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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
 Posted - 11/28/2009 : 12:59:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
Which of the following does an existence (as opposed to a collection of multiple existences) NOT have:
1) Location
2) Volume
3) Attributes
4) History
?????????????????????
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5) Experiences |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 13:19:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Photons and other subatomic particles have no well-defined locations or volumes, only probabilistic ones. |
We've been tinkering with the microcosm for over a century now. Even the finest minds in the field will admit they cannot show you a fundamental particle. Indeed, some of the particles are only on the books because they make the equations work...WECIB (What Else Could It Be). Our technology is not sophisticated enough yet to be definitive. Like blind men of science, pioneers in the field are well apt to experience a 'part' and think it is a 'whole'. There is a different model - one that in no way disagrees with the data and provides a new perspective - a new interpretation.
| Actually, nobody disagrees with number 3. The problem with #3 is that you're misunderstanding what an emergent phenomenon is. It's not a merging of a bunch of existences into one, it's a wholly new existence with different properties than any of its constituent parts. #4 is nothing more than a straw-man caricature of what "emergent phenomenon" means. |
So, 8X10^27=1 ??? No, I understand quite well what you are claiming, but not the magic that makes it happen...I am always skeptical of magic, so please explain the process that makes 8X10^27 = 1...OR does it become 8X10^27+1??| I have heard nothing yet that would lead me to believe otherwise |
So what? You still haven't supported your position with evidence, just more rhetorical attempts to dismiss counterarguments.
Two Hydrogen atoms and an Oxygen atom, independent on one another, don't behave as if they were a water molecule. A water molecule has attributes and a history different from those of its constituent atoms. What parts of this do you disagree with?
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Not having access to CERN nor the technical training to use it if I did, I have been forced to resort to simple logic applied to accepted principles...rhetoric I guess you call it. If you wish me to believe 8X10^27= 1 (or 8X10^27+1), I'm afraid it is you that bears the burden of proof. I am not the one conjuring up the supernatural. |
I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 14:47:13 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Originally posted by THoR
Quite simply, I am stating that
1) Something must exist in order to experience |
You seem to be using the word "experience" to mean "record of existence" in some senses and "feel, know, remember" in others. Yes, minimally something must first exist before it can "experience" anything in the sense of being aware that it exists. But not everything that exists has a conscious experience. That requires a brain. |
Agreed. So let us define:
To experience = act or be acted upon.
Consciousness = cognition - what a life form experiences
All elements experience. They act and react, although we reserve the term consciousness for those of the animated (thinks, propagates and experiences a unique existence as a single identity) variety. There is no standard term for the reactions of non-animated entities.
There are MANY forms of human consciousness: 1) Waking (presuming I have not yet bored you too badly), 2) intoxicated (one of my favorites...sometimes), 3) dormant (time passes quickly), 4) comatose (#2 taken to the extreme or trauma), pristine (your corpse falls off and takes your highly enhanced DELL with it)
Many life forms have no brains. Fortunately I have encountered less than half a dozen who post to this forum (none on this topic).
So then how can such statements as this be justified?
| When you eventually die, it may well be a familiar state to whatever level of consciousness you experience. You may even vaguely remember past death states - probably more as an instinct than as the vivid sounds and images generated by your living "mind's eye". Your condition in death is vastly different from your condition while alive. |
Who says fundamental particles experience any "level" of consciousness? Jack McNally graciously allows that "It seems consciousness, as we know it, only occurs when you are wrapped within your corporal shell," but he seems dubious that brains are the whole story. He's certain that human souls will be detectable by future technology, and asks such fantasy-laden questions as "How many souls are there in the region of Earth? Are others arriving? Do some leave?" This is religious magical thinking, not science or logic. |
Unfortunately, our senses do not make man privy to the vast realm of reality. We cannot see beyond the visible spectrum. Microbes - once considered fanciful (magical) thinking - were discovered by deduction long before they were observed. Some 99+% of the universe is invisible to us (space). My hypothesis goes something like this:
I experience, therefor I exist. It is not possible to be more than one existence. My corporal shell is a composite, so it must be something I inhabit and I must be a yet-to-be-discovered fundamental element, possibly something without the property of mass (as are other particles in the Standard Model)| Life is a transient state of being - followed, of course, by another condition called Death. Your "existence" didn't begin with your birth, nor will it end upon your demise. Existence is eternal, states of being are temporary. |
My existence certainly did begin with my birth and subsequent the development of my brain. The particles which comprise my body don't have independent consciousness because they lack the necessary apparatuses for higher thought. "I" am my body. There is no "me" apart from my body. It isn't merely a meat shell housing some immortal soul. |
That's funny. Every element in your corpse pre-existed your birth and will remain after your demise. Conditions have a beginning and an end. Existences do not. Existence is not a function of cause and effect (the main premise of http://www.theory-of-reciprocity.com/index.htm) and therefor not temporal (eternal) in nature.
