Are we persons or particles?

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You making at least two assumptions:
You are obviously still entrenched in your bunker of material things you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch.
Does our power of invention come from our senses? If so how?
We learn by association, which is based on sensory data.

What is responsible for the association and interpretation of sensory data. More sensory data? Hmm… Sensory data associates and interprets sensory data…
Progress is not determined by the percentage of extinctions but by the degree of development. By any standards the transformation of a simple cell into a person is an incredible achievement. The very fact that despite all the odds life has survived on a violent, catastrophic planet is formidable evidence that it is not fortuitous.
The basic layout of our physical makeup has hardly changed since the development of the first eukaryotes. As a matter of fact, 90% of the cells that make up you and I are microbial eukaryotes.

Aha! But **what **has transformed our physical makeup and what accounts for the other 10%?
You are changing the subject. If all human activity is the result of meaningless, valueless and purposeless biochemical reactions life is also meaningless, valueless and purposeless. Your valuations are futile attempts to impose value on that which is valueless. Not only that. In “your” scheme of things “your” valuations are not “yours” at all. They are caused by biochemical reactions. In “your” scheme of things “you” are just a cog in the machine of nature and have no choice whatsoever. You think and do what you are compelled to think and do…
ROTFL!!!

I enjoy living and I don’t care two damns about these absurdities. Life is a mystery. Why waste time trying to solve it when you should be living it?

You are merely evading the issue. When you cannot refute an argument you resort to irrelevant expostulation. Why waste time on a philosophy forum when you should be living your life? You can fool yourself but you can’t fool everyone else… 🙂
You don’t need a catechism but you need a rational source of meaning.
Not really no. I don’t need a rational source of anything.

No wonder you are incapable of producing a rational argument!
I don’t know how I was born, how I grew up, how I am now entering middle age and how eventually I will become old and die. I don’t even need to think about these things.
That explains a lot!
The process continues whether I try to rationalize it or not. All I need do to obtain wisdom is to sit and wait.
Your faith in the power of doing nothing but sit and wait is touching but unrealistic…
Where do you obtain the power to assign meaning?
From a system of ethical and moral imprints that have been vouchsafed me by a combination of genetically inherited traits and assimilated life experience.

Which are totally beyond your control or power to change… Bad luck!
What do you hold yourself up with? The things you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch?
Why not?

Can you see, hear, taste, smell and touch your mind?
Generally, you find the happiest people are the ones who don’t ask these accursed questions.
The happiest people don’t live in a fool’s paradise.
Contented people are happy to sit around feeling content.
Contented people don’t just sit around but share their contentment with others.
Searching high and low for some kind of meaning, in my opinion, reeks of desperation.
Not to search for meaning reeks of apathy, fatalism and - above all - sheer laziness.
 
Because the collection of said particles form a human person with a brain. The brain also made of particles is the central processing unit that sapience arises from.
How and **why **have the collection of said particles form a human person with a brain?
 
You are obviously still entrenched in your bunker of material things you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch.
Yes. I think superstition is the soul provenance of the educationally subnormal.
What is responsible for the association and interpretation of sensory data.
It’s an organ known as the brain.
Aha! But **what **has transformed our physical makeup and what accounts for the other 10%?
Evolution by mutation in period doubling cascade and natural selection transformed our physical makeup and cells that contain the human genome account for the other 10%.
You are merely evading the issue. When you cannot refute an argument you resort to irrelevant expostulation.
I simply don’t consider these drivelling sentimental outburst of blithering piety, pomposity and stupidity worth a second’s meditation.
Why waste time on a philosophy forum when you should be living your life? You can fool yourself but you can’t fool everyone else… 🙂
Because I want to know my enemy. :rotfl:
No wonder you are incapable of producing a rational argument!
And small wonder you are incapable of producing a reasonable one, carrying all that prehistoric metaphysical baggage around. Why, how I pity you.
That explains a lot!
It applies to you as well my friend, only your vanity prevents you from accepting it.
Your faith in the power of doing nothing but sit and wait is touching but unrealistic…
And your faith in sitting waiting for the touch of the divine fills me with the urge to defecate.
Which are totally beyond your control or power to change… Bad luck!
And yours too. Your luck is worse than mine since I at least can understand and influence my experiences. You sit and wait for God to sort you out. Good luck with that.
Can you see, hear, taste, smell and touch your mind?
Yes. I can feel my mind at all times. It’s an intergral part of me.
The happiest people don’t live in a fool’s paradise.
You’ll never know.
Contented people don’t just sit around but share their contentment with others.
I have a number of close friends whom I spend time engaging with in various pleasurable pursuits.
Not to search for meaning reeks of apathy, fatalism and - above all - sheer laziness.
Only to somoene like you who cannot accept what they are.
 
That persons exist is obvious, regardless of what scientists think. The error occurs when scientists use their titles and knowledge to deny the identity of man in his fullness. The present problem is scientists injecting purely speculative and ideological conclusions into biology textbooks as opposed to simply sticking with facts.

