Oh, buddy, you seriously overcomplicated.The following might be clearer to you than what I already posted.
Is “the empty set is a subset of {1,2,3}” an example of an absolute, or non-conditional proposition?“X” is an absolute, or non-conditional proposition.
Please quote from an actual message that I posted.when you wrote “If X then X”
Suppose that “X” is the following sentence: “the empty set is a subset of {1,2,3}.”“X” is an absolute, or non-conditional proposition.
Please quote a message that I posted, and bold the part where you see “If X then X.”when you wrote “If X then X”
That might be more accurately stated as: ‘I do not understand how non rarional matter etc’.More then morality, I think that human consciousness, as we experience it, is indicative that a higher intelligence/mind/personality created us. Non-rational matter by itself, no matter how it is combined, cannot produce a “me” that is self-aware.
Since by definition the empty set is the subset of ANY set, it is an absolute proposition. ANY definition is an absolute proposition.Suppose that “X” is the following sentence: “the empty set is a subset of {1,2,3}.”
In that case, is “X” an absolute, or non-conditional proposition? That is not a rhetorical question. Please answer it.
Sorry, I wanted to say: “if you WRITE” and not “if you WROTE”, The letters “I” and “O” are next to each other.when you wrote
Suppose that y is an assertion of the form “p isn’t a conditional proposition.”There are many ways to construct a proposition. If the proposition can be transformed into an “IF x THEN y”, (while keeping its meaning intact) it is a conditional proposition.
I see no need to “suppose” that, it is obvious. If in the proposition “IF x THEN y” the “y” WOULD be a further conditional, we could simplify the expression by combining ALL the conditionals, something like “IF (x and z and q and p…) THEN y” where the “y” is not a conditional". What is your point?Suppose that y is an assertion of the form “p isn’t a conditional proposition.”
Not necessarily. I am not proposing a God of the gaps. Rather, I am saying we will never discover how non-rational matter can be arranged to create rational consciences by itself because it is a flat contradiction to say that it can. Just like we can never discover a two-dimensional round square. It is a flat contradiction and foolhardy to go on looking for it on that basis.That might be more accurately stated as: ‘I do not understand how non rarional matter etc’.
Correct. Nobody understands how non-rational matter can be arranged to produce rational consciousness on it’s own. But, we CAN understand, and even prove that it can’t. With this established, it is not, then, a God of the gaps argument.I would then agree with you. Because I don’t understand it either. Nobody does yet.
You are getting ahead of me. The most I think our consciousness can prove is that there is reality which is entirely outside of the physical universe, but capable of interacting with it similar to how a novel writer is not inside the universe he writes, but, nevertheless, has a direct influence on it. It also proves that there is at least one thing in this extra-physical reality that is something more like a mind than not. This can be called “God,” but it doesn’t have to be. There is no reason to suppose it is a Trinity, or even that it conforms to the deity of any established religion.But then does that lead to a belief in God? Well, there is no connection at all unless you already have a belief in God in which case your bemusement at how non-rational matter can produce a self is not bemusement at all. You had the answer before the question was asked.
I don’t think religion or belief necessarily behaves this way, either. Not in the way you’re thinking. It IS a benefit to atheism in that atheism tends not to, but it is not exclusive to atheism. However, it’s not entirely accurate to say that any knowledge system doesn’t do this at least a little bit. Most of our knowledge is actually taken on authority, the least reliable source of knowledge. Have you been to Australia? If not, you take it on authority that such a place exists. You have never actually seen it. You don’t even know really if it is shaped the way you think it is, even if you have been there, because you have never seen it from a far enough distance to know for sure. Most of our knowledge works this way. It is therefore not unreasonable for one to believe something with evidence, but no proof, since most of our knowledge is assumed without proof.This is one of the benefits of atheism which I might note in a concurrent thread: We don’t start with the answer and then discount all matters that do not support it.
I did, but my belief in God has certainly undergone some drastic changes since my childhood. In fact, my parents hardly recognize my faith anymore because it is so different from what they raised me with. To them, I might as well be an atheist.I am assuming, Mort, that you had a belief in God before you ever considered consciousness and the self. Maybe you could confirm that and tell me if you think it plays anynpart in your opinions on the matter.
There is disagreement as to what it actually means when we say ‘life’. We have everything from protocells which are definitely not alive but have some of the characteristics of life (see the TED talk: ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life), through to collections of cells which appear to be alive but do not have all the characteristics that are normally associated with life - viruses, through to the smallest of bacteria which are considered to be alive.Not necessarily. I am not proposing a God of the gaps. Rather, I am saying we will never discover how non-rational matter can be arranged to create rational consciences by itself because it is a flat contradiction to say that it can. Just like we can never discover a two-dimensional round square. It is a flat contradiction and foolhardy to go on looking for it on that basis.