Back to your list:
| 2) Each existence has a unique history and set of experiences. |
But not necessarily conscious experience. A rock has a history, but it doesn't "experience" anything. The "logic" McNally uses to justify souls and past lives is particularly specious:
| Conscious thought is played back upon the senses - this feedback is often called the "mind's eye". You no longer have the same brain or nervous system to call upon to replay the events of a past life. The impressions of previous events are not ingrained upon your present body and the corpse you currently inhabit may be somewhat different in its architecture. Memory seems to be a call on demand feature inherent to our nature. When you are awake, you tend to recall those memories which best serve the processes of your waking consciousness. You are more likely to remember your dreams while you are still in a semi-dream state and unless you make a conscious effort to record or 'bookmark' them, you often can't recall them after you are fully awake - even when you know you definitely experienced a dream. Even waking memories tend to decay over time unless they are reinforced periodically. This doesn't mean you may not still have soul memories from past lives, but they may not be retrievable by your consciousness. They would be dim, you would have to have some reason to summon their recall and the effort required to retrieve and decode them may not be worth the trouble. |
The fact that our waking minds are bad at recalling dreams is not evidence that we have forgotten memories from previous "states of being" because it ignores the evidence that brains are required for consciousness. The nervous system isn't just required for "playing back" memories, but for forming them in the first place. |
Admittedly my observations on life/death are pure conjecture. But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. If that fundamental element which is YOU has always existed and will continue to do so (a daunting thought, possibly unpleasantly so at first), cognition of some form cannot be ruled out.
| 3) Putting elements into proximity with each other does not magically forge them into a single existence - Pinocchio hypothesis |
So you don't believe in molecular bonding? Putting elements into proximity with each other does forge them into something new. You can't "unglue" them without an atom smasher. Matter is not just a heap of fundamental particles like a pile of marbles. Atoms interact and bond with one another in unique patterns with unique properties not found it in them individually. They don't behave like individual football players on a field. That's the point. Whether or not they have a single "existence" is irrelevant. They have a different existence than they would have otherwise had, indeed could possibly have had, individually. |
Yes, collections of particles exhibit different individual behaviors when exposed to different environmental circumstances. What you interpret to be 'properties of a composite' are nothing more than the collective result of those individual behaviors - often synergistic in nature. I don't have cause to disbelieve in the weak and strong forces (galaxy glue). Those forces are engendered by the ingredients in the elements you mentioned (composites all). Most of those ingredients are as of yet not understood to any significant degree. We are cows trying to learn calculus. We get it WRONG - a lot - but we learn (sometimes). Don't be so anxious to dismiss any point of view that challenges the conventional wisdom.
| I have heard nothing yet that would lead me to believe otherwise |
Maybe because your ideas seem to be largely formed by people writing and thinking 3000 years ago. Science has made great strides since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Dualism is pretty much dead. It has been considered and rejected. If you wish to resurrect it, you first need to address the outstanding objections against it. |
Yeah, 3000 years ago, they used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe. Well guess what...it IS.
Consider:
Using any given point in space as the point of origin for an X,Y,Z axis, one may theoretically extend equidistant lines to infinity throughout the spectrum of three-dimensional coordinates. The procedure inscribes a sphere which theoretically encompasses the Universe. By definition, the selected point is the center of that sphere - and the center of the Universe. Since the same can be done for all points in the Universe, every point in the cosmos is its center. Actually I am the center of the universe...so you should be REALLY nice to me.
I'm currently working on a flat Earth theory, unfortunately I have discovered that in order to complete my proof I must first curve the entire universe...WAITAMINUTE...........
