Can science REALLY explain Reality?

[Gaber]

Oh - just looked up panetheism, which is apparently slightly different (the World is in/part of God). Hmmmm. Is there a term for what I’m talking about?

If I’m not mistaken, panentheism is the philosophy which propones that God is ALL, and that the sense of limits and human incarnation is a procedural error stemming from identification with the limits of awareness, as distinct from Consciousness, due to embodiment. Other ideas that make Christianity come off as mostly symbolic, not the historicized and personified story, stem from that.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Before 1925 (when quantum physics was truly born), all of it. Phase transitions were being studied in the mid-1800’s, conductors were invented in the 1880’s, the Drude model of electrons moving through metals was derived in 1900, ferromagnets were introduced in 1906, the vacuum transistor in 1907, superconductivity was discovered in 1911, the Ising model in 1924, and so on.

Once quantum physics came about with Heisenberg and Schroedinger, a lot more was explained and developed. However, a large portion of solid state physics pre-dates quantum physics.

Sorry … by solid state physics I mean semiconductor physics, as in post-transistor. So all that stuff is history. Semiconductors all are based on quantum theory. Of course they don’t know that, but that’s how they are designed.

Alan

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Sorry … by solid state physics I mean semiconductor physics, as in post-transistor. So all that stuff is history. Semiconductors all are based on quantum theory. Of course they don’t know that, but that’s how they are designed.

Alan

I might be inclined to disagree with the wording of the above. Semiconductors were not initially designed based on quantum physics but based on the electrical properties they exhibited, mostly because semiconductors were first made nearly a whole century before quantum physics:

• Michael Farraday experimented with silver sulfide in the 1830’s and published the first findings of semiconductors (though the word semiconductor is attributed to Volta in the 1780’s!)
• Becquerel, in 1839, designed and toyed with semiconductor+electrolyte junctions & discovered the photovoltaic effect
• In the early part of the 1850’s, Hittorf expanded the sulfide branch of semiconductors that Farraday started
• The 1909 Nobel prize in physics went to Braun (and Marconi) for his work on metal sulfide semiconductors in the 1870’s
• Hall described the Hall effect in the late 1870’s

Hopefully this extremely short list of pre-quantum semiconductor physics shows that it was experiment and not quantum theory that advanced semiconductors.

After quantum mechanics, making faster, more efficient semiconductors became incredibly easy because we could compute it without having to experiment. But, historically, semiconductors were based on experiments.

 

[inocente]

“The human person is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. In man spirit and matter form one nature. This unity is so profound that, thanks to the spiritual principle which is the soul, the body which is material, becomes a living human body and participates in the dignity of the image of God.”

“The spiritual soul does not come from one’s parents but is created immediately by God and is immortal. It does not perish at the moment when it is separated from the body in death and it will be once again reunited with the body at the moment of the final resurrection.”

I guess the essential issue is one of definition, and (as usual ) the meaning of meaning… the question, I guess, remains what the soul is - I suppose ideas indicating a sort of alternative substance are somewhat overly limiting to correspond with Catholic ideas exactly, but it’s still not quite animism, which indicates all corporeal objects to have spiritual entity, doesn’t it?!?

I’d speculate that animism is an artifact of how our brains work, mirror neurons and so on – we tend to imagine agents in everything, including blaming the hammer after hitting our thumb.

If I remember my comparative religion, culturally animism varies a lot but the common factor is a notion of a disembodied human soul or spirit. Some philosophers have tried to dress it up as a dualism, but it’s easy to show any open-minded person that it’s irrational – there’s no way it can interact with the physical world.

As you say, Catholic thinkers don’t see the soul that way at all, but methinks some individual Catholics don’t understand the difference and substitute naive animism. If I’m right, a simple test would be that if they are not phased by neuroscience then they understand, while if they see neuroscience as attacking their belief then darned tooting it attacks animism.

 

[Sair]

I’d speculate that animism is an artifact of how our brains work, mirror neurons and so on – we tend to imagine agents in everything, including blaming the hammer after hitting our thumb.

