Ok.
I was worried that someone so attached to the physical evidence was suddenly dropping their principle in making definite statements about immaterial things.
But you haven’t.
Instead you are simply redefining the words to suit.
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I was worried that someone so attached to the physical evidence was suddenly dropping their principle in making definite statements about immaterial things.
But you haven’t.
Instead you are simply redefining the words to suit.
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HarryStotle
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Justified beliefs about the observable, physical world are one thing, and your model regarding that is adequate, I suppose.HarryStotle:
Okay you seem to have missed a huge part of my position that I thought was fairly presented before. Guess you missed it or are just being argumentative for the sake to be argumentative. I am not talking about knowing all of reality to have justified belief, only that we can only have justified believe/conclusions about reality that we have actually interacted with. What reality demonstrates to be the case is the reality that we have actually interacted with. I don’t know how you missed that. …
The problem is that our existence isn’t merely concerned with understanding the observable world but, rather, with our agency in it.
We find ourselves “cast into” this world and no matter what we know or can know about the physical world, that knowledge does not rise to the level of providing warrant or justification for our moral choices and actions.
What I do know about the world does not provide sufficient grounds for how am I to act in this world as a moral agent.
Now you might argue that knowing about the world implies that as an agent I must merely survive in the world the best I can as a matter of fact.
Fine, but survival does not imply morality by any stretch. Genghis Khan “survived” and even thrived by massacring large swaths of largely civilian populations. Ditto with Attila the Hun.
So why not propose fearless aggression and murder as the proper moral order? It is what we witness in nature as embedded in the food chain regarding apex predators. So why not among humans?
You want to propose atheistic humanism as the moral foundation for human life. However, if mere survival is the underlying warrant for moral life, I fail to see how we get from survival to humanism.
You have argued that social cooperation works to assure survival, but cooperation to build military strength and defeat or kill rivals also works, at least until a stronger foe is encountered.
Peaceful cooperation only works until your society encounters a conquering empire that wipes you out.
So, proposing humanism in terms of being underwritten by some form of morality which is not merely utilitarian or survival focused requires a view of what it means to be human that is not merely natural, but something else. That something else is moral agency, and moral agency doesn’t derive from the natural, material order.
There is no ‘ought’ that can be milked out of what ‘is’, unless the ‘is’ assumes the natural order is not all there is; that good and virtuous human choices aim at something more than mere survival but at some ideal in terms of what makes a human being a human being. That ideal does not come from observing the natural, material world, but from a transcendent view of what it means to be human, that includes value, truth, beauty and goodness.
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HarryStotle
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The Thanos of the gaps, then?
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HarryStotle
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It isn’t that I don’t like unanswered questions. It is that answers must be sufficient to the challenge posed by the question. Or, at least attempt to answer the question instead of just dismiss it outright as “smuggled”. It is fine to admit you have no answer to a question, but it is not fine just to pretend it doesn’t exist, or that it is “smuggled.”
Another way to see this is that “How did the universe start?” does not adequately deal with the existence of minds, consciousness, intelligence, concepts, abstractions, intentions, truth, morality, values, goods, purposes, and beauty, but simply tries to dismiss all of these as chimeras. Limiting consideration to How? doesn’t even try to explain any of these away so much as to merely ignore them hoping they’ll evaporate away if they are appropriately neglected or scorned. These are “emerging” or surreal phenomena that fade in and out – they come and go not even as substantial as the dew in the morning, or the sun rising and setting, just sweet-nothings that needn’t preoccupy us.
Don’t want to consider a proposition, dismiss it as “smuggled” or inconsequential.
But, then, let’s turn around and build a secular humanist morality just 'cuz.
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HarryStotle
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It isn’t a matter of who’s got the bigger fantasy. It is a matter of whose fantasy explains more.HarryStotle:
My fantasy about reality actually comes true though. Medicine works, rockets work. The religious’ claim about reality with deities, demigods, monsters, demons, etc. has yet to be demonstrated in reality ever since the first day these ideas were thought of. That’s a few 100 thousand years at least. Still waiting on one piece of evidence to vindicate these claims still it seems. Who’s got the bigger fantasy?
Your fantasy is limited to the physical world, and therefore it explains stuff in the material world - medicine, rockets, and the like.
Note, my fantasy doesn’t deny the physical world so I don’t deny rockets, medicine, technology, etc.