PS: outstanding objections is a dead link
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I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
| Edited by - THoR on 11/28/2009 14:55:45 |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 14:59:47 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hawks
Originally posted by THoR
Which of the following does an existence (as opposed to a collection of multiple existences) NOT have:
1) Location
2) Volume
3) Attributes
4) History
?????????????????????
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5) Experiences
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Experience = act or be acted upon
Consciousness = cognition |
I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 15:49:27 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
Agreed. So let us define:
To experience = act or be acted upon.
Consciousness = cognition - what a life form experiences
All elements experience. They act and react, although we reserve the term consciousness for those of the animated (thinks, propagates and experiences a unique existence as a single identity) variety. There is no standard term for the reactions of non-animated entities.
There are MANY forms of human consciousness: 1) Waking (presuming I have not yet bored you too badly), 2) intoxicated (one of my favorites...sometimes), 3) dormant (time passes quickly), 4) comatose (#2 taken to the extreme or trauma), pristine (your corpse falls off and takes your highly enhanced DELL with it) |
All of these forms of consciousness require a brain with the exception of "comatose," which by by definition is a state of unconsciousness.
| Many life forms have no brains. |
And thus do not experience any form of consciousness.
| Unfortunately, our senses do not make man privy to the vast realm of reality. We cannot see beyond the visible spectrum. Microbes - once considered fanciful (magical) thinking - were discovered by deduction long before they were observed. Some 99+% of the universe is invisible to us (space). |
All of which is irrelevant to your hypothesis. The fact that human beings have been wrong in the past isn't evidence that scientists are wrong now about this. As I said, it's not like dualism is a new hypothesis. It has been investigated and found wanting. You need to come up with positive evidence to support your case, not merely make an appeal to ignorance.
My hypothesis goes something like this:
I experience, therefor I exist. It is not possible to be more than one existence. My corporal shell is a composite, so it must be something I inhabit and I must be a yet-to-be-discovered fundamental element, possibly something without the property of mass (as are other particles in the Standard Model) |
Why is it not possible to be more than one existence? It may not be possible to experience more than a single consciousness. (Then again, it may. Think of the Borg.) But since you defined experience as "to act or be acted upon," then it is without question possible for composites to have different, separate experiences as individual particles and as a group. A single atom does not behave or interact with its environment in the same manner as two atoms which share a covalent bond. There is no need to invent a phantasmagorical "fundamental element" to explain this.
| My existence certainly did begin with my birth and subsequent the development of my brain. The particles which comprise my body don't have independent consciousness because they lack the necessary apparatuses for higher thought. "I" am my body. There is no "me" apart from my body. It isn't merely a meat shell housing some immortal soul. |
That's funny. Every element in your corpse pre-existed your birth and will remain after your demise. |
Yes, but those elements which comprise me aren't "me" when they are no longer assembled into a composite. A disassembled clock no longer keeps time.
Yes, but conditions dictate what experience existences will have. Disrupt the conditions and you change the experience.
| Admittedly my observations on life/death are pure conjecture. |
So you are Jack McNally? That wasn't clear to me before.
| But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. |
Why would experience necessarily be conserved?
| If that fundamental element which is YOU has always existed and will continue to do so (a daunting thought, possibly unpleasantly so at first), cognition of some form cannot be ruled out. |
But there is no evidence that individuality is caused by a fundamental element, and great evidence against the idea that anything without a brain is capable of consciousness in any sense. There is no "fundamental" you. There is only the composite you. A temporary arrangement destined to disintegrate and cease to be you.
| Yes, collections of particles exhibit different individual behaviors when exposed to different environmental circumstances. What you interpret to be 'properties of a composite' are nothing more than the collective result of those individual behaviors - often synergistic in nature. |
But the properties of a composite are often not reducible to its component parts. Dave used the example of water. Neither oxygen not hydrogen alone possess the attributes of water. The behavior of water can't be found in the "individual behavior" of the atoms which form it. You can break water into its components, but you can't do so and keep its "waterness." Water is non-reducible. Indeed, you seem to be making a reductionist argument: | Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understand the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. |
But scientists haven't subscribed to reductionism for awhile now.
| I don't have cause to disbelieve in the weak and strong forces (galaxy glue). Those forces are engendered by the ingredients in the elements you mentioned (composites all). Most of those ingredients are as of yet not understood to any significant degree. We are cows trying to learn calculus. We get it WRONG - a lot - but we learn (sometimes). Don't be so anxious to dismiss any point of view that challenges the conventional wisdom. |
But it's not sufficient to simply challenge conventional wisdom. It should build on what we already know, or provide evidence that what we know is wrong. Your hypothesis is unable to do either. It's armchair philosophy, an empty thought exercise that ignores contrary data while subsequently failing to provide any new data.
