Can an Atheist Answer These?

[Shredderbeam]

I have already stated that reasoning implies originality, creativity, insight, evaluation, flexibility, imagination and purposeful activity…

But how do you know that those things are more than mechanical operations?

 

[tonyrey]

I have already stated that reasoning implies originality, creativity, insight, evaluation, flexibility, imagination and purposeful activity…

But how do you know that those things are more than mechanical operations?

Can you explain how a machine can be original, creative and have insight into its own functions? How can it imagine and establish purposes for itself? Is it responsible what it does?

 

[liquidpele]

Can you explain how a machine can be original, creative and have insight into its own functions? How can it imagine and establish purposes for itself? Is it responsible what it does?

If there is no God, how do you currently go about deciding what your purpose is? Think honestly about it.

 

[Shredderbeam]

Can you explain how a machine can be original, creative and have insight into its own functions? How can it imagine and establish purposes for itself? Is it responsible what it does?

You’re using the argument from ignorance. You are claiming that reasoning is more than mechanical deduction, so the burden of proof is upon you.

 

[AnAtheist]

You’re using the argument from ignorance. You are claiming that reasoning is more than mechanical deduction, so the burden of proof is upon you.

tonyrey believes in a dualism of body and mind, thus to him the body is only a biological machine and the mind, the true self, is something sitting in there stiring that machine. Now, when someone says, body and mind are both material, he thinks that someone is eliminating the mind from his picture, just leaving the biological machine behind. But the claim is actually that body and mind are one, the “only a machine” and “where is all the mind stuff” problems are not really problems.
Granted nobody has ever seen a mind or creativity or love etc. when having dissected a brain, but I have hewn several trees and cut them into pieces, and tell you what, I have never found a forest there.

 

[Leela]

1.) Why is it that every form of life on this planet has a basic, fundamental desire to avoid death at all costs?

2.) Why does a species want to reproduce?

3.) What is the point of continuing on, of ensuring that the next generation comes into existence? Is it to be remembered? If it is to be remembered, why ?

• For what reason?*
  Why does a species like a virus have the same desire to survive that say, a human, or a sunflower has?

In other words, why does every species of life on earth want to perpetuate itself?

Hi shoewindow,

Your questions point to a creative aspect of the universe and to value as fundamental to rather than tacked on top of experience. Nothing makes me want to personify this aspect of reality. Materialists accounts of nature do have a hard time with these ideas but they are able to explain them through physical laws and evolution. You seem to be dissatisfied with the explanations that materialism offers. That’s okay, just use materialist explanations when they are useful and explanations of behavior in terms of intentions, values, and psychology where they have more explanatory power. We aren’t stuck with any one philosophical system or theology to give us the one true accont of The Way Things Really Are. I don’t think there is any particular language in which that the universe demands to be spoken of or any particular sentences that the universe demands to be said about about it. The descriptions of reality we come up with are useful for some purposes and not for others just like tools in a tool box. If language evolved as a tool for coping with reality rather than as a representation of reality, then we don’t have to worry about whether our words are in the correct relation to reality any more than we would worry about whether a hammer correctly corresponds with reality. We can instead concern ourselves with coming up with better alternatives to our current beliefs, dropping old beliefs that no longer serve us as well as new ones, and with creating a future that is better than our past.

Best,
Leela

 

[djeter]

I’ve recently found this interesting. It springs from the very strange views of reality that quantum theory has given us.

"At the end of the day quantum mechanics does make sense in its own realm and offers explanations for strange effects that have no other explanation. In the traditional interpretation of quantum theory –sometimes also called the “Copenhagen,” “standard,” or “orthodox” interpretation — one must, to avoid paradoxes or absurdities, posit the existence of so-called “observers” who lie, at least in part, outside of the description of the world provided by physics. That is, the mathematical formalism which quantum theory uses to make predictions about the physical world cannot be stretched to cover completely the person who is observing that world. What is it about the “observer” that lies beyond physical description? Careful analysis suggests that it is some aspect of the rational mind.

This has led some eminent physicists to say that quantum theory is inconsistent with a materialistic view of the human mind."

…

The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God? Mark Vernon, who writes science articles, did a little research and came up with the following matrix of five scientist with differing views on this.