Your attributing to my fantasy only “…deities, demigods, monsters, demons, …” as if that is all my fantasy claims is disingenuous.
My claim is that reality is deeper than the physical, observable world we encounter precisely because that world doesn’t and can’t explain its own existence. It doesn’t even explain its own How? adequately. Yet, you want to ignore that and pretend it might someday.
There are sufficient indicators in the world: cosmic fine tuning, a finite beginning to the universe, consciousness, purpose, intelligibility, morality, etc., that point at something more than mere materialism all the way down.
So to portray the two views adequately – more appropriately than slapping a ‘fantasy’ label on one of them – the question redounds to what, ultimately speaking, grounds reality?
Is it more reasonable to conclude…
- materialism all the way down, or
- there is something more to it that can explain all of the facts about reality, including those being brought up by the WHY? question, including the existence of minds, consciousness, intelligence, concepts, abstractions, intentions, truth, morality, values, goods, purposes, beauty, etc.
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Damian
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There’s other forms of non-physical evidence because there is non-physical aspects of reality, like magnetic fields, gamma particles, ionization energy, etc. But, again, I believe what you are talking about for “physical evidence” is logical arguments for an idea about reality that we can not interact with at all or detect in reality in any way. If this is what you are talking about, which I assume it is, then sorry but that is not a way you come to having justified beliefs that are in direct reference to our reality.
I’ll offer my Einstein example again: Einstein mathematically, logically concluded, that gravity waves should exist. However, since we had no way of detecting them in reality at all, we had no way of actually determining their existence is there. So we were not justified in concluding that they are actually there until we were able to detect them in 2015. That is when we are justified to update our internal model of reality to match what reality has actually demonstrated to be there. The mathematical model told us where to look and where to spend funds on development for tools and instruments to be able to run the experiment to find them, but we were not justified to believe they were actually there until we actually found them in reality. Again, what reality demonstrates to be there is what is justified to believe about reality, not our logical models because how many times was our logical models found to be broken once we tested them against reality. All the time. That’s why drug trials fail all the time for example.
I’m explaining my position, not moving the bar. If you have a better word to use for what I am talking about then I’ll use that word. If we’re talking about two different concepts then I’ll need you to clarify that. I care about communicating the ideas and concepts about what I am talking about, not playing word games like what HarryStotle was attempting when they tried to give more meaning to the phrase “naming all the animals”.
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Damian
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Yes this is the problem. My “fantasy” is actually reflected in what reality demonstrates and then where reality doesn’t demonstrate more, my “fantasy” explanation forces me to say “I don’t know” because it’s more honest to actually state that.
Your “fantasy” can explain everything since its a being that can literally do anything and can choose when and where it decides to do something. So yes it can be a solution for anything, but so can the “fantasy” of Thanos. However, my “fantasy” actually reflects reality, yours doesn’t.
That’s the track record of my “fantasy” process I agree with. We all know the track record of science actually explaining something in a naturalistic way when the religious claimed to have the solution by the excuse of “god did it”. Well science has pushed the idea of the deity all the way back to being in another realm where we can not investigate at all and to claim that its not even a claim about reality but a metaphysical internal logical idea. Okay, well that’s the realm of comic books as well. So that’s progress it seems because the track record of something ever being demonstrated to be part of the supernatural, from all of our existence, is still a big fat 0.
that’s the track record so far. Do you have any evidence at all that’s counter to this other than you don’t want that to be the case? Sorry but what you would prefer reality to be has no bearing on the actual truth of what reality demonstrates to be the case. Reality doesn’t care what you want it to be, it shows you what it is and you just have to deal with that.
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HarryStotle
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It’s a “track record” only if you ignore everything that logically cannot be explained by your fantasy. You know, the stuff you casually dismiss as the “Why?” that you say needs no explanation because your fantasy can’t explain it.
Method meet metaphysics.
That is hardly a fair depiction, since science doesn’t even begin to deal with the problem of why reality is intelligible to begin with, or why our minds are tuned to comprehending the mathematical order in the universe.
The capacity to engage in abstract mathematics is not evolutionarily necessary, so science doesn’t exactly explain why we can comprehend the intricate processes that order the universe and make it comprehensible in the first place. Or why the universe is so mathematically complex to begin with, to say nothing of the hard problem of consciousness.