The stuff you got inside a brain is merely electromagnetic field plus a bunch of neurons. Neurons fire electrons collectively and generate a coherent electromagnetic field. This gives rise to a physical state which can be conscious. Not all state of matter are conscious. They are just different states, metal, liquid, superconductor, etc. This means that you could create a conscious being if you can generate similar coherent electromagnetic field.Not necessarily. I am not proposing a God of the gaps. Rather, I am saying we will never discover how non-rational matter can be arranged to create rational consciences by itself because it is a flat contradiction to say that it can. Just like we can never discover a two-dimensional round square. It is a flat contradiction and foolhardy to go on looking for it on that basis.
The matter depends entirely on whether you consider the act of stealing to be morally correct or not. There is nothing se to consider.
Bradski;14303084:
Wouldn’t you as well?If I steal my neighbours gun to sell so that I can buy drugs you might consider that to be immoral.
The taking would be just iff the community’s just laws allowed the preemptive taking of a neighbors property on suspicion of its use in a future criminal act. I don’t see such a law as practical. The problem, after all, is your crazy neighbor; not his gun. Or did you plan to take all his knives, ropes, plastic bags, etc.?But what if I steal it because he just told me he was going to shoot his family?
Pardon, but I never actually said there was a distinct point on the evolutionary timeline at which we suddenly had consciousness. Richard Dawkins has given an excellent explanation for how a human eye could have developed. If an eye can come about through gradual evolution, so can a brain. If you think that is what I’m disputing, then I haven’t presented my argument lucidly enough.There is no point along that line that you can say that anything specific happened. Just like you can’t say that on Tuesday 3rd at 4:35pm half a million years ago, homo erectus became homo sapien.
Well, “life” is not what I am primarily concerned about here, since biologists say that plants are “alive,” but it is no trouble at all to understand how a “live” plant cluld have developed exclusively from physics.There is disagreement as to what it actually means when we say ‘life’. We have everything from protocells which are definitely not alive but have some of the characteristics of life (see the TED talk: ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life), through to collections of cells which appear to be alive but do not have all the characteristics that are normally associated with life - viruses, through to the smallest of bacteria which are considered to be alive.
A bacteria would not be considered to be conscious in any sense. It may react to its environment but with no more intention than a flower turns to the sun.
Now work your way up the line that connects the virus, through the bacteria, through various organisms with rudimentary nervous systems to ones where the nervous system is specifically located to those with what might be describes as a brain (I think the smallest is a fruit fly) and we still haven’t reached anything that can be described as having a consciousness.
But keep going and we will eventually reach a point where there may be some debate as to whether a particular animal or insect becomes aware of its environment and its position within that environment.
A “rational,” conscious mind, if entirely physical, is just as irrational as the flower turning to the sun. If our physical brains can account for our consciousness by themselves, then we can’t really say that we are rational. Even my thoughts that result in me typing this message and the “decisions” I made to get here were not being made by “me,” at all, but were predetermined by the physical laws of the universe; a result of atoms and subatomic particles doing what they will according to physics until they make larger structures that then do what they will until a brain and its operations result. Just as stupid, just as dumb, just as mindless as the flower turning to the sun.Keep going and we will eventually reach a point where we could discuss if the creature was self aware. And further up the food chain we go and maybe we can discuss whether something else had distinct thought processes. And eventually we will get to a point where we can definitely say that there is intelligence. And then rational intelligence. And then a conscience.
See, this is where I’m being misunderstood. Even if our consciousness requires some extra-physical component as I think it does, we still need our brains to be physically conscious in the same way that the person behind a microphone needs working speakers of a certain physical structure in order to manifest his voice across a great distance to a different place. Now, this brain, as you have already said, came about through gradual evolution. You and I have always been in agreement about that (though, apparently, without being aware of it).Now how all this happened exactly is likely to be never known. But to suggest that it cannot firstly denies the obvious fact that it has already happened and secondly shows an inability to understand the gradual changes that can happen over geological time.
exhuastedIt’s like having a blue ball and saying that it can’t change into a red one. But if you had a billion balls, the first being blue and all the rest turning incrementally from blue to red, you could take a group of a thousand balls and state that there is obviously no change. They all look exactly the same. There is no evidence of change being made. Therefore some intelligence created the red ball at this particular point.
I don’t know what to say to this except to clarify that I don’t think that it works that way, appearances aside. Hopefully this post will have cleared that up by now.You appear to think that there was no life and then life. And then no consciousness and then consciousness. And then no rational thought and then Einstein. That is not the case.
Yes, our ability to be physically conscious is dependent on our brains which developed through evolution. I have never not thought this. I am just repeating it on this post ad nauseam. in order to thoroughly reply in an effort not to be misunderstood about this again.There obviously was a point when whatever you were could be considered not to have a capacity for rational thought. And you obviously have it now. So it obviously developed.
My apologies for appearing tomassume that you don’t understand the processes involved. But I tend to overwrite posts in this matter because someone invariably jumps in and claims that I haven’t even explained how life just ‘popped into existence’. Which it clearly didn’t.Yes, our ability to be physically conscious is dependent on our brains which developed through evolution. I have never not thought this. I am just repeating it on this post ad nauseam. in order to thoroughly reply in an effort not to be misunderstood about this again.