Damn wikipedia. I don't know why links there always get fubared. You can locate the part in question by going to the "Dualism (philosophy of mind)" page and reading the section entitled "Arguments against dualism."
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 11/28/2009 16:02:44 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 16:25:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
We've been tinkering with the microcosm for over a century now. Even the finest minds in the field will admit they cannot show you a fundamental particle. Indeed, some of the particles are only on the books because they make the equations work...WECIB (What Else Could It Be). Our technology is not sophisticated enough yet to be definitive. Like blind men of science, pioneers in the field are well apt to experience a 'part' and think it is a 'whole'. There is a different model - one that in no way disagrees with the data and provides a new perspective - a new interpretation. |
An awesomely vague rejection of quantum physics. Brilliant! Why bother with rationality when you can just throw out huge compilations of evidence that contradict your preferred conclusions... er, axioms.
Well, nevermind I said anything, then. If you're willing to go so far to protect your hypothesis, I can't follow you. In other words, I'm not willing to toss a century of science on the scrap heap just to find some common ground with you in order to maybe agree with your ideas. We can't even begin to reach an understanding on these points if you're asking me to ignore billions of man-hours of solid research.| So, 8X10^27=1 ??? No, I understand quite well what you are claiming, but not the magic that makes it happen...I am always skeptical of magic, so please explain the process that makes 8X10^27 = 1...OR does it become 8X10^27+1?? |
If you have to ask those questions, then you understand nothing about what I am saying.| Not having access to CERN nor the technical training to use it if I did, I have been forced to resort to simple logic applied to accepted principles...rhetoric I guess you call it. |
My point is that anyone who accepts the principles you put forth as axioms is denying reality. Your "accepted principles" are obviously false. And since you seem to be unable to defend them in any positive fashion, I can only conclude that your hold on them is dogmatic, and not supported by any reason or evidence.| If you wish me to believe 8X10^27= 1 (or 8X10^27+1), I'm afraid it is you that bears the burden of proof. I am not the one conjuring up the supernatural. |
No, actually, you're the one who came here and claimed that dualism is alive and well and offered this illogical, unrealistic nonsense to support it. Emergent phenomena are real. They exist. They happen all the time. Your refusal to even attempt to dismantle an example as simple as water demonstrates your unwillingness to concede the point in the face of real counterexamples. You can't save your hypothesis by ignoring reality. Not here. It may work in a smoke-filled dorm room, but not in a forum dedicated to critical thought.
The real nail in your metaphysical coffin, though, came when you said this to H.:| Every element in your corpse pre-existed your birth and will remain after your demise. Conditions have a beginning and an end. Existences do not. |
That's a laugh riot. No wonder you feel free to ignore physics and chemistry and biology: you don't understand them. Not enough to say what you've said right there, yet repeat that 8x1027 number like a mantra.
Really, if existences do not have beginnings or ends, then "Carbon" must simply be a condition, and not an existence. A Carbon-14 atom undergoing radioactive decay ends the condition "Carbon," and replaces it with the condition "Nitrogen," but the underlying existence (energy) still remains. Energy must be the only "existence" in the entire universe, then, because it is the only thing that is eternal (thank you, laws of conservation). Therefore, your body isn't a collection of 8x1027 anythings. It cannot be, since those are just 8x1027 conditions of energy, and have no existence on their own. Consciousness, too, must be nothing more than energy, so instead of there being over six billion consciousnesses on the planet, there is nothing but energy in a wide variety of conditions.
In other words, if you'd really thought your logic through to its bitter end, you could have proven that nobody exists at all. You certainly don't exist, you're just a condition of energy, by your own definitions.
