theophilus

This is a fascinating example of where atheistic naturalism always and inevitably leads.

Rather than freeing man from beliefs in "myths and legends" about religious stuff, you deprive man of any significance at all. It's like PETA; they don't elevate animals by saying they are equal to humans, they debase humans by saying they are no better than animals.

If all thought is explicable on the basis of the functioning of elctro-chemical impulses in the brain, there is absolutely no possiibility of saying anyting meaningful about anything, including that all thought is ultimately "matter in motion." BTW which electro-chemical impulse told you that all thought is just electro-chemical impulse?

There is no right or wrong (both in terms of morals and in terms of being "true or false') since matter is neither. All thought, including the incoherent thoughts of the "insane" are of equal value, since the impulses happening in your brain are no more legitimate than anyone elses.

This leads inexorably to a behaviorist worldview in which there is no value and no purpose.

Congratulations!!

Lobstrosity

Men are animals. We have no intrinsic significance beyond the fact that we are what we are. This isn't good and it isn't bad, we're just humans for better or worse. For some reason you seem to have this egotistical need for superiority, so you make up this fantasy that repeatedly tells you how special you are. The truth of the matter, though, is that humans are incredibly insignificant on the scale of the universe. That much should be blatantly obvious to anyone capable of rational thought. If you just let go of your need for superiority, I think you'll be a much happier person. Perhaps if you do this you'll be again capable of thinking logically without being blinded by emotion.

If that's the way the world is, that's the way it is. It doesn't actually change anything. Such a discovery doesn't suddenly make our lives any different physically. I know it's humbling to learn that you're not supremely amazing, but hey, that's life. You're just an average Joe--it's something we all have to come to grips with as we grow up. We don't need to make up fairytales to give our lives pseudo-meaning.

HRG

If the predictions of the dualistic hypothesis are indistinguishable from those of the materialistic one, the first is obviously sliced by Occam's Razor.

I might as well propose a dualistic theory of celestial mechanics: there is an Infinitely Wise Guardian who makes sure that planets actually move according to Einsteinian gravity. It makes the same predictions than ordinary celestial mechanics.

Regards,
HRG.

Jack the Bodiless

Theo, I find it particularly ironic that you can type this garbage into a COMPUTER and post it on the INTERNET without even seeing your own hypocrisy!

Do you agree that your computer is explicable on the basis of electrical impulses in microprocessor chips?

Do you wish to argue, therefore, that the computer has no possibility of computing "anything meaningful about anything"? Are you arguing that therefore all computation is incoherent and insane? That computers cannot function if materialism is true?

This is really very simple to understand, Theo. Our material brains are like COMPUTERS, programmed by EVOLUTION. Our thoughts have meaning TO US because our ability to survive and reproduce has had meaning TO US throughout our development.

He who computes, survives. And replicates.

Clutch

Tercel,I know you find it annoying to have your arguments from ignorance skewered. But Wyz is right (and even if he wasn't, he's a mod) -- my jabs seem to given you an excuse to dodge the demolitions of your various claims.

So, here it is, dispassionately:

First. Evidential support is a differential notion, on pain of a familiar problem called the "Tacking Paradox". I pointed out long ago that your claims about evidence incorporate this incoherence into your view.

The basic point is that any empirically adequate theory T1 can have unobserved absurdities tacked onto it to become T2, while remaining, ex hypothesi, empirically adequate. The idea that T1 and T2 are equally confirmed by the evidence is risible, though.

Hence, your claim that dualism and monism are equally supported by the evidence is not, as you claim, an a priori truth; indeed, it is not a truth of any sort, being universally recognized as false in confirmation theory.

Second. You claim that one simply could not have evidence discriminating the two views, no matter how much one knew about the relations between neurophysiology and behaviour. (Prescinding from unknown conceptual revolutions.) But then you claim that boiling water is a bad analogy, since we understand just how water boils -- there doesn't appear to be a gap there, into which supernaturalism could be inserted. But by your first claim, the second claim is utterly irrelevant. For if the second claim is relevant, then learning more about the causal relations between neurology and behaviour would make intelligence as settled a question as boiling, vis a vis materialism.

Now, you claim that you will not consider the neurology-behaviour connection settled until But I have challenged you repeatedly to give arguments that would not work equally well to prove the substance dualism of life force -- and in this case again you fail by this very minimal standard. For we cannot construct organisms "from the ground up", nor do we have exhaustive "knowledge of how every tiny bit works". Hence you are employing radically flexible standards, in addition to arguments from ignorance and from failure of imagination.

Third. You completely mischaracterize materialism, and imagine a problem that simply does not exist.
The fact is that there is exactly zero tension here. Or rather, there is as much tension as there is between (A) and (B).

A) Life is a property of matter.

B) Life does not exist in the absence of certain physical structures.

Of course any property that is a property of matter will not exist in the absence of matter. Why on earth would anyone think that this amounted to some internal tension?Finally we again reach the crux of the matter. However, this is simply a fact about your understanding of things. There is no even vaguely plausible reason to regard it as having any scientific, conceptual or metaphysical implications.

Lobstrosity

Three problems I see with the dualistic hypothesis:

1) It cannot permit hypnosis (well, the kind that lets a person convince you you're a three-toed sloth)
2) It cannot permit brainwashing
3) It cannot permit the existence of brain-damaged people who do not realize they have suffered brain-damage (yet these people exist anyhow).

The dualistic hypothesis says that all of our ultimate decisions are the product of intangible free will carried out in some supernatural realm. It says that nothing can ever interfere with our free will, rather the interference takes place in the portions of our brains responsible for converting those decisions into physical realities. All three of these above phenomena exist, and yet all three violate any rational application of the dualistic hypothesis. For example, brainwashing clearly affects the decisions we make; it removes our free will. Yet it does not physically change the structure of our brains, so if we adhere to the dualistic hypothesis, which treats neurons as sub-processors and relay connections, such a change in decision-making is inexplainable.