The idea of deity hasn’t been pushed anywhere, really. It is just that our ideas about deity were inadequate to begin with, just as our ideas of science or mathematics or metaphysics or mind or intelligibility or pretty much everything else were inadequate.
The argument you appear to be making is that an inadequate concept of deity ought to be sufficient to toss out the entire possibility of deity. Does an inadequate or primitive concept of mind or consciousness mean we must deny the existence of conscious mind rather than explain it?
What you fail to realize is that you appear to be fixated on a primitive understanding of deity defined as magical sky being. Fine, we can safely dispose of deity as a sky-god who does magic.
I am not sure why in your view a claim that God did it necessarily prohibits exploring the question of “How did God do it?” As if an explanation and God are logically incompatible.
God doing something doesn’t necessarily imply mysterious magic that can never be comprehended. Seems very primitive, theologically speaking, to presume it does.
The false dichotomy in your logic is the assumption that “God did it” and “Science explains it” are logically incompatible. In reality, what science accurately explains might be precisely how God did it.
The Why? is, however, a completely separate question which science does not and cannot address, but we need not merely presume it has no answer.
That, again, might be as primitive, scientifically speaking, as primitive theists assuming God did it completely satisfies the question of how.
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Damian
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Again, here is the difference. You want a system that can logically explain every question, regardless if you can demonstrate it to actually be part of reality. IE: Comic books do this. This is attempting to define something into existence.
My accepted process uses logic to narrow down where to look for the solution in reality and then see if reality offers that up when we look for it for questions specifically referenced to reality. For me, what reality demonstrates to be the case is the justification for held beliefs regardless of my internally consistent logical arguments. If I can’t find my logical conclusion in reality, I can keep looking, but I can’t claim that logical conclusion to actually be the case for reality.
Yes you can’t explain Why something that is naturally occurring in reality because that implies a mind that had a choice to pick some other thing to create. Again, this is the difference. You’ve created a grammatically correct question, but since its in reference to reality, it’s not a justified correct question to ask. Like “What does the color Yellow smell like?” The correct question to ask about reality is, “How did this happen?” There is no mind out there in the ether, so far from what reality demonstrates, to justify any “Why” about naturally occurring processes.
Okay, so it’s Thanos again. and loop and loop and loop we go.
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Damian
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“Tuned” implies a tuner, which is again, attempting to smuggle in your arrow you are trying to paint the bulls-eye around. Stop this. Reality does not demonstrate that there is a tuner, mind, etc. at all at this point. Stop smuggling in Thanos.
As to “Why the reality is intelligible to begin with…” don’t know what you’re getting at here. We have developed sensory ability to detect reality with sight, touch, etc. That data gets feed into an organ that is able to retain that information and determine predictable methods of action for humans to maximize their survival in the environment they are interacting with. That is being “intelligible” about reality. Every organism with some biochemical process to do the same thing does this. But that’s a “How” question again, not a “Why” question. You’re creating another “What’s the smell of Yellow?” question.
Mathematics is just a modeling language we’ve developed to describe the predictive nature of the experienced reality. The label “Two” wouldn’t make since to anyone who hasn’t experienced “quantity”. Same with the idea of “heat”. Heat wouldn’t make since to anyone who hasn’t experienced “differing temperatures” of reality. These are all adjectives we use to communicate the experienced reality to each other. Two apples, four pears, etc.
It’s not a necessity, but it is a benefit over other creatures that didn’t develope the ability to do this. Primates understand quantity differences as well. The higher the functioning brain of the organism, the better they are at understanding quantity changes. The amoeba doesn’t have the ability to quantify its food in its surroundings but it is able to determine that an area has less food than another area based on the amount of energy it has to expend for hunting.
Every area of natural science is mathematically complex. But again, numbers are just adjectives, the mathematical equations are just logical processes we’ve observed. Such as 2 apples with 3 more apples is 5 apples. 2, 3, 5 are all adjectives in reference to comparison to 0. Apples are the observed noun of reality that changed. What was that observed change in reality, the addition of adding 3 apples to 2 apples. Now use mathematics to describe that observed reality. 2+3=5.
Mathematical models that we create based on scientifically tested previous conclusions allows us to make predictions for future models. Like predicting where a rocket will go based on mathematical models of thrust, inertia, momentum, etc. from us just starting out with throwing rocks and making the bow and arrow.