Our physical composition cannot be fully described by science.

God bless,
Ed
You know, the thing about science and scientists? They’re all about the details. And you know what’s in the details?

God bless,
jd
 
Yes. I think superstition is the soul provenance of the educationally subnormal.
It’s an organ known as the brain.
Evolution by mutation in period doubling cascade and natural selection transformed our physical makeup and cells that contain the human genome account for the other 10%.
I simply don’t consider these drivelling sentimental outburst of blithering piety, pomposity and stupidity worth a second’s meditation.
Because I want to know my enemy. :rotfl:
And small wonder you are incapable of producing a reasonable one, carrying all that prehistoric metaphysical baggage around. Why, how I pity you.
It applies to you as well my friend, only your vanity prevents you from accepting it.
And your faith in sitting waiting for the touch of the divine fills me with the urge to defecate.
And yours too. Your luck is worse than mine since I at least can understand and influence my experiences. You sit and wait for God to sort you out. Good luck with that.
Yes. I can feel my mind at all times. It’s an intergral part of me.
You’ll never know.
I have a number of close friends whom I spend time engaging with in various pleasurable pursuits.
Only to somoene like you who cannot accept what they are.
Is this tirade of abuse supposed to be a philosophical discussion?! 🤷
 
Persons don’t exist as far as science is concerned but most scientists believe in human rights. So how do we fit into the atomic scheme of** things**?
Science uses various models. To a physicist we may be elementary particles, to a chemist molecules, to a biologist an organism, to a medic a person and to a social scientist part of a group. It wouldn’t make much sense to try to understand laughing in terms of quarks or photon entanglement in terms of botany. 🙂
Particles are not conscious or rational or purposeful but we are. They don’t have a right to life but we do.
Grains of dirt can’t hold up a roof but a whole bunch cooked into bricks and cemented together can. In the same way, we are composed of particles but are more than that. It’s about organization. A computer chip isn’t just some silicon, and we are a whole lot more complicated than a bunch of chips.

Consciousness is a hard nut to crack but there’s no reason in principle to think that it can’t be explained. If and when it is, it will need new models and none of them will, by definition, appeal to the supernatural - Supernatural : (of something’s cause or existence) not able to be explained by the laws of science; forces or events that cannot be explained by science – Cambridge

If consciousness is explained there will no doubt be many threads here pointing out failings of the model, but currently it’s still an open question. Philosophers haven’t had much luck trying to explain it (or even agreeing on an exact definition :rolleyes:) so why not let scientists have a go and see if they come up with anything?
 
Neither does the “matter-did-it” fantasy…
The scientific pursuit of explanations in terms of material causes (“matter did it”) helps us predict and control our environment. “God did it” can’t help us do that though perhaps it can do other things for you.
 
Science uses various models. To a physicist we may be elementary particles, to a chemist molecules, to a biologist an organism, to a medic a person and to a social scientist part of a group. It wouldn’t make much sense to try to understand laughing in terms of quarks or photon entanglement in terms of botany. 🙂

Grains of dirt can’t hold up a roof but a whole bunch cooked into bricks and cemented together can. In the same way, we are composed of particles but are more than that. It’s about organization. A computer chip isn’t just some silicon, and we are a whole lot more complicated than a bunch of chips.
Yep. There is a long way between “human beings are composed of particles” and “humans are *just *bunches of particles that deserve no more consideration than do lumps of dirt.” What is going on the OP is analogous to atheist attacks on the bearded old man in the sky version of God.
 
Yep. There is a long way between “human beings are composed of particles” and “humans are *just *bunches of particles that deserve no more consideration than do lumps of dirt.” What is going on the OP is analogous to atheist attacks on the bearded old man in the sky version of God.
I beg to disagree. Materialists believe we are composed **solely **of particles which have “emergent” qualities. One member of this forum explained that the correspondence of belief to reality is an isomorph of atomic particles and that all our activity consists of rearrangements of atomic particles! The old man in the sky is not a patch on that… 🙂
 
The scientific pursuit of explanations in terms of material causes (“matter did it”) helps us predict and control our environment.
I agree but does it help us predict and control ourselves and other persons? When science is revered as the supreme explanation it becomes a religion. “Matter did it” becomes “Matter did everything”!
“God did it” can’t help us do that though perhaps it can do other things for you.
“God created everything” helps us to understand what we are and why we exist whereas “matter created everything” reduces us to accidental freaks which exist for no reason or purpose whatsoever…
 
I beg to disagree. Materialists believe we are composed **solely **of particles which have “emergent” qualities.
The idea of emergence is not that particles have emergent properties. It is that while particles have a tendency to form atoms, atoms have properties that particles don’t have and molecules have properties that atoms don’t have, and that cells have properties that molecules don’t have, etc.

Note that none of this has anything to do with the meaning of life. There is no either/or between a meaningful life and materialism. You keep insisting what materialists simply must believe as a consequence of believing in the utility of science, but no one is forced to make the leap from “everything can have a material description” to “everything only ever ought to be thought about in material terms.”
 
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