Precisely what is wrong with today's dogmatic materialism

[inocente]

Inocente, my bad, I should have specifically said veredical Nde’s which are Nde’s in which a patient has seen or heard things that are either in his field of hearing and vision that he could hear or see I’m his present condition or hearing things that are not within his field or vision or hearing.

A great example of this is the nde of Pamela Reynolds .

youtu.be/6R654H_qOvA

Just because people didn’t experience these things as much in the past doesn’t mean they aren’t real. Modern medicines ability to keep the body and brain alive or fresh has increased dramatically during the last 100 and this is most likely why we have more great examples to work with.

You cannot just call veredical Nde’s anecdotal because of the independent corroboration of the evidence by non biased witnesses.

The evidence for veredical Nde’s has gotten nothing but strong through the years

The video is what’s meant by anecdotal evidence.

I’m sure people are not lying, but they certainly aren’t out of their bodies, it’s just too unbelievable.

1. How can the patient see without eyes? Light is coming at their phantasm from all directions in all frequencies. Light is physical, how can they can focus on photons from one direction at a time and sense them without any physicality? Anyhow, how can their phantasm have a position in physical space when it isn’t physical?
2. How come they only see the exact same very narrow range of frequencies as the human eye (390 to 700 nm) and not also infrared and radio, etc.?
3. How can they hear without ears? Sound is a rapid pressure oscillation, how can they possibly detect moving air molecules without any physicality?
4. How can they possibly make sense of light and sound without all the brain circuitry which we know is essential to perception?

Those are just for starters.

As a thorough remedy for your facile science credulity

Sorry if my questions above are facile, credulous and dogmatic.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Sorry if my questions above are facile, credulous and dogmatic.

You know yourself too well that you took my comment out of context. So why that remark? I hadn’t talked about Nde’s at all – they only mildly interest me.

 

[inocente]

You know yourself too well that you took my comment out of context. So why that remark? I hadn’t talked about Nde’s at all – they only mildly interest me.

It was a good opportunity to point out that science teaches us to be skeptical and to keep asking questions, the very opposite of your accusation of facile credulity.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

inocente
**
It was a good opportunity to point out that science teaches us to be skeptical and to keep asking questions, the very opposite of your accusation of facile credulity. **

Yes, science teaches us to be skeptical about everything but scientism, which is dogmatic

 

[Linux]

Have you ever heard that the whole is (usually) more than a simple sum of the parts? Is a house simply a pile of bricks, some iron-work, some wooden parts and a little glass here and there? Or is there a special arrangement of these parts, which will render the result more than just a “pile of bricks”?

A house, as it exists outside of the “concept” of a house, is never more than just a pile of bricks; it is not objectively a house (in fact bricks themselves do not exist out side the concept of a brick. Only the substance we call a brick exists. But to keep things simple we will pretend that bricks do exist objectively). We use the pile of bricks, insofar as its particular arrangement is concerned, as a house. A “house” is purely a concept in the mind indicating the purpose for which we want to use a particular arrangement of bricks. If you say that a house can and does truly exist independently of the human mind (objectively) as an intrinsic expression of the bricks particular arrangement, then you would have to admit that purpose is objective and intrinsic to various arrangements of matter, and that therefore you live in a teleological universe.

 

[inocente]

A house, as it exists outside of the “concept” of a house, is never more than just a pile of bricks; it is not objectively a house (in fact bricks themselves do not exist out side the concept of a brick. Only the substance we call a brick exists. But to keep things simple we will pretend that bricks do exist objectively). We use the pile of bricks, insofar as its particular arrangement is concerned, as a house. A “house” is purely a concept in the mind indicating the purpose for which we want to use a particular arrangement of bricks. If you say that a house can and does truly exist independently of the human mind (objectively) as an intrinsic expression of the bricks particular arrangement, then you would have to admit that purpose is objective and intrinsic to various arrangements of matter, and that therefore you live in a teleological universe.