His results are here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/08/a-spiritual-reality-veiled-from-us/

Needless to say, something for everyone…

dj

 

[tonyrey]

You’re using the argument from ignorance. You are claiming that reasoning is more than mechanical deduction, so the burden of proof is upon you.

On the contrary I am using the argument from knowledge, the direct knowledge that all of us possess - of our power of reason, creativity, insight, imagination and purposeful activity.
Can you explain how a machine can be original, creative and have insight into its own functions? How can it imagine and establish purposes for itself? Is it responsible what it does?

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey believes in a dualism of body and mind, thus to him the body is only a biological machine and the mind, the true self, is something sitting in there stirring that machine.

Your claim to know what I believe is totally false! I shall be interested to know how you reach your conclusions…

1. The mind is not sitting anywhere. It is immaterial.
2. The mind does not stir anything. It is immaterial.
3. The body is not just a biological machine. It is a conscious, creative and purposeful.
   manifestation of the mind.

Now, when someone says, body and mind are both material, he thinks that someone is eliminating the mind from his picture, just leaving the biological machine behind.

And that is precisely what he is doing because the mind is regarded as no more than the activity of the brain.

But the claim is actually that body and mind are one, the “only a machine” and “where is all the mind stuff” problems are not really problems.

Problems are not problems for those who have a superficial view of reality. If you read a few philosophical discussions of the mind-body problem you will realise that consciousness, qualia and free will cannot be so readily dismissed as the product of electrical impulses.

Granted nobody has ever seen a mind or creativity or love etc. when having dissected a brain, but I have hewn several trees and cut them into pieces, and tell you what, I have never found a forest there.

There is a slight difference is between a forest and a rational, responsible person. No reductionist has ever explained how the activity of the brain can produce a responsible, autonomous entity.

 

[tonyrey]

If there is no God, how do you currently go about deciding what your purpose is? Think honestly about it.

I currently go about deciding what my purpose is - and so do you - precisely because there is a God who has given us the power to do so.

 

[AnAtheist]

No reductionist has ever explained how the activity of the brain can produce a responsible, autonomous entity.

Perhaps not yet, and if someone did, you’d ignore it anyway.
But has anyone explained how an immaterial mind controls the body? How does it move muscles, cause brain activity, controls glands? Telekinetically? Magically?

 

[liquidpele]

I currently go about deciding what my purpose is - and so do you - precisely because there is a God who has given us the power to do so.

Except that if there is no God, you go about doing it with an ability that is not of God. With or without God, the reality is that we have that ability. You attribute it to God. I do not. For the sake of argument, assume there is no God, and then ask yourself how you would have the ability to make the decisions you do. If you can’t come up with an answer, perhaps you should accept that you’ve not really examined other options.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Out of curiosity, what do you take to be “real knowledge”?

Real knowledge is that which we know to be true, we reap its benefits. Like the knowledge that sent man to the moon, or cures illness etc.

 

[Leela]

There are Why questions and How questions. They are related but not identical. The main problem, that I see, in this thread is that people are talking past each other. I can only speculate as to why that is so. We ask WHY questions to get real answers to the questions of how we ought to live. We ask HOW questions so that we can better understand the natural that affect us everyday and attempt to improve our quality of life. Both type of questioning are valid and useful…
…
I heard an Oxford Chemist illustrate the HOW vs. WHY distinction by saying that science tells us that giving strychnine to your grandmother will kill her. However, science will not tell us whether we should give it to her.

Are you suggesting that since science can’t tell us why we shouldn’t poison our grandmothers that we need religion to do that for us? I think we can figure out that it is wrong to kill our grandmothers without asking priests or referring to ancient books.

As to “why versus how,” I think the “why” is pretty simple here. Why do animals try to live and avoid death? Because they want to live. That’s why. Why do all animals want to live and so few animals want to die? Because the ones that don’t want to live are less likely to pass on their “want to die” genes to future generations.

I think what you really want to know isn’t just why we want to live but why we should want to live which begs the question, doesn’t it? This question presupposes a moral order that is external to ourselves and to which we have a duty to conform. Before answering I would need to be convinced that such a moral order and such a duty exists. Until then, it seems enough to know that I want to live, and I never need to ask why I *should *want to live.