If I remember my comparative religion, culturally animism varies a lot but the common factor is a notion of a disembodied human soul or spirit. Some philosophers have tried to dress it up as a dualism, but it’s easy to show any open-minded person that it’s irrational – there’s no way it can interact with the physical world.

As you say, Catholic thinkers don’t see the soul that way at all, but methinks some individual Catholics don’t understand the difference and substitute naive animism. If I’m right, a simple test would be that if they are not phased by neuroscience then they understand, while if they see neuroscience as attacking their belief then darned tooting it attacks animism.

Ultimately, what is the difference between a considered philosophical approach to the notion of a soul - that which many Catholics espouse - and the scientifically grounded notion of “the soul” being simply that which humans feel as their individual consciousness, as being in touch with our real essence, which is what naturalists see as being in touch with our animal nature, understanding that we are the products of millions of years of natural evolution, and working with that as a basis for not just our “base” instincts, but also our “higher” instincts like morality and aesthetics? Why separate the latter from the former, as if they come from different places in a dualistic universe?

If one doesn’t see the soul as some kind of supernatural animating spirit that inhabits - yet is separate from - all natural objects (or maybe just living ones), then why consider it supernatural at all? I am beginning to think that the answer to this question depends upon the worldview one wishes to uphold, rather than any possible evidence - although such evidence as we do have for human psychological functioning seems to suggest that we will learn more by seeking our true essence in nature, rather than beyond it…but again, that could just be my “worldview” talking!

 

[Sair]

If I’m not mistaken, panentheism is the philosophy which propones that God is ALL, and that the sense of limits and human incarnation is a procedural error stemming from identification with the limits of awareness, as distinct from Consciousness, due to embodiment. Other ideas that make Christianity come off as mostly symbolic, not the historicized and personified story, stem from that.

Interesting. My understanding - and I fully admit that I have more research still to do - tends to distinguish panentheism from pantheism by the understanding that the former considers god to both encompass and transcend the universe - thus being a “greater” entity, as such, than the universe, and surpassing those aspects of reality that are merely within, or part of, the universe - whilst the latter (the belief that I hold) is that if there is indeed anything that can be called “god”, it is the totality of the universe - as Hume put it, we “suppos[e] it to contain the principle of its order within itself” - and to be appropriately aware that everything we are, as human animals, was ultimately produced by these principles.

Based on my reading, there are not a few scientists who adopt this level of respect and reverence for the natural world. There’s a wonderful quotation from Carl Sagan that speaks to this perspective - “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”

 

[Gaber]

Interesting. My understanding - and I fully admit that I have more research still to do - tends to distinguish panentheism from pantheism by the understanding that the former considers god to both encompass and transcend the universe - thus being a “greater” entity, as such, than the universe, and surpassing those aspects of reality that are merely within, or part of, the universe - whilst the latter (the belief that I hold) is that if there is indeed anything that can be called “god”, it is the totality of the universe - as Hume put it, we “suppos[e] it to contain the principle of its order within itself” - and to be appropriately aware that everything we are, as human animals, was ultimately produced by these principles.

Based on my reading, there are not a few scientists who adopt this level of respect and reverence for the natural world. There’s a wonderful quotation from Carl Sagan that speaks to this perspective - “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”

I like this one, too:

“We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos

 

[inocente]

Ultimately, what is the difference between a considered philosophical approach to the notion of a soul - that which many Catholics espouse - and the scientifically grounded notion of “the soul” being simply that which humans feel as their individual consciousness, as being in touch with our real essence, which is what naturalists see as being in touch with our animal nature, understanding that we are the products of millions of years of natural evolution, and working with that as a basis for not just our “base” instincts, but also our “higher” instincts like morality and aesthetics? Why separate the latter from the former, as if they come from different places in a dualistic universe?

If one doesn’t see the soul as some kind of supernatural animating spirit that inhabits - yet is separate from - all natural objects (or maybe just living ones), then why consider it supernatural at all? I am beginning to think that the answer to this question depends upon the worldview one wishes to uphold, rather than any possible evidence - although such evidence as we do have for human psychological functioning seems to suggest that we will learn more by seeking our true essence in nature, rather than beyond it…but again, that could just be my “worldview” talking!

