an example of any experience which is not the result of a physical and electrical change within your brain. Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain.
 

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Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
ive been trying to experience "Midnight Purple Gloss" all day.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
Red is not so unproblematic. Some people see the number 5 as red even if it is printed with black ink. It is called synesthesia.

Again:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture4.shtml
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
MC,

quote:

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You cannot give an example of any experience which is not the result of a physical and electrical change within your brain. Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain.

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This last is an assumption, not a proven fact. There is nothing that rules out aspects of experience occuring through some extra-brainal system. There is nothing that limits perception to only what happens in the brain.

Or perhaps you can show me why this is wrong?
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
There is no reason to account for 'extra-brainal' activity for which there is no evidence. Find the evidence and we will have to account for it.

Absent that, there is no way to prove the existence or non-existence of something there is no evidence for. Other than assuming that if there is no evidence for something, it probably doesn't exist.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
I didn't say anything about accounting for it. I said you couldn't rule it out. The statement that "Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain." is an assumption, not a proven fact.

Also, it's not a matter of there isn't evidence. It's that the things we are talking about are not capturable in evidence. They fall outside the scope of scientific investigation.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 
Nothing I'm talking about is outside the scope of scientific investigation, but then my red may be different from yours.

[ October 24, 2006, 07:19 PM: Message edited by: orlox ]
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

quote:

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My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong.

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You are correct in that I don't expect that to convince anyone. But what do you expect me to say when you ask me to prove why I think my claim is self-evident?

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How do you know that your red is the same as his red?

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I do NOT know how the mechanisms of his brain filter and interpret his perceptions of that same wavelength -- but that experience is still a physical experience

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Again, the assumption that this is only a physical experience is just that, an assumption.

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I haven't asked for proof. I haven't even asked for evidence. I've simply asked you to acknowledge the possibility that strict materialism is true.

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But if I can observe that a nonphysical thing exists...

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Occam's Razor is never proof.
It is, however, a logical way to choose between two alternatives when the unknown variables are themselves unknown.

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Occam's Razor is never proof.
It is, however, a logical way to choose between two alternatives when the unknown variables are themselves unknown.

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It is far far simpler to accept that the universe exists as ONLY mental experiences in your mind, rather than posit the existence of an elaborate, gigantic physical world consisting of trillions and trillions of particles.

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Meh. I've never found it particularly useful.

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:

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How do you know that your red is the same as his red?

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Assuming he's capable of identifying the right wavelength of light, all I "know" is that my "red" and his "red" are roughly the same wavelength. I do NOT know how the mechanisms of his brain filter and interpret his perceptions of that same wavelength -- but that experience is still a physical experience, even if I can't replicate it without having the same brain.

The argument for qualia is like saying that batter poured through a sieve should always land in the same pattern, even if you're dealing with different sieves, different types of batter, different griddles, and different angles at which the batter is being poured. If it were possible to keep all those variables equal, it might be reasonable to assume the same final pattern; it's not particularly possible, but that's actually the sort of problem that, say, engineers specializing in liquid dynamics (and neurosurgeons) work on every day.

But that doesn't mean that the batter is not physical. It's not some spiritual hypothetical just because we can't satisfactorily control the variables that go into shaping its result.

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quote:

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Originally posted by orlox:
From Wiki:

Metaphysical naturalism is any worldview in which nature is all there is and nothing supernatural exists. It is often simply referred to as naturalism, and occasionally as philosophical naturalism or ontological naturalism, though all those terms have other meanings as well, with naturalism often referring to methodological naturalism.


Also Wiki:

Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural from nature. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.

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For clarity, stick me in the metaphysical naturalist camp, just like KoM.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I have tried very, very hard to avoid using jargon in this thread, and resent your continued attempts to drag it, kicking and screaming, into it.
 

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Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
 

Still, I am not so quick to dismiss the problems with redness. Ultimately, I bow to Ramachandran as quoted earlier:

"The question is how does the flux of ions in little bits of jelly in my brain give rise to the redness of red, the flavour of marmite or mattar paneer, or wine. Matter and mind seem so utterly unlike each other. Well one way out of this dilemma is to think of them really as two different ways of describing the world, each of which is complete in itself. Just as we can describe light as made up of particles or waves - and there's no point in asking which is correct, because they're both correct and yet utterly unlike each other. And the same may be true of mental events and physical events in the brain."
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
Why imagine some non-physical thing that does your experiencing for you? If you're just going to make things up, you may as well say that you're a puppet of a flying unicorn, who does your perceiving for you. No? How about your perception is contained in germs that live beneath your toenail, which just grow a brain in your head for a hobby.

