Teleology important for science

[inocente]

Perhaps it’s not surprising he is a programmer. It’s obviously an occupational hazard. Considering that we would be programmed by mindless molecules it would seem all our conclusions would be worthless… (including the “isomorphism” hypothesis

As someone who works in information technology, and has travelled on business all around the world, I’d like to make it clear to non-Christians that I’ve met many Christians in the industry, but never one person, Christian or not, so superficial as to stereotype an entire profession.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Indeed not. But I must insist that we keep this relatively simple. We aren’t discussing whether my dog could write a critique of post modernism. Just whether they have this mysterious non-material mind. Which doesn’t exist anywhere and can’t be detected.

Who says it needs “detection?”

Personal, first-hand experience, counts more than “detection,” as far as I am concerned. Lack of detection says more about the state of detection technology or science than it does about reality or about what does or does not exist.

Again, turning your method and its shortcomings into your metaphysics. Ugh.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Also, a bit mystified why you think your personal logic defeats God’s omnipotence.

You are not, apparently, as mystified as I am…

Why do you suppose you can invoke God’s omnipotence whenever you need to prop up YOUR “personal logic?”

It is “mystery!” It is God’s omnipotence!

You still haven’t addressed my question, but never mind, it is pretty clear you have no answer.

 

[Bradski]

Who says it needs “detection?”

Personal, first-hand experience, counts more than “detection,” as far as I am concerned.

So all we have is your personal experience as to whether this ephemeral non-physical and undetectable ‘mind’ exists.

Is that it?

 

[Peter_Plato]

But those are speculations, it’s early days. Point is, when it comes to this kind of thing, the track record of armchair philosophers is they’re not nearly imaginative enough. The very notion that thoughts are reducible to neurons is obviously dead wrong, since thoughts are transitory, occurring only as brief patterns of activity, the instantaneous form of thousands on neurons firing. Did any armchair philosopher realize that meaning might not be stored but instead be in transitory activity? O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful (which I only know from Steve Martin in L.A. Story quoting the Bard ).

So, let’s see…

Armchair philosophers are not “nearly imaginative enough” and “dead wrong” because they have a penchant to wrongly reduce thought to neurons, but proposing that thoughts are “transitory” and “brief patterns of activity” and “the instantaneous form of thousands of neurons firing” is a sheer act of imaginative and speculative genius that will cause armchair philosophers to be thrown off their high horses in collective awe and wonder.

Call me amused.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So all we have is your personal experience as to whether this ephemeral non-physical and undetectable ‘mind’ exists.

Is that it?

Yup, apparently I am unique among the species since you disavow having any personal experience whatsoever.

My question would be, then: How can you know for certain you don’t have this “ephemeral non-physical and undetectable ‘mind’” unless you knew from personal experience what it was that you were disclaiming the experience of having?

I mean, it isn’t as if I am claiming personal experience of hgfybvdtdsr that you would be left wondering what I am talking about precisely because you don’t have any personal experience of hgfybvdtdsr - at least, that you know of.

You understand what is being talked about by ephemeral non-physical and undetectable ‘mind’ because you have personal experience of it, even though you are trying to back away from admitting it.

 

[o_mlly]

Adler has been called many things but not to my knowledge an “armchair philosopher.”

In his book “Intellect: Mind Over Matter” and this interview clip, Adler explains how we share with animals material based imaginations, memories and sense perceptions only in their particulars but only the human mind thinks universal concepts which cannot be based solely on matter.

I don’t know if Adler owned a dog.
youtube.com/watch?v=wW-PeayslSA

 

[inocente]

You are not, apparently, as mystified as I am…

Why do you suppose you can invoke God’s omnipotence whenever you need to prop up YOUR “personal logic?”

It is “mystery!” It is God’s omnipotence!

You still haven’t addressed my question, but never mind, it is pretty clear you have no answer.

I tried to answer your questions, not sure which one you think is unanswered, you didn’t say. Still, you’ve answered all of mine with your lack of charity.

So, let’s see…

Armchair philosophers are not “nearly imaginative enough” and “dead wrong” because they have a penchant to wrongly reduce thought to neurons, but proposing that thoughts are “transitory” and “brief patterns of activity” and “the instantaneous form of thousands of neurons firing” is a sheer act of imaginative and speculative genius that will cause armchair philosophers to be thrown off their high horses in collective awe and wonder.

Call me amused.

Did you know that sarcasm is detected by the parahippocampal gyrus cortical region of the brain?

That’s what I mean by you answering all my questions. You could at least make debunking a bit of a challenge, it’s no fun at all when you make it this easy.

smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-sarcasm-yeah-right-25038/?no-ist

 

[Peter_Plato]

I tried to answer your questions, not sure which one you think is unanswered, you didn’t say. Still, you’ve answered all of mine with your lack of charity.

Did you know that sarcasm is detected by the parahippocampal gyrus cortical region of the brain?