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Damian
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Or you keep redefining what your deity is, where it is, what the justified evidence of this deity is, move the goal post, move the goal post, and oh yeah, move the goal post. So you’re kind of admitting here that if this deity did reveal itself in the past that it did it in such an inept way that we would outgrow that evidence in two generations it seems. After two generations, there wouldn’t be anyone that had direct experience with this entity any more since that is the only evidence that was provided for its existence in this reality we could have referenced.
No, its an argument to throw out the idea of a justified reason to conclude that a deity is actually part of reality. There still could be one, but we are not justified in concluding that deity is actually part of reality yet. Again see my Einstein gravity wave example for justified belief of reality claims.
No because right now we call the mathematical concept of “Dark Mater”, just that, Dark Mater. Its just a place holder for an idea we have of about reality based on our mathematical models of reality that we haven’t detected yet in reality. But we are looking for it. Dark Mater is just the label for that logical concept. That’s all the “god” label is. Just a label for a logical concept. Still doesn’t make us justified in believing that is actually part of reality until we can demonstrate it is part of reality.
Because you have yet to demonstrate that God is part of reality at all. You’re arguing for how peter pan flies by wanting to just blow by the point of justifying that peter pan is part of reality in the first place.
Nothing is logically incompatible if you define your terms correctly. However, if your reference point is reality, then your logical models are just a place to look for this idea first in reality to see if its actually apart of reality or not. If its not or you can’t determine that it is, then, sorry but you can’t define something into existence. Just doesn’t work that way.
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Damian
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No, it’s Thanos, not God.
Yes you’re moving the goal post again. Lightning isn’t Zeus. It’s the natural process that Zeus setup now that we understand how weather works. It’s always 5 degrees of god of the gaps isn’t it. Here’s why you can toss out the idea of god at this point. Until you can demonstrate that god is part of reality, that is when you can bring god in the the lab for explanation for something. Until then, you are not allowed to use the idea of a deity as an explanation for anything at all because its literally no different than saying magic, thanos, etc.
It’s not a correct question to ask in reference to naturally occurring processes in reality. It’s the “What’s the smell of Yellow?” question again. Grammatically correct, but incorrect to ask in reference to naturally occurring processes in reality because, so far from what reality actually demonstrates, there is no mind behind naturally occurring processes and there is no data indicating that naturally occurring processes can change, there is no choice for a cone of sand to be the result of an hour glass. So the correct question for the cone of sand is How, not Why. “Why” implies a choice. There is no choice here for the sand to not end up that way.
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And you can measure consciousness with them?
That seems quite a stretch given that it is difficult for most to even define it.
How exactly do you prove someone is aware?
How exactly is that any different then faith?
What happened to the evidence based rejection you have had for anything concerning God?
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Damian
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You can observe the process of consciousness just like you can observe the process of digestion and running.
Again, its just a label for a biological process that your brain does.
You ask them to describe the reality that they are detecting, like heat, sight, sound, picture of a painting, etc and then they describe that experience to you.
Faith is the excuse you use for holding a position when reality has not demonstrated that is even an option to accept. Like rolling a 1d6 dice and having faith that a 7 will appear. You can literally hold any view of reality you want, even if its in direct contradiction to another view, all on the excuse of faith.
Still there, never went away. If you can actually demonstrate anything in reality that we can investigate to conclude that is the supernatural, not just an unknown natural process, but actually never never land, then you’ll have a justified reason to believe in the supernatural.
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HarryStotle
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Here is the problem with consciousness being “just a label for a biological process.”vz71:
You can observe the process of consciousness just like you can observe the process of digestion and running.
Again, its just a label for a biological process that your brain does.
That same biological process is, right now, occurring billions of times all over the globe of the earth with roughly the same biochemicals at work.
So the question is: Why am I, as the loci of MY consciousness, present in the place and time where I am here and now?
Why are you not here where I am, and I not where you are? There is no explaining that. Biochemicals and biological processes are not sufficient to give rise to my identity or your identity, although they might be sufficient to give rise to identity in general.
If I am merely a random biological process, why did that process occurring myriads of times all over the globe not result in my consciousness somewhere else or at some other time? Why here? Why now?
Think deeply about this. You do not have an answer for it.