We don’t need to worry about purpose.

A house is more than a pile of bricks in the sense that it can provide shelter for sheep. Its wall might also make a nice target for the shepherd’s son to bounce a ball off. The builder had neither of these or hundreds of other possible purposes in mind when building the house, so purpose is neither here nor there.

What we can say with certainty is that a house is greater than the sum of its parts, and in the same way human beings are obviously more than “walking bags of chemicals”.

The term for this, not just in science but also in philosophy and religion, is emergence.

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts. - Anderson (pdf)

 

[Linux]

We don’t need to worry about purpose.

I fail to understand this response. So i will just skip it.

A house is more than a pile of bricks in the sense that it can provide shelter for sheep.

Ontologically speaking, that does not make it more than a pile of bricks. Its simply a coincidence that this pile of bricks given its arrangement can be used to shelter sheep. It does not follow that the pile of bricks is both objectively and essentially a pile of bricks plus a sheep shelter. It can be used as a sheep shelter because we want to use it for that purpose, but that is not what it is essentially and objectively. It is essentially just a pile of bricks with a particular arrangement.

Its wall might also make a nice target for the shepherd’s son to bounce a ball off. The builder had neither of these or hundreds of other possible purposes in mind when building the house, so purpose is neither here nor there.

I fail to understand where you are going with this, nothing here suggests to me that the pile of bricks is objectively and essentially a “house”. You are confusing the concept of a house with the objective reality of the bricks on the basis that those bricks can be used for the purpose of a home. But houses do not exist objectively and essentially. If they did, then an atheist would have no choice but to admit that they live in a universe full of objective purpose since houses exist for the purpose of providing a home for people.

What we can say with certainty is that a house is greater than the sum of its parts

The concept of a house is certainly greater than the objective reality of the bricks, but there is no such thing as a physical object that has the “nature” of a house.

That much is certain to me.

 

[Tyrion]

We don’t need to worry about purpose.

Exactly. Let’s underscore this by pointing out that the house (as a specific structure) would still be significantly different from a pile of bricks, even if by some unfortunate catastrophe all the living beings would perish from the Earth, and with them all the “purposes” would disappear as well.

 

[Linux]

Exactly. Let’s underscore this by pointing out that the house (as a specific structure) would still be significantly different from just a pile of bricks, even if by some unfortunate catastrophe all the living beings would perish from the Earth, and with them all the “purposes” would disappear as well.

Bricks placed in a specific arrangement does not make it essentially more than bricks. Ontologically speaking It is still just a pile of bricks arranged in a specific way, and nothing more than that. Houses do not exist objectively. A house is a concept relating to the purpose for which one wants to use a specific arrangement of bricks.

 

[tonyrey]

It is dogmatic and it is materialistic! Can materialism justify itself?

 

[Aloysium]

The video is what’s meant by anecdotal evidence.

I’m sure people are not lying, but they certainly aren’t out of their bodies, it’s just too unbelievable.

1. How can the patient see without eyes? Light is coming at their phantasm from all directions in all frequencies. Light is physical, how can they can focus on photons from one direction at a time and sense them without any physicality? Anyhow, how can their phantasm have a position in physical space when it isn’t physical?
2. How come they only see the exact same very narrow range of frequencies as the human eye (390 to 700 nm) and not also infrared and radio, etc.?
3. How can they hear without ears? Sound is a rapid pressure oscillation, how can they possibly detect moving air molecules without any physicality?
4. How can they possibly make sense of light and sound without all the brain circuitry which we know is essential to perception?

Those are just for starters.

Sorry if my questions above are facile, credulous and dogmatic.

Not proposing an answer and not having had any such experience myself, I would like to point out that these are not uncommon experiences that people describe but cannot explain. They usually do not report colour but rather impressions of their and/or other bodies and of things that were said.
It is interesting how things are discounted when they cannot be explained.