The concept of soul is interesting because the basic idea occurs in just about all cultures, but the definition varies and is always vague. To me the vagueness indicates that it can’t be objective, while the commonness says it’s not totally subjective either. So somewhere in between, call it “species (or collective) subjective”.

In other words something which is meaningful to most humans due to our makeup, but probably wouldn’t make any sense at all to a species of intelligent aliens.

If this is right then it doesn’t invalidate “soul”, it still has meaning to us, but it’s anthropology not physics, and sets limits on how much we can expect to rationalize about it.

Which imho might be not much at all.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

If I’m not mistaken, panentheism is the philosophy which propones that God is ALL, and that the sense of limits and human incarnation is a procedural error stemming from identification with the limits of awareness, as distinct from Consciousness, due to embodiment. Other ideas that make Christianity come off as mostly symbolic, not the historicized and personified story, stem from that.

Er, this is rather a specific form of panentheism, isn’t it? Or at least everything after the first sentence is… there are Christian forms of pantheism, I think, so they’re probably not like this at least

Carl Sagan?!?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

I’d speculate that animism is an artifact of how our brains work, mirror neurons and so on – we tend to imagine agents in everything, including blaming the hammer after hitting our thumb.

If I remember my comparative religion, culturally animism varies a lot but the common factor is a notion of a disembodied human soul or spirit. Some philosophers have tried to dress it up as a dualism, but it’s easy to show any open-minded person that it’s irrational – there’s no way it can interact with the physical world.

As you say, Catholic thinkers don’t see the soul that way at all, but methinks some individual Catholics don’t understand the difference and substitute naive animism. If I’m right, a simple test would be that if they are not phased by neuroscience then they understand, while if they see neuroscience as attacking their belief then darned tooting it attacks animism.

What about an embodied soul or spirit? Would a disembodied spirit be incapable of interacting with the physical world? Presumably that would depend upon what you think it is…

I have to say, I remember reading an article according to which short term memory was being considered for relocation based on the realisation that another part of the brain went blip the same time the generally conceived of location of short term memory went blop… if neuroscience were as advanced as it’s generally believed to be, it wouldn’t be open to such basic reinterpretation…

 

[inocente]

What about an embodied soul or spirit? Would a disembodied spirit be incapable of interacting with the physical world? Presumably that would depend upon what you think it is…

As an exercise, ponder music, which consists of pressure waves in the air that are picked up by the ears. The ears, or something downstream, would need to transfer that data to a non-physical mind at around 1,400,000 bits per second (CD quality) or more. How is that done? Where’s the evidence of it happening? Why has no transfer mechanism been found?

Or consider deciding to make a cup of coffee. How does a non-physical mind cause the electrochemical signals needed to make your muscles respond?

These are very basic questions which supernaturalists never, ever answer - they always change the subject or else just “forget” to respond to the post.

I have to say, I remember reading an article according to which short term memory was being considered for relocation based on the realisation that another part of the brain went blip the same time the generally conceived of location of short term memory went blop… if neuroscience were as advanced as it’s generally believed to be, it wouldn’t be open to such basic reinterpretation…

Neuroscience is really very young since it depends on high technology - the first fMRI scanners were only available in the '90s so it needs to be given time.

We need to be on guard here, because supernaturalists will endlessly pick holes in scientific explanations to mask the fact that they have zitch explanations of their own. You see this all the time, supernaturalists must go to special classes in deception or something.

 

[Gaber]

…

Carl Sagan?!?

Mystic Banana?!?

 

[tonyrey]

The concept of soul is interesting because the basic idea occurs in just about all cultures, but the definition varies and is always vague. To me the vagueness indicates that it can’t be objective, while the commonness says it’s not totally subjective either. So somewhere in between, call it “species (or collective) subjective”.

In other words something which is meaningful to most humans due to our makeup, but probably wouldn’t make any sense at all to a species of intelligent aliens.