The dualistic hypothesis is distinguishable from the materialistic hypothesis (in the same way a radio is distinguishable from, say, a CD player), and all the evidence we have points to its being mere wishful thinking.

theophilus

The unavoidable conclusion of your statements is that life is meaningless, knowledge is impossible and that words like "logically," happier," fantasy," etc. are inexplicable.

But, you do use them (along with the assumption that is "better" to believe what you believe) which just proves that you don't really believe what you are saying. You know that life has meaning and purpose even while you deny it. You know this becasue you know the God of scripture even though you deny him.

Mageth

Yeah, Lobstrosity, that should put you straight. In addition, you know that you really like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, even though you deny it.

Fiach

Life is in itself meaningless. It happened due to a series of chemical reactions, evolution by some complex biochemical nucleotide changes producing organisms best suited to their changing environments. It was not random but due to natural properties of matter. It has no meaning apart from having natural properties. It just is. The biological properties include a coded programme for replication that with complex brain circuits modulates sex and reproduction. If we choose to postulate a meaning of life, it would be "to adapt and replicate."

Going from that to presume that because life is essentially meaningless that Knowledge is impossible makes no logical sense. It does not follow from the premise. Knowledge is essential in sentient organisms because it is part of evolved mechanisms of survival. Knowledge is a primary adaptive device for hominids as tooth and claw was for the Sabertooth and Tyranosaurus. It is whatever works that counts.

like "logically," happier," fantasy," etc. are inexplicable

Again, this does not follow from the premises. We know that logic, happiness, and fantasy are explicable. Logic is part of our complex frontal circuitry that gave our ancestors and advantage over rivals with smaller frontal lobes. Logic is a mental function that varies in humans. In scientists, people with well developed logic circuits tend to be the ones who become scientists. Those with faulty logic circuits make poor scientists and get weeded out in undergraduate college before ever getting to graduate school. Your computer is a good example of a simple logic system. Our brains take this to a high level of involvement. But there is a spectrum of logic from Scientists, Mathematicians, Computer nerds on the high end to the gullible folks who believe in UFOs, paranormal, supernatural fantasies are at the low end with flawed logic circuits.

Happiness is an affective state. It is mediated through the limbic lobe of the Brain, a curling loop of brain tissue and tracts. Affective states can be studied using SPECT imaging and now by the direct measurement of neurochemical transmitters and the sensitivity of several different receptors (Seratonergic, Dopaminergic, Cholinergic, and Adrenergic). The SPECT of a happy person is easily distinguished from that of a depressed one.

Everything that we think, feel, imagine (fantasise), and our mood-affect is all brain based. We are all capable of fantasy as we are in writing fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy novels or short stories. Those of us who are highly logical and rational have no difficulty distinguishing our fantasies from the real world around us. Some sick people's fantasies merge or displace their real world (Schizophrenia, and forms of religious extremism.) And there is the largest group, the ones in the middle of the spectrum.

All the things you posit to be inexplicable, are increasingly being shown to be quite explicable. Neuroscience is advancing exponentially now. I am pressed to read 8 journals and a book of brief abstracts on this work that I can skim and then call up the full article text.

There is so much information coming in that processing it is hard enough for us, neuroscientists, to conceptualise. But we are clearly a small minority who understand this. We need to try to explain this data to the general public in non-technical language so they can understand this. It shocks and saddens me to see intelligent people like yourself, is not aware of current science that would help explain phenomena that you wouuld otherwise consider "inexplicable" or attribute it to invisible deities copping out on trying to understand it.

Fiach
PS: I will address your second paragraph in my following post.

Fiach

Perhaps I have an assumption that it is better to believe reality than an imaginary fantasy world with an imaginary and implausible human designed god. And that I can't prove. For some people who are traumatised by reality (horrified by seeing lions killing a zebra), or are not capable of understanding complexity (feel better with simplistic myth explanations) they might not be better off knowing the truth. Truth can sometimes be unpleasant, and it is definitely very complex compared to sanitised fantasies.


Obviously I believe what I am saying. I am staking my life on it and placing the delusion of immortality on the line. I would like to be immortal but wishing for it doesn't make it happen. No matter how hard he wishes a pig can't fly. If I am wrong, a very cruel God will send me to hell to burn forever. Naturally, if there were a 1% chance of this being the case, I would work harder to force my brain to accept your theology, even if it meant using Peyote or Cocaine. But fortunatly my impression is that the Judeo-Christian god cannot exist based on the Bible alone.

Life has only the meaning (anthropomorphising) of adapting and replicating (i.e. preserving itself and promoting the survival of its offspring.) The God of scripture is a topic that we must disagree upon. To me, having read the Bible extensively is that God is an exaggerated projection of human traits personified into a hypothetical God. God was created by Man in Man's own image and likeness. We gave him all of our worst traits: jealousy, capriciousness, vindictiveness with cruelty, love and hate, injustice, rage attacks, remorseless killing, and an amoral position that dictates human morality on an arbitrary and changing basis. This is the description of any classic Oriental Potentate. But God is clearly a being patterned off Hebrew shamans of 4000 BCE to 324 CE.

Try to view this as my opinion and not as an insult. Some of my ideas on brain circuitry and religion, many believers find insulting. I don't mean it any more insulting than the fact that you believe I am going to burn forever in hell as a terrible sinner. Lets keep that in mind, and perhaps it will keep our discussions from degenerating into personal attacks. Thanks.

Fiach