Consider how you know that you are not dreaming the monitor in front of you. It exists and your senses connect you to it. There is no doubt that it exists. You can focus on the subjective experience and thereby make it less real, disconnecting from it and attending to your mental processes such as colour, shape and thought.
There is so much more to the structure of experience than is described by the rather rudimentary and generally reductionistic explanations offered by today’s science.

 

[tonyrey]

Not proposing an answer and not having had any such experience myself, I would like to point out that these are not uncommon experiences that people describe but cannot explain. They usually do not report colour but rather impressions of their and/or other bodies and of things that were said.
It is interesting how things are discounted when they cannot be explained.

Consider how you know that you are not dreaming the monitor in front of you. It exists and your senses connect you to it. There is no doubt that it exists. You can focus on the subjective experience and thereby make it less real, disconnecting from it and attending to your mental processes such as colour, shape and thought.
There is so much more to the structure of experience than is described by the rather rudimentary and generally reductionistic explanations offered by today’s science.

Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings, decisions, intuitions and perceptions from which we **infer **the existence of everything else.

 

[inocente]

I fail to understand this response. So i will just skip it.

When I said we don’t need to worry about purpose, I meant we don’t need to worry about purpose for the reason which followed.

Ontologically speaking, that does not make it more than a pile of bricks. Its simply a coincidence that this pile of bricks given its arrangement can be used to shelter sheep. It does not follow that the pile of bricks is both objectively and essentially a pile of bricks plus a sheep shelter. It can be used as a sheep shelter because we want to use it for that purpose, but that is not what it is essentially and objectively. It is essentially just a pile of bricks with a particular arrangement.

Why is it essentially a pile of bricks and not essentially the constituents of the bricks, or essentially the constituents of the constituents?

In any event that’s just how we see it, humans are very good at seeing the world as a set of things. But the cognition is rough and ready - touch a brick and some of its molecules stick to your hand and some of your skin stays behind on the brick, but you still perceive them as distinct.

I fail to understand where you are going with this, nothing here suggests to me that the pile of bricks is objectively and essentially a "house". You are confusing the concept of a house with the objective reality of the bricks on the basis that those bricks can be used for the purpose of a home. But houses do not exist objectively and essentially. If they did, then an atheist would have no choice but to admit that they live in a universe full of objective purpose since houses exist for the purpose of providing a home for people.

Why do you think a brick exists objectively and a house doesn’t?

Subjective means based on personal beliefs or feelings rather than facts, for instance a belief in essence of brick is subjective.

Objective means based on real facts and not personal beliefs or feelings, so a house is just as objective as a brick.

Objective doesn’t mean facts have purposes, assigning purpose is subjective (hence “we don’t need to worry about purpose”).

The concept of a house is certainly greater than the objective reality of the bricks, but there is no such thing as a physical object that has the “nature” of a house.

Isn’t saying that a concept is greater than what is objectively real rather like saying crimson is greater than the A above middle C?

You ignored the point of my post, which was Aristotle’s "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” but I’m sure he appreciates your insights.

 

[inocente]

Consider how you know that you are not dreaming the monitor in front of you. It exists and your senses connect you to it. There is no doubt that it exists. You can focus on the subjective experience and thereby make it less real, disconnecting from it and attending to your mental processes such as colour, shape and thought.
There is so much more to the structure of experience than is described by the rather rudimentary and generally reductionistic explanations offered by today’s science.

Yes we can imagine all kinds of things.

A lot of these experiences are reported during surgery, and anesthetics such as ketamine and nitrous oxide are known to have psychedelic effects, i.e. they are hallucinogenic.

Hallucinations can be induced in several ways including drugs, sensory deprivation, trance and meditation. They can be very vivid, but unless every voice hallucination in paranoid schizophrenia is actually a real voice, and everyone tripping on pot or LSD actually leaves their body, they are just hallucinations.

 

[Aloysium]

Yes we can imagine all kinds of things.

A lot of these experiences are reported during surgery, and anesthetics such as ketamine and nitrous oxide are known to have psychedelic effects, i.e. they are hallucinogenic.