Sure, you might just assume you are you where you are at this moment because you happen to be you, but that doesn’t explain anything, it just assumes what you need to explain.
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HarryStotle
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That would be you attempting to squirrel in God as the kind of thing that could be brought into a lab to be dissected or analyzed. A thing like any other thing.
Reality dictated by your method; where things can only be real that can be subjected to your restricted method of analysis. The drunk looking for his lost keys under the lamppost because “The light is better over here.”
Your use of the word Thanos is a weak attempt to mask rather than to consider what you leave unexplained.
In actuality you are hiding what your method can never explain behind a word with the pretense that the word represents an ever shrinking facet of reality. Yet, you cannot know whether that facet of reality is ever shrinking at all unless you assume your method necessarily renders it so.
You cannot allow the limitations of your method to be revealed or considered because you maintain reality is what your method reveals. You cannot know that, you can only assume it. Which is to beg the question.
Method becomes metaphysics. Logically problematic.
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Damian
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So you want to know about self awareness, self identity then, correct?
Every animal has the ability to detect its environment. With an (name removed by moderator)ut of data from the environment, you’ll need a processing device to react to that (name removed by moderator)ut, ie a consciousness process of the brain. Otherwise what’s the point of detecting the environment if you can’t do anything with that data. The more complex a brain, the more complex a the process of consciousness becomes and thus why we have self identity because of just how complex our brains have developed for reacting to the environment. We can create language to communicate to each other, just like lower levels of organisms use chemicals to communicate to each other or light patterns to communicate, but vocal language uses less energy for communication than the amount of energy to create chemical excretions or bioluminescence, for example. We’re all just a very complex higher functioning animal that can interact with each other based on (name removed by moderator)ut we detect about our environment.
Every animal has the ability to detect its environment. With an (name removed by moderator)ut of data from the environment, you’ll need a processing device to react to that (name removed by moderator)ut, ie a consciousness process of the brain. Otherwise what’s the point of detecting the environment if you can’t do anything with that data. The more complex a brain, the more complex a the process of consciousness becomes and thus why we have self identity because of just how complex our brains have developed for reacting to the environment. We can create language to communicate to each other, just like lower levels of organisms use chemicals to communicate to each other or light patterns to communicate, but vocal language uses less energy for communication than the amount of energy to create chemical excretions or bioluminescence, for example. We’re all just a very complex higher functioning animal that can interact with each other based on (name removed by moderator)ut we detect about our environment.
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Damian
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Wrong here, the drunk isn’t looking in the well lit area over the dark area because there’s better light. She’s looking in the well lit area because that’s the only place she can actually investigate. There is no other place that she can investigate currently at this time. The proper analogy would be the drunk looking for their keys in reality and the theist coming along and going, Oh you silly person. Your keys are actually in a different realm of existence where there are magical beings and ghosts and spirits and demons oh my. Now why isn’t the drunk looking into that other realm for their keys? What a silly person they are for not thinking to just go power on their cross-dimensional door machine to enter that realm to look for their missing keys.
Or a telescope or any other way we actually attempt to interact with reality to see if there is anything there at all. Again, if you can not actually demonstrate that your idea of a deity is detectable in any way in reality, you have no way to determine the difference between claims of thanos and reality.
Its actually going the opposite direction. Here’s something that the rest of the world seems to understand that the religious seem to miss. The more we learn about reality, the more we actually learn that we don’t know. For every fact we discover, we uncover a multitude of new questions to ask. The only thing shrinking is the area where the religious claim a deity was involved. That’s why they keep redefining terms and labels based on the updated information we actually learn about reality.
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Damian
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I’ve always stated the limitations of my accepted method. To have justified belief claims about reality is based on what reality actually demonstrates to be there. That is a limit I’ve stated multiple times. I acknowledge that limit because it helps to determine the difference between justified belief claims about reality and just any nonsense people thought up. That’s how you determine the claims of Thanos are actually a true statement about reality verse someone’s active imagination.
I’ve given you all the rope you want, to make all the internally consistent logic claims you want. That’s fine. But now demonstrate your internally logically consistent model that references reality is actually part of reality. Go find it in reality. Go see if reality actually demonstrates your claims. If reality doesn’t, then its all just a comic book series. Logically consistent but not based in reality at all, so far.
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Please demonstrate how you measure consciousness.
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