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tonyrey
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In other words particles are integrated but the entities that are formed are **collections of particles **which have emergent properties.
It has everything to do with the meaning of life. All materialists believe that atomic particles are meaningless and purposeless - and also that the entire universe is equally meaningless and purposeless. To attempt to insert objective meaning and objective purpose into such a pointless system is a futile enterprise. Meaning and purpose can be - and are - superimposed on life by human beings but the net outcome for the materialist is exactly the same as the starting point: an inconsequential spark in the darkness of eternity…
We can think about everything in any terms we like but what we think does not alter the circumstances into which we are born. To some extent the world is what we make it but we cannot change the final outcome of life on earth. The materialist can certainly choose to make the leap and think in spiritual terms. Whether it is consistent to do so is another matter…
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Leela
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Aren’t you getting tired of trying to make this argument? Isn’t it getting old trying to tell materialists how they simply must believe that life is meaningless? This whole thing is as silly as if I tried to convince Christians that they simply must believe that the earth is flat. How else could Jesus ascend into Heaven? Or that they simply *must *believe that homosexuals need to be stoned to death. It says so in the Bible after all.In other words particles are integrated but the entities that are formed are **collections of particles **which have emergent properties.
It has everything to do with the meaning of life. All materialists believe that atomic particles are meaningless and purposeless - and also that the entire universe is equally meaningless and purposeless. To attempt to insert objective meaning and objective purpose into such a pointless system is a futile enterprise. Meaning and purpose can be - and are - superimposed on life by human beings but the net outcome for the materialist is exactly the same as the starting point: an inconsequential spark in the darkness of eternity…
We can think about everything in any terms we like but what we think does not alter the circumstances into which we are born. To some extent the world is what we make it but we cannot change the final outcome of life on earth. The materialist can certainly choose to make the leap and think in spiritual terms. Whether it is consistent to do so is another matter…
You know what charity means in debate? It means that you argue against the best possible formulation of a position rather than an absurd caricature. How about giving it a try?
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Touchstone
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Right. Levels of description and layers of abstraction as the basis for context and meaning. This is a tired loop here, though, it’s been pointed out over and over. The only way to resolve the discussion dynamics here is to understand that unless there is something more, something beyond emergence and levels of description and complex systems, something supernatural or mystical, it’s ipso facto inadequate, for many.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.
Yep. Another pair of good examples.
Here I think you’ve (inadvertantly skipped over the crucial fulcrum of the debate) – what would, in principle stand as an explanation for conscious on materialist terms. If you review the discourse here on this over the last year or so, it’s clear that you do NOT have any consensus on the idea that “there’s no reason in principle to think it can’t be explained”. Tonyrey is clearly against a materialist rendering, no matter how thorough, because, in principle for him (her? don’t know!) a materialist explanation is a fundamentally inadequate non-explanation. No amount of richness in the model for meaning, semantics, emotion, aspiration, self-awareness, etc. will suffice, simply because it’s material in its vocabulary.
It’s easy to test, just by raising the question: what would an “adequate explanation” of consciousness in material terms look like?
Even for me, a thoroughgoing materialist, it’s not clear what that would like like. If we came up with “breakthrough” models that were astonishingly precise and accurate in their predictions, and which provided rich explanatory models that demonstrated how various neural structures integrated to facilitate not just perceptual awareness, but meta-representational concepts of self and self-considering-self, there’d still be a whole lot more to know, and to investigate. Science is never satisfied in that sense, and so no theory is adequate, finally.
I raise that because even I suspect this is an example of the “heap” problem, where there is no particular grain of sand that makes a “non-heap” a “heap” of sand, but only depths of knowledge and robust models that are broadly convincing – most people would say “yeah, that’s a heap of sand”. And for those who are simply defiant in the face of such prospects, even that will never be enough; there must be some supernatural/mystical element, or its an existential psychology crisis, and life has no meaning, etc.
Philosophy, to the extent it is useful at all, is effective in a negative sense. C.S. Lewis had a good line that said we need to engage philosophy because good philosophy was needed to combat and discredit bad philosophy – negation as the value proposition, there. There’s no reason to expect philosophy will provide explanations or “figure it out” – philosophy has no metric for what does or does not stand as an explanation in the first place. It can (and should) cast doubt, but that’s all – it doesn’t build, but only negates (and that’s valuable).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) so why not let scientists have a go and see if they come up with anything?