I can't prove that you don't use non-physical mumbojumbo to perceive things, but there's no logical reason to assume that you do.

Assuming, for a moment, that there is some non-physical YOU, apart from your body. How does it interact with the physical body? How does a non-physical thing act on a physical thing?

If a non-physical YOU can act on your physical body, then non-physical qualia (which I don't believe in) can act on the physical body as well. There's no need for a non-physical YOU to experience these qualia.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 

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But if I can observe that a nonphysical thing exists, how could strict materialism possibly be true - unless that initial observation itself is wrong.

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This is also one enormous problem with the whole "qualia" argument, too; it's ultimately useless.

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Nothing could be further from the truth. Without the "qualia" aspect of experience, the world as we know it would not exist, and life would be utterly meaningless. This is because all objects are only meaningful to us in the way through which we can experience them.

Consider a tree. When you think about a tree you don't think of a bunch of atoms. You think of it as a thing with rough brown bark that looks a certain way and feels a certain way. You think of it as having bright green leaves that look a certain way, which look a different way in the fall. You think of the way you can perceive the leaves moving if the wind were to blow. You might imagine how it would look at different points across time, growing larger. The idea of the tree in your mind is constructed through all of these experiences. A tree is only meaningful to you in this way.

Now, if you want you can imagine a tree as a set of atoms, but atoms in themselves mean nothing. They don't look like anything, they don't feel like anything, etc. You can't conceive of an atom in any true sense. Similarly, a bunch of atoms is equally meaningless. They only become meaningful indirectly, if they are grouped together in ways that produce qualia in our minds.

A world in which there was no such qualia would be, in essence, like the Matrix when seen as only 1's and 0's. Atoms are to our physical world like those digits are to the Matrix. Seeing lines and lines of 1's and 0's means nothing to anyone, unless you can translate those 1's and 0's into some sort of experience.

Thus the world, as we know it, would literally not exist if it were not for qualia. This is a big reason why it is so absurd to me to deny the existence of qualia - it is the equivalent of saying the world I know doesn't exist, and instead suggesting that the only world that does exist is an meaningless code of atoms.

Furthermore, good and bad would not exist either. Or, at least, pleasure and pain would not. That is because pleasure and pain are both experiences themselves. Pain is only bad because we experience it as bad. Pleasure is only good because we experience it as good. We can't deconstruct pleasure and pain, and we cannot build them out of atoms. The same goes for joy, love, etc. Without qualia, there would be nothing that is good and nothing bad in the world - and thus nothing to guide our decisions.

So, deny qualia if you wish, but at the very least you will still have to ACT as if qualia exists - you will have to act as if you actually feel pleasure and pain, and as if the world actually means something to you. That is why this is an important matter.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
As a side note, I don't really know anyone who doesn't believe in experience. Lots of people just think experience is physical - which is not the end of the world, because they still at least believe they can feel pleasure and pain, see trees for what they mean to us, and generally find meaning in the atoms of the world.

But the trouble arises when they go looking to understand experience in the wrong places. They think it is physical, so they think answers to questions of "good" and "bad" can be found by examining only the physical through science. This inevitably leads to mistaken answers. One mistake, given by KoM earlier in this thread, is that there is no such thing as good and bad. Another mistake is concluding that good and bad is simply doing whatever our body wants. Another mistake is concluding that good and bad is determined by evolution - that our purpose is to be the fittest. These mistakes arise from looking for meaning in the wrong places.

These mistaken beliefs have a very real impact on our society too. The "tyranny of relativism" described by the Pope can be traced back to these mistakes. It stems from our inability to find a way to meaningfully understand what is or is not right and wrong. A significant chunk of what is wrong with our pop culture society can be traced back to our belief in materialism, and its implications on how we think about meaning, and how we go about distinguishing good from bad.

So, while thinking experience is physical is not as bad as denying the existence of experience altogether, it is still a major problem.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I note you still haven't answered MY question.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
Which question? I don't know how to define "thing", as I said. I observe nonphysical experience because that's just how experience works - it is directly observable to the person who is having the experience. That is a fundamental property of experience.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
So experience is by definition "observable," but it's impossible to identify the means by which all experiences are observed?
 

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Posted by Ecthalion (Member # 8825) on :
 
qualia doesnt make the tree exist. Atoms are still physical things, they just are beyond the range of human eyesight. A tree compsed of atoms is a mass of these physical things and we get the experiences of touch, taste, smell, sight from these mass of atoms. Just because we cannot see the atoms that make up the substance does not make qualia exist.
 