Hallucinations can be induced in several ways including drugs, sensory deprivation, trance and meditation. They can be very vivid, but unless every voice hallucination in paranoid schizophrenia is actually a real voice, and everyone tripping on pot or LSD actually leaves their body, they are just hallucinations.

We can and do imagine a lot of things, including the universe itself; I am imagining you having written the post. Hubble images, as another example are just that, images, although all these, no one would doubt (well, maybe some would), relate to things that exist.

In your discussion of hallucinations, you are grouping diverse mental phenomena into that same category; doing so hinders the development of an understanding as to the nature of those experiences and what they are related to.

This brings up the issue, not so much with science but in general, that it is easier, or less unsettling, to deny rather than to put something on a back burner when one cannot understand it.

 

[inocente]

This brings up the issue, not so much with science but in general, that it is easier, or less unsettling, to deny rather than to put something on a back burner when one cannot understand it.

I guess that argument could be used to try to bully folk into believing absolute anything, like a goldfish in the house brings bad luck, a dog howling means death is near, don’t go out on Friday the thirteenth, ESP, UFOs, alien abductions, mind reading, wizards, zombies, leprechauns, Bigfoot, the curse of the werewolf, Zeus, the Centaurs, …

 

[Linux]

Why is it essentially a pile of bricks and not essentially the constituents of the bricks, or essentially the constituents of the constituents?

Bricks do not exist objectively either.

In any event that’s just how we see it, humans are very good at seeing the world as a set of things. But the cognition is rough and ready - touch a brick and some of its molecules stick to your hand and some of your skin stays behind on the brick, but you still perceive them as distinct.

Irrelevant. Houses do not exist objectively and neither do bricks, and I have explained why.

Why do you think a brick exists objectively and a house doesn’t?

I have explained why. And I never said that bricks exist objectively. I evidently said that bricks do not exist objectively but for the sake of argument pretended that they did in order to make my point. You conveniently ignored what I said.

Subjective means based on personal beliefs or feelings rather than facts, for instance a belief in essence of brick is subjective.

That is not the only context in which the word subjective applies, and the idea that essences are subjective is your personal opinion which you conveniently haven’t backed up. Its irrelevant anyway since we can both agree that things have distinct natures.

The idea of a house has no objective reality in the sense that there is no nature outside of our own subjective ideas that is a house. The concept of a house is purely related to the purpose for which we want to use an object, and has nothing to do with the nature of the object itself accept in respect of its convenient arrangement. Some objects can be used for houses, but they are not by nature houses; objectively speaking.

a house is just as objective as a brick.

False. Neither houses or bricks are objective natures.

Objective doesn’t mean facts have purposes, assigning purpose is subjective (hence “we don’t need to worry about purpose”).

Straw-man. I never said that it does. By saying that houses exist objectively, as a real nature, it is you that is assigning purpose to objects whether you realise it or not. Since if a houses are real “natures”, then it follows that they exist for the objective purpose of housing people regardless of whether human-beings exist or not. The concept of a “house” insofar as its meaning is concerned is intrinsically related to the purpose of housing people; giving them a home. Its a goal directed concept.

Isn’t saying that a concept is greater than what is objectively real rather like saying crimson is greater than the A above middle C?

No

You ignored the point of my post, which was Aristotle’s "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” but I’m sure he appreciates your insights.

That’s funny, since you seem to have ignored everything I have said as-well.

 

[Aloysium]

I guess that argument could be used to try to bully folk into believing absolute anything, like a goldfish in the house brings bad luck, a dog howling means death is near, don’t go out on Friday the thirteenth, ESP, UFOs, alien abductions, mind reading, wizards, zombies, leprechauns, Bigfoot, the curse of the werewolf, Zeus, the Centaurs, …

You do illustrate a situation how denial can be a useful response; it is better to be functioning and wrong than to be in a state of total confusion.