Admitting to that, however, does not necessitate that our consciousness is solely dependent on our physical brains. I am saying it can’t be.
Thankfully accepted. I understand. Those people frustrate me, too. It’s like they’re not even trying to understand their opponents.My apologies for appearing tomassume that you don’t understand the processes involved. But I tend to overwrite posts in this matter because someone invariably jumps in and claims that I haven’t even explained how life just ‘popped into existence’. Which it clearly didn’t.
I’m with you so far…So there is obviously an acceptance that we are, as we stand, rational beings. And that at some point in the past we were not.
only glosses over this:But even a rat makes rational decisions. And I wouldn’t think that we’d consider ratus ratus to be a great example of rodent morality. And whatever we were a few billion years ago made some sort of rational decisions as we developed. You might claim the decisions ns to be nothing more than instinct, but here’s where all those balls come into the discussion.
A “rational,” conscious mind, if entirely physical, is just as irrational as the flower turning to the sun. If our physical brains can account for our consciousness by themselves, then we can’t really say that we are rational. Even my thoughts that result in me typing this message and the “decisions” I made to get here were not being made by “me,” at all, but were predetermined by the physical laws of the universe; a result of atoms and subatomic particles doing what they will according to physics until they make larger structures that then do what they will until a brain and its operations result. Just as stupid, just as dumb, just as mindless as the flower turning to the sun.
Now, you can say that this is how it really works, but you then have to go on and admit that no moral outrage can be valid or rational; that it is, in fact, irrational to be morally outraged by anything, which is the point of my original post.
which is what I am chiefly concerned with and has nothing to do with our evolutionary development.C. S. Lewis went even further and said that it would then be a flat contradiction to go on trying to argue anything rationally. I think he was right.
If by “rational thought process” you mean something which we can duplicate in a complex computer, then I agree, but that is not what I’m talking about. It is tough to come to an agreement on definitions when talking about these things, but I’ll try my best to clarify exactly what I’m talking about.Because what you are saying is that it is impossible for some basic instinctive behaviour to evolve into something we’d call rational behaviour. Well personally speaking, I can’t see how, if you have a lineage long enough and some hundreds of millions of years with which to play, you wouldn’t get something like rational thought processes.
If it was not a natural, incremental process, then you are stuck with something similar to the argument that says that at 3:30pm on the 3rd of July X amount of years ago, rational thought popped into existence.
This is Adam and Eve territory.
While this is a bit of a charicature, I’ll agree with it and defend it here. Maybe self-conscious rational thought did not instantaneously spring into existence in the form which we now possess. Obviously, that couldn’t have happened since our brains are/were gradually evolving physical organs. They could not have suddenly had the ability to handle the types of thinking which we do today if the instant before their most complex thought was how to use a stick to pull bugs out of a hole. But, logic and intuition say that there had to have been a first self-conscious thought, right? There’s no way to fracture the self-consciousness of a thought. It either is or it isn’t. An almost self-conscious thought is the same as a non-self-conscious thought. That makes the very first self-conscious thought, small as it may seem, a very big event in human evolution. I always think about the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with the ape first figuring out how to use/make a weapon from the strewn about bones. A very small event in our vast chronology, but huge in terms of ramifications. His tribe became the dominant one and the less evolved tribe died out.So either it is an incremental, entirely natural process or…kazam! One day we were amoral, non rational beasts and then we became Man.
That might be more accurately stated as: ‘I do not understand how non rarional matter etc’.
I would then agree with you. Because I don’t understand it either. Nobody does yet.
I’m too spent for this. Bradski, perhaps you can explain for STT why that is not a fully sufficient explanation for how irrational matter can generate consciousness on its own.The stuff you got inside a brain is merely electromagnetic field plus a bunch of neurons. Neurons fire electrons collectively and generate a coherent electromagnetic field. This gives rise to a physical state which can be conscious. Not all state of matter are conscious. They are just different states, metal, liquid, superconductor, etc. This means that you could create a conscious being if you can generate similar coherent electromagnetic field.
I don’t think if such a argument is valid. Matter can be sentient too. There is a nice talk by Peter Russel about this topic in here.I’m too spent for this. Bradski, perhaps you can explain for STT why that is not a fully sufficient explanation for how irrational matter can generate consciousness on its own.
As regards not fracturing a self conscious thought, that’s like saying you either see or you don’t - there’s no half way point. Which there clearly is.I always think about the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with the ape first figuring out how to use/make a weapon from the strewn about bones. A very small event in our vast chronology, but huge in terms of ramifications. His tribe became the dominant one and the less evolved tribe died out.
And the idea that: well, it’s possible for non-rational matter to create is…not supported by evidence. Ever.Non-rational matter by itself, no matter how it is combined, cannot produce a “me” that is self-aware