Best,
Leela

 

[Shredderbeam]

tonyrey believes in a dualism of body and mind, thus to him the body is only a biological machine and the mind, the true self, is something sitting in there stiring that machine. Now, when someone says, body and mind are both material, he thinks that someone is eliminating the mind from his picture, just leaving the biological machine behind. But the claim is actually that body and mind are one, the “only a machine” and “where is all the mind stuff” problems are not really problems.
Granted nobody has ever seen a mind or creativity or love etc. when having dissected a brain, but I have hewn several trees and cut them into pieces, and tell you what, I have never found a forest there.

Well, interestingly enough, we do know certain chemicals that are typically associated with feelings of love, but of course, the subjective experience cannot be identified from external inspection.

On the contrary I am using the argument from knowledge, the direct knowledge that all of us possess - of our power of reason, creativity, insight, imagination and purposeful activity.
Can you explain how a machine can be original, creative and have insight into its own functions? How can it imagine and establish purposes for itself? Is it responsible what it does?

I’m talking about the logical fallacy:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

Let us say that I am unable to explain. How do you know that reasoning is more than mechanical deduction, or to put it another way, what evidence do you have that lead you to this positive conclusion?

 

[WillieWonka]

1.) Why is it that every form of life on this planet has a basic, fundamental desire to avoid death at all costs?

2.) Why does a species want to reproduce?

3.) What is the point of continuing on, of ensuring that the next generation comes into existence? Is it to be remembered? If it is to be remembered, why ?

• For what reason?*
  Why does a species like a virus have the same desire to survive that say, a human, or a sunflower has?

In other words, why does every species of life on earth want to perpetuate itself?

1. I don’t know. Do they all have a fundamental desire to avoid death?
2. I don’t know.
3. I don’t know.
4. I don’t know what reason a virus has to survive. What is it, and how do you know it is the same reason a human has to survive?

I can speculate on these questions, but no more. Howeevr, if you do know the answers, there is a Nobel waiting.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Real knowledge is that which we know to be true, we reap its benefits. Like the knowledge that sent man to the moon, or cures illness etc.

Real knowledge is that which we know to be true, we reap its benefits. Like the knowledge that wreaked havoc on Hiroshima, or made it possible to abort female fetuses, etc.

If knowledge is defined in terms of its worldly capacity, then it is merely techne, a tool that has no value apart from its results. But if these results have proven to be both advantageous and harmful, it is difficult to argue the case that the advance of our understanding – our “real knowledge” – as you say, is profitable to us.

And if it may not even be profitable, how can we define it by the ability to “reap its benefits”?

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Real knowledge is that which we know to be true, we reap its benefits. Like the knowledge that wreaked havoc on Hiroshima, or made it possible to abort female fetuses, etc.

If knowledge is defined in terms of its worldly capacity, then it is merely techne, a tool that has no value apart from its results. But if these results have proven to be both advantageous and harmful, it is difficult to argue the case that the advance of our understanding – our “real knowledge” – as you say, is profitable to us.

And if it may not even be profitable, how can we define it by the ability to “reap its benefits”?

Just because we can use these things in bad ways does not make them untrue, does not make them part of our knowledge. Are you trying to say fusion is not true because we can use it to cause harm?

 

[Matthias123]

Granted nobody has ever seen a mind or creativity or love etc. when having dissected a brain, but I have hewn several trees and cut them into pieces, and tell you what, I have never found a forest there.

This is straw, because we understand the species known as “forest” to be a higher category of the species known as “tree”. Many trees comprise the species of “forest”, and thus we understand the species of “forest” to be form. Now form itself is immaterial, therefore unless you are an angelic being that can see essence per se, you are not going to be able to see the form of “forest” per se, but you can know this form or as Plato says “idea” by abstraction when viewing the matter a vast group of trees through your senses.

 

[tonyrey]

Perhaps not yet, and if someone did, you’d ignore it anyway.
But has anyone explained how an immaterial mind controls the body? How does it move muscles, cause brain activity, controls glands? Telekinetically? Magically?

Has anyone explained how and why physical energy exists, has produced and controls immaterial realities like persons, their thoughts and their decisions? Where is the source of integration and organisation? Or is that an illusion? Do you really believe you are no more than a collection of electrical currents?