Science has a positive model (once one grants negatable philosophy – ‘reality is real and somewhat intelligible’) that can distinguish between explanation and non-explanation, and even better, works in a cumulative fashion.
The real question is, as science “comes up with something”, what of it? It’s not at all clear that that will matter here, at all, and in fact, the more science does deepen and develop naturalistic models of cognition, the more dogmatic the rejection must be, here. The supernatural dimension to the mind is a hill Catholics are willing to die on, and must, according to their doctrines, no matter what kinds of performance physical models achieve.
And it’s not hard to defend that hill it’s crucial. The “immaterial” part of the picture is unfalsifiable, so no matter how good the naturalist account is, one can always say, “No there must be more”. Especially if the whole meaning of one’s life depends on that being the case.
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Moonstruck888
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Ditto.
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tonyrey
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Touchstone
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What would a refutation look like, for you? You’ve said this before, but I can’t think there’s any possible refutation you would identify as such. What would the world have to look like for you to conclude that a materialist account of cognition and personality obtains?
Absent some kind of idea of what would satisify you, of what would falsify your intuitions, isn’t it disingenuous to congratulate yourself for the “absence of any refutation”?
Just so it’s clear I’m not asking for something I myself would deny, the second coming of Jesus, complete with all manner of miracles we could witness, test, videotape, measure and analyze, a real, corporal Jesus who could demonstrate plenary control over the fabric of reality (say, zapping the Earth from one part of its orbit to an opposite point in its orbit, and back at will, or right my (or anyone’s) name in the stars, with the stars, etc., that would be a world in which I would consider my atheism falsified. And I could go one at length enumerating different scenarios that would have me resigning my atheism, and easily acknowledging the reality of a God (or god).
So, I can imagine falsifying scenarios for my beliefs, many of them. Can you? Or do you just take comfort that your “absence of refutation” obtains by rule, because you hold that refutation of your intuitions are no refutable, even in principle?
Wondering.
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Windfish
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Maybe this will help:
youtube.com/watch?v=qbg_dhI4XCs
I mean, as I said in the other thread, it at least makes for a solid If ___, then ___ statement. If this happened, atheism is wrong.
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Touchstone
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Ugh. Seriously, Windfish? That’s downright embarrassing to offer, isn’t it?
If you don’t just laugh at that video (see, the, uh, “beating specimen”, some parts of which are beating after five years in the dude’s container – urk!), you’re gonna fall for the Hindu “Milk Miracle” for sure:
youtube.com/watch?v=xfRoJxv3nbY
Hail Brahma!
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Windfish
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That’s it? So you have a Eucharistic miracle which has been intensively and scientifically studied, shown to be identical to a Eucharistic miracle 1100 years ago, and that’s it? That’s all you have to say? Just incredulity? Huh. I mean, incredulity is expected, but that is no rational basis for dismissing the whole investigation. The milk miracle is a non sequitur.
In any case, the If ___, then ___ statement stands. If it happened, you’re wrong about atheism.
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Touchstone
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OK, I guess I missed the links to the science stuff on this. Can you point me to it please?That’s it? So you have a Eucharistic miracle which has been intensively and scientifically studied, shown to be identical to a Eucharistic miracle 1100 years ago, and that’s it? That’s all you have to say? Just incredulity? Huh. I mean, incredulity is expected, but that is no rational basis for dismissing the whole investigation. The milk miracle is a non sequitur.
In any case, the If ___, then ___ statement stands. If it happened, you’re wrong about atheism.
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Windfish
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Do you agree with the If ___, then ___ statement, though?
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Leela
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What points? You’ve made no argument. You just keep saying that you can’t understand how materialists could possibly find life meaningful given that we are made of particles. How does one even attempt to refute youir claim that you can’t understand how materialists find meaning in life? You can just keep on saying, “nope, still don’t get it.” As far as I can tell your incredulity is your whole argument.
As when Bill O’Reilly said that he doesn’t have enough faith to be an atheist, the bottom line for me is that I’m just not nihilistic enough to think that life would have no meaning if there were no supernatural being out there to lend live meaning. I recognize that the world has intrinsic meaning rather than needing meaning to come from outside of the world. You think that you are valuing humanity with your view, but ironically your idea of humanity requires that it can only have value if something nonhuman grants meaning to humanity. Your idea of the basis for the *worth *of humanity depends on humanity being unworthy of sustaining its own value.