That’s what I mean by you answering all my questions. You could at least make debunking a bit of a challenge, it’s no fun at all when you make it this easy.

smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-sarcasm-yeah-right-25038/?no-ist

In which region of the brain does debunking get confused with deflecting? Or where in the brain do your attempts at sarcasm get confused with my honest, but maligned, questions seeking answers that you can’t provide?

I suppose you will blame my “lack of charity” for the reaction of Wesrock:

Wow, not-so-veiled insult.

In what part of the cortical region is “oblivious to reality” to be located?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Then please be specific. Exactly which aspects of your mind do you claim don’t arise from physical processes alone?

Now this question was actually an interesting one, philosophically speaking.

One aspect that definitely cannot be attributed to physical processes alone is the experience – which no conscious human can doubt or dismiss – of consciousness as the loci of experience, of being the subject of our own experiences.

If physical processes alone are responsible for that, then why do I not experience being the loci of experience wherever those same physical processes occur? In other words, in every human brain where they occur?

It does no good – and begs the question actually – to insist that I am having the experience of being aware in my body because my particular physical processes are occurring in my body. It begs the question because that “answer” merely assumes and doesn’t explain why I am in this particular body, and the result of these particular physical processes, in the first place. It does nothing to explain the reason why I am, but tries to make the whole question just disappear in a cloud of polysyllabic technical jargon – a kind of pseudo-scientific incantation to make the question just go away.

What that logic leaves completely unanswered is why do the physical processes in my body produce the experience of being me when those relevantly same physical processes in another body do not? In other words, why am I me, in this particular body, and not the same me in some other body or in all others?

Alleging that physical processes alone account for self-awareness does not actually answer how they do, nor even begin to address the question.

The question boils down – much like getting an ought from an is – to explaining how it is possible to get a subject (personal identity) out of objects (molecules, chemicals, proteins) or different subjects/persons from relevantly similar objects.

 

[Wesrock]

Thoughts are obviously about things (skipping such things as concepts for a moment). You see a cat, someone says cat and you associate what you see with the word. When you see the cat, there is physical activity in the brain that allows you to experience it. If it’s difficult to grasp how all that info can be interpreted, then think of a basic organism that simply reacts to light. It can ‘see’ the difference between light and dark. It has a mental image of it (even some completely blind people can detect light without ‘seeing’ it).

There is a difference between cause and effect relationships and actually being about something. This is not about the imagination, or mental images, or perception. When you see a cat, or the word cat, or hear the word cat, and a sequence of neural activity occurs in your brain, is the meaning of the concept of cat objectively in those neurons and in that pattern sequence? If I were to rip that particular neuron sequence out of your brain, or if I were to rip out your entire brain and freeze it at the moment of firing of that neuron sequence, does that material actually quantify the meaning “cat,” in itself. Is the concept “cat” in the material? Is there a cat in your brain? I would say it’s in your mind, but is it in the material? Substitute “cat” with chiliagon, triangularity, love. Is the material quantifiably carrying those meanings?

Consider language. The written word “cat”, the paper and ink that goes into making that word when handwritten, carries no such meaning in itself. That same pattern could be a pointer to any number of concepts, depending upon the language. It’s meaning is derived by an external mind reading it. The meaning is not quantifiably existing as an imbued part of the paper and ink. Are you saying the neuron sequence that fires does have such meaning intrinsic to it?

 

[Wesrock]

As a materialist, if you can’t tell me there’s a cat in the material of your brain, you can’t tell me that there’s a cat in your mind. That’s the point of this. If there isn’t a triangle in your brain, there isn’t a triangle in your mind. This isn’t necessarily to say human beings wouldn’t function, only that there is no actual mind. To speak of reason, intelligence, will, the self etc . . . is absurd, as these are non-existent. We are reduced to functioning automatons. There are no mental states, or logical arguments, or ideas. Those all become folk wisdom and nothing more (though how there can be such a thing as folk wisdom without a mind, I don’t know!) The concept of human thinking requires a radical redefinition and is merely just triggered responses and carries no actual information content besides on and off. This is what we mean when we say materialism eliminates the mind. It inevitably leads to a school of philosophy called eliminative materialism. This results in nothing we would traditionally call a mind or self or consciousness (and I don’t just mean stream of thought by these things). Such things become merely illusions, and our experience of such are lies or artifacts.

 

[inocente]

In which region of the brain does debunking get confused with deflecting? Or where in the brain do your attempts at sarcasm get confused with my honest, but maligned, questions seeking answers that you can’t provide?

Have a look at the literature, some people find it harder than others to process sarcasm. It’s not their fault, any more than being color blind. If I was one of those unfortunate people, being sarcastic about my blindness to sarcasm would be making fun of my special needs.

However, when you write a post dripping with sarcasm, and end it with “Call me amused. ”, using the sticky which is titled “Roll Eyes (Sarcastic) ”, then clearly you knew exactly what you were saying, and clearly it wasn’t exactly about “honest, but maligned, questions” and clearly I was not blind to that.

btw you keep forgetting to tell me your question(s).