If this is right then it doesn’t invalidate “soul”, it still has meaning to us, but it’s anthropology not physics, and sets limits on how much we can expect to rationalize about it.

Which imho might be not much at all.

Do you reject the existence of the soul? If not why do you believe it exists?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

As an exercise, ponder music, which consists of pressure waves in the air that are picked up by the ears. The ears, or something downstream, would need to transfer that data to a non-physical mind at around 1,400,000 bits per second (CD quality) or more. How is that done? Where’s the evidence of it happening? Why has no transfer mechanism been found?

Or consider deciding to make a cup of coffee. How does a non-physical mind cause the electrochemical signals needed to make your muscles respond?

These are very basic questions which supernaturalists never, ever answer - they always change the subject or else just “forget” to respond to the post.

Neuroscience is really very young since it depends on high technology - the first fMRI scanners were only available in the '90s so it needs to be given time.

We need to be on guard here, because supernaturalists will endlessly pick holes in scientific explanations to mask the fact that they have zitch explanations of their own. You see this all the time, supernaturalists must go to special classes in deception or something.

Yes, those evil supernaturalists, believing in widespread human experiences which science wouldn’t have the ability to evaluate honestly as anything other than side effects of physical phenomena, because ultimately that’s all we can really evaluate scientifically… tautology, anyone?

**I am a supernaturalist, you numpty!!! ** What you’re after is technical information for something which we don’t have the ability to gather technical information for. But why deny supernature just because we can’t evaluate it as easily as physical objects? I think we should guard against such blatant superstition…

For all we know, a transfer mechanism may have been found, or a whole load of them, or perhaps that’s what the entire brain is, but this would never be determined scientifically to be such, because we wouldn’t have the ability to understand the technicalities of what is happening - inevitably, the scientific default will always be to assume an exclusively physical explanation and causality, however improbable or poorly evidenced, because that’s all we have the technical ability to investigate or formulate

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Mystic Banana?!?

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” - The Carlster

Sounds like an extraordinary claim to me - what’s the extraordinary evidence to justify it?

 

[tonyrey]

As an exercise, ponder music, which consists of pressure waves in the air that are picked up by the ears. The ears, or something downstream, would need to transfer that data to a non-physical mind at around 1,400,000 bits per second (CD quality) or more. How is that done? Where’s the evidence of it happening? Why has no transfer mechanism been found?

Or consider deciding to make a cup of coffee. How does a non-physical mind cause the electrochemical signals needed to make your muscles respond?

These are very basic questions which supernaturalists never, ever answer - they always change the subject or else just “forget” to respond to the post.

Neuroscience is really very young since it depends on high technology - the first fMRI scanners were only available in the '90s so it needs to be given time.

We need to be on guard here, because supernaturalists will endlessly pick holes in scientific explanations to mask the fact that they have zitch explanations of their own. You see this all the time, supernaturalists must go to special classes in deception or something.

In that case you don’t believe in the supernatural gifts of faith, hope and love…

 

[atheistgirl]

You see this all the time, supernaturalists must go to special classes in deception or something.

Naughty, but very funny

Sarah x

 

[Sair]

In that case you don’t believe in the supernatural gifts of faith, hope and love…

I think you just demonstrated Inocente’s point quite nicely…

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Anything can explain reality. A rock can explain reality. A humiliating, or if you prefer an exhilarating, experience can explain reality.

It just depends on how thorough a job you want done and what you want explained.

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, those evil supernaturalists, believing in widespread human experiences which science wouldn’t have the ability to evaluate honestly as anything other than side effects of physical phenomena, because ultimately that’s all we can really evaluate scientifically… tautology, anyone?

**I am a supernaturalist, you numpty!!! ** What you’re after is technical information for something which we don’t have the ability to gather technical information for. But why deny supernature just because we can’t evaluate it as easily as physical objects? I think we should guard against such blatant superstition…

I prefer to call materialism substititious because it reduces persons to subatomic particles and is a symptom of subnormal intelligence!