I don’t share your pessimistic view of the world, life, humanity, etc, but there is nothing here to make rational arguments about. The value of human life is a moral we draw from our experiences–from listening to Beethoven, reading Alice Walker, watching your children play, exploring our history and contemplating the possiblilities for what we may make of ourselves in the future. If you don’t get what is so astonishingly beautiful about the world and that humanity is worthy of profound respect I really doubt that I can help you. It isn’t something that you can expect a mathematical proof for. But I suspect that you are just pretending to not get it and posing as an extreme skeptic who will not be satisfied with any justification whatsoever. Your skepticism is just a pose. Why do you think we ought to answer to a your false pose? You are just asking questions that you and I don’t even have.
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tomarin
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People can and do find meaning in life without having firm religious convictions. Nevertheless as a matter of principle I think an atheist has to acknowledge that human life has no ultimate significance if there if there is no God and we are alone in the universe.
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inocente
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I understand what you’re getting at, but here’s a popular version of the oath taken by doctors over the last 40 or 50 years. Note that it doesn’t expect science alone to be the start and end of matters, a sentiment that probably applies to all scientists.
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Like I said, folk are working on it. You young ‘uns, you want everything now.
I tried to think of a reason why not and couldn’t. Call me an incurable romantic. :hug3:
Well again, let the scientists have a go and see if they come up with something. It might be a wild goose chase but either way it could be fun.
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inocente
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I understand what you’re getting at, but here’s a popular version of the oath taken by doctors over the last 40 or 50 years. Note that it doesn’t expect science alone to be the start and end of matters, a sentiment that probably applies to all scientists.
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Like I said, folk are working on it. You young ‘uns, you want everything now.
I tried to think of a reason why not and couldn’t. Call me an incurable romantic. :hug3:
Well again, let the scientists have a go and see if they come up with something. It might be a wild goose chase but either way it could be fun.
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inocente
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No, twas deliberate.
The issue is about the concept. One dictionary definition of the word conscious is “awake, aware of what is happening around you, and able to think“. Even at that simple level the word has three meanings, but once we think about it some more we get “semantics, emotion, aspiration, self-awareness, etc.” as you said, and more besides.
Currently people are trying to explain much smaller pieces of the puzzle, often for medical purposes. These studies will build, and at some point new models will almost certainly disregard geometry completely in favor of mapping functional systems.
Now, here’s the thing - the catch-all word “consciousness” will start to be replaced with concepts relating to the new models. These models will be useful by explaining how we tick and no one will be immune. Kids will learn about it in psychology 101 (or whatever replaces psychology 101). And it won’t all happen in one go, these changes in how we think of ourselves will dribble out over decades rather than coming in one gush.
Currently most people no longer think the guy who washes his hands 60 times a day is possessed, they decide he might just have an obsessive behavioral disorder and should see a doctor. In the same way, most will come to terms with the changing state of knowledge.
The word conscious may become limited to meaning just “awake” and it will no longer be enough to argue “we don’t know”. The arguments will need to shift to “we don’t know this particular bit”, and as the bits we don’t know keep on shrinking, alternative explanations will have to keep shifting ground. This is about us after all, it affects us in everyday life and isn’t just about something abstract like whether the Earth goes around the Sun.
But I completely agree that some will remain defiant. As a girl might say, what’s a girl to do?
PS: Nice post, made me think.
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Touchstone
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If that sample in the petrie dish was the beating heart of Jesus, then yes, I think that would discredit my atheism. I’m not sure why you are giving me blanks for the crucial parts of your proposition, but assuming that’s what you meant, yes.
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Touchstone
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If that sample in the petrie dish was the beating heart of Jesus, then yes, I think that would discredit my atheism. I’m not sure why you are giving me blanks for the crucial parts of your proposition, but assuming that’s what you meant, yes.
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Touchstone
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If that sample in the petrie dish was the beating heart of Jesus, then yes, I think that would discredit my atheism. I’m not sure why you are giving me blanks for the crucial parts of your proposition, but assuming that’s what you meant, yes.
-TS
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