I suppose you will blame my “lack of charity” for the reaction of Wesrock:

If I had anything to say about the reactions of another poster, I’d say it to him or her, why in heaven’s name would I blame it on you???

In what part of the cortical region is “oblivious to reality” to be located?

I’m going to say that’s more sarcasm.

Yes, I’m pretty certain that’s more sarcasm.

PS Saw your next post but ran out of time today.

 

[Wesrock]

The very notion that thoughts are reducible to neurons is obviously dead wrong, since thoughts are transitory, occurring only as brief patterns of activity, the instantaneous form of thousands on neurons firing.

Is transitory supposed to be an issue? I never realized it was, and certainly philosophers had accounted for such in their philosophies of the mind before modern neuroscience.

Regardless, the claim of materialism is that everything is explained materially. So, in that instantaneous flash of millions of firing neurons (or perhaps over a series of flashes over time), do those thousands and millions of networking neurons take on any actual meaning in themselves, even for the briefest instant? When I think chiliagon, does a chiliagon suddenly manifest itself in my brain? Is the concept of chiliagon manifested within that material for even the briefest moment such that the concept exists there, within it. The meaning not being derived from it or interpreted from it, such as a sign post directing you towards a city ,but actually present there? Or what if we take the entire brain state over a period of time? Is a chiliagon hiding somewhere in there?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

There is a difference between cause and effect relationships and actually being about something. This is not about the imagination, or mental images, or perception. When you see a cat, or the word cat, or hear the word cat, and a sequence of neural activity occurs in your brain, is the meaning of the concept of cat objectively in those neurons and in that pattern sequence? If I were to rip that particular neuron sequence out of your brain, or if I were to rip out your entire brain and freeze it at the moment of firing of that neuron sequence, does that material actually quantify the meaning “cat,” in itself. Is the concept “cat” in the material? Is there a cat in your brain? I would say it’s in your mind, but is it in the material? Substitute “cat” with chiliagon, triangularity, love. Is the material quantifiably carrying those meanings?

Consider language. The written word “cat”, the paper and ink that goes into making that word when handwritten, carries no such meaning in itself. That same pattern could be a pointer to any number of concepts, depending upon the language. It’s meaning is derived by an external mind reading it. The meaning is not quantifiably existing as an imbued part of the paper and ink. Are you saying the neuron sequence that fires does have such meaning intrinsic to it?

Bravo!

 

[tonyrey]

inocente:
Perhaps it’s not surprising he is a programmer. It’s obviously an occupational hazard. Considering that we would be programmed by mindless molecules it would seem all our conclusions would be worthless…(including the “isomorphism” hypothesis As someone who works in information technology, and has travelled on business all around the world, I’d like to make it clear to non-Christians that I’ve met many Christians in the industry, but never one person, Christian or not, so superficial as to stereotype an entire profession.
An exquisite non sequitur.

An occupational **hazard **does not entail that “an entire profession” agrees with this particular programmer.

BTW Do you subscribe to the hypothesis that truth is an isomorphism of mindless molecules? If not why not?

 

[tonyrey]

The adherents of logical positivism abandoned their view when they realised the verifiability principle cannot be detected by the senses. It took courage to admit they were wrong but materialism is clearly absurd, incoherent and self-destructive. That is why the vast majority of human beings have always distinguished the mind from the body. Even primitive man intuitively realised there is more to reality than meets the eye and believed in supernatural power…

 

[tonyrey]

Teleology is not only important for science, it is its very foundation! Any form of investigation presupposes a purposeful search for explanations, not only physical causes but reasons for events in the past, present and future. That is where materialism is defective in its retrospective approach to reality. It is a one-way street which turns out to be a cul de sac - unless of course it ends up with an infinite regress which is equally vacuous. But its fatal flaw is its exaltation of analysis at the expense of synthesis, resulting in an atomistic view of reality which deprives existence of all value, purpose and meaning. Persons are reduced to things and human rights are as nonsensical as everything else -except of course for the hypothesis that nothing makes sense…

 

[tonyrey]

Correction:

As someone who works in information technology, and has travelled on business all around the world, I’d like to make it clear to non-Christians that I’ve met many Christians in the industry, but never one person, Christian or not, so superficial as to stereotype an entire profession.

An exquisite non sequitur.

An occupational hazard does not entail that “an entire profession” agrees with this particular programmer.

BTW Do you subscribe to the hypothesis that truth is an isomorphism of mindless molecules? If not why not?

 

[Bradski]

What that logic leaves completely unanswered is why do the physical processes in my body produce the experience of being me when those relevantly same physical processes in another body do not? In other words, why am I me, in this particular body, and not the same me in some other body or in all others?

Your memories make you ‘you’. If you had my memories, you’d be me. Quite simple really.

Even primitive man intuitively realised there is more to reality than meets the eye and believed in supernatural power…

That’s a new one on me. Primitive man believed in goblins and trolls and water sprites and thought that thunder was a god being angry and if we sacrifice a goat it’ll help the harvest – and that just goes to show ‘there’s more to reality than meets the eye’. There’s not a lot I can say about the level of logic in that.