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Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 

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Consider a tree. When you think about a tree you don't think of a bunch of atoms. You think of it as a thing with rough brown bark that looks a certain way and feels a certain way. You think of it as having bright green leaves that look a certain way, which look a different way in the fall. You think of the way you can perceive the leaves moving if the wind were to blow. You might imagine how it would look at different points across time, growing larger. The idea of the tree in your mind is constructed through all of these experiences. A tree is only meaningful to you in this way.

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So experience is by definition "observable," but it's impossible to identify the means by which all experiences are observed?

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qualia doesnt make the tree exist. Atoms are still physical things, they just are beyond the range of human eyesight. A tree compsed of atoms is a mass of these physical things and we get the experiences of touch, taste, smell, sight from these mass of atoms. Just because we cannot see the atoms that make up the substance does not make qualia exist.

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Qualia are not required in order to do this. You're talking about a combination of memory and imagination; it is not self-evident that these are not purely electrical and chemical processes.

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In the same way, people are made of skin and brain and blood and bones and arms and hair and literally hundreds of thousands of conceptual subunits. But the fact that we can create convenient subcategories to address smaller components of something that can also be considered part of a greater whole does not mean that it's necessary for that greater whole to be what you mean by "qualia."

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Memory and imagination would only do this insofar as they point to experiences. When I remember a tree, I am reminded of my experiences with the tree.

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Isn't that pretty much what it means to remember something? Your past encounters with trees, depictions of trees, and descriptions of trees all blend together in your memory so that when you see a tree, your perception is influenced by your memories.

It's possible that the following is true: an experience occurs by a physical process (e.g. external event->sensory perception->brain interpretation), is stored in memory by a physical process (electrical and chemical brain state, formation of synapses), and is applied to future experiences by a physical process (same). "Quale," then, would just be a fancy word for what happens in the brain when sensory data are interpreted.

Incidentally, the Google Ad I'm seeing at the bottom of the page is for Soaps.com, which purports to be a treasure trove of information about General Hospital.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

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It's possible that the following is true: an experience occurs by a physical process (e.g. external event->sensory perception->brain interpretation), is stored in memory by a physical process (electrical and chemical brain state, formation of synapses), and is applied to future experiences by a physical process (same). "Quale," then, would just be a fancy word for what happens in the brain when sensory data are interpreted.

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If you redefine "quale" in that way, you are really saying the qualia I'm talking about and that I observe in my experiences doesn't exist.

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Why should I doubt what I think I have clearly observed...

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I'm saying you wouldn't necessarily know the difference, which I suppose amounts to the same thing from your perspective.

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Except I'm not at all clear how or why you think you have "clearly observed" anything of the kind, Tres.

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How or why do you think that you've observed that 2 is a number? You think that, right?

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I originally thought that too, when I heard about qualia. But eventually I concluded that if there were no qualia then I'd have no perspective. If there were no qualia, then I wouldn't be able to even conceive of the concept of qualia.

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Why should I doubt what I think I have clearly observed in order to allow the possibility of a model of the universe which I have been given no reason to think is true?

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Very well. I'll just file "qualia" under "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and have done with it.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 

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I also don't see why the concept of qualia is needed to supplement experience, but then, I don't buy the philosophical zombie, either.

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I'll just file "qualia" under "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and have done with it.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
Reactions in the brain are no more "experience" than a line of dominoes falling down in response to a sensory triggor.

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Originally posted by Tresopax:
If experience amounted to processing sensory inputs, computers would have experiences, other machines would have experiences, other physical systems could have experiences, the internet would be having an experience as we speak...

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Originally posted by Tresopax:

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I'll just file "qualia" under "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and have done with it.

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It is a terrible mistake to "have done with" everything in your Flying Spaghetti Monster file. While that file contains many things that aren't true, it also contains virtually everything that is important in the world.

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Should we worry about whether the computer feels pain when we turn it off, or when it produces an error message?

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None of them have consciousness, so I'm not going to bother with your follow-up reasoning.

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What leads you to believe they don't have consciousness?

Consider the earth and everything on it, for instance. The earth takes in inputs (light, for instance), processes those inputs through a whole variety of complex reactions, and then outputs various actions. It is far more complicated than a human brain, in part because it includes billions of human brains. It sends out signals reporting its own existence (thanks to the SETI project). It acts to preserve itself and its health. What else might it need to do (other than experience qualia, of course ) in order to be considered conscious by you?

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So you're primarily concerned with the moral implications of extending concepts of consciousness to anything capable of perception and analysis?

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