How this related to ID in any way, I no longer know. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 16:26:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. |
This sounds suspiciously like cosmic homeopathy. |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 16:29:40 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
| Admittedly my observations on life/death are pure conjecture. |
So you are Jack McNally? That wasn't clear to me before. |
I get it now! THoR stands for "THeory of Reciprocity." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 16:37:52 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Damn wikipedia. I don't know why links there always get fubared. |
It's because for security reasons, we don't allow parentheses within URLs. They get processed into spaces, instead. So if you put inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind) What you get out is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_ philosophy_of_mind What you want to do is change the left-parens to "%28" and the right-parens with "%29," thusly:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 And it will work: Arguments against Dualism. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 17:37:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Originally posted by THoR
Agreed. So let us define:
To experience = act or be acted upon.
Consciousness = cognition - what a life form experiences
All elements experience. They act and react, although we reserve the term consciousness for those of the animated (thinks, propagates and experiences a unique existence as a single identity) variety. There is no standard term for the reactions of non-animated entities.
There are MANY forms of human consciousness: 1) Waking (presuming I have not yet bored you too badly), 2) intoxicated (one of my favorites...sometimes), 3) dormant (time passes quickly), 4) comatose (#2 taken to the extreme or trauma), pristine (your corpse falls off and takes your highly enhanced DELL with it) |
All of these forms of consciousness require a brain with the exception of "comatose," which by by definition is a state of unconsciousness.
| Many life forms have no brains. |
And thus do not experience any form of consciousness. |
You mean like Paris Hilton?
| Unfortunately, our senses do not make man privy to the vast realm of reality. We cannot see beyond the visible spectrum. Microbes - once considered fanciful (magical) thinking - were discovered by deduction long before they were observed. Some 99+% of the universe is invisible to us (space). |
All of which is irrelevant to your hypothesis. The fact that human beings have been wrong in the past isn't evidence that scientists are wrong now about this. As I said, it's not like dualism is a new hypothesis. It has been investigated and found wanting. You need to come up with positive evidence to support your case, not merely make an appeal to ignorance. |
I am not touting dualism - mind/body, in reference to physics/philosophy of science. There are many forms of dualism including political. There are MANY BI-legislators out there promoting BI-partisanship i.e. Specter, McCain, Lieberman and other congressional hermorphidites...but I digress), I am touting simple mechanics. The animated particles that engender life are quite well hidden and until we are sufficiently evolved to be able to detect them, they can only be implied by deduction. 'Emergent properties' is what pundits use to try to explain away the phenomenon of thought, but I haven't seen anything that reconciles this seemingly supernatural process with the principles of logic. Explain to me - PLEASE - the mechanics of this miracle.
My hypothesis goes something like this:
I experience, therefor I exist. It is not possible to be more than one existence. My corporal shell is a composite, so it must be something I inhabit and I must be a yet-to-be-discovered fundamental element, possibly something without the property of mass (as are other particles in the Standard Model) |
Why is it not possible to be more than one existence? It may not be possible to experience more than a single consciousness. (Then again, it may. Think of the Borg.) But since you defined experience as "to act or be acted upon," then it is without question possible for composites to have different, separate experiences as individual particles and as a group. A single atom does not behave or interact with its environment in the same manner as two atoms which share a covalent bond. |
Agreed: the experience you have in a crowd is significantly different from that which you would have alone, but that doesn't magically create a third party observer of which you are only a part. Every observer is still an individual in an environment different than solice. A crowd is not 'AN' existence, it is a composite - a condition involving multiple individuals. It is of as many minds as there are participants.| There is no need to invent a phantasmagorical "fundamental element" to explain this. |
Do you deny the existence of any fundamental particles OR those without the property of mass OR just those with/without the property of mass which have not yet been discovered?
| My existence certainly did begin with my birth and subsequent the development of my brain. The particles which comprise my body don't have independent consciousness because they lack the necessary apparatuses for higher thought. "I" am my body. There is no "me" apart from my body. It isn't merely a meat shell housing some immortal soul. |
That's funny. Every element in your corpse pre-existed your birth and will remain after your demise. |
Yes, but those elements which comprise me aren't "me" when they are no longer assembled into a composite. A disassembled clock no longer keeps time. |
It is hypothetically possible to trace - from prior to your birth to date - each morsel, cell, atom, particle that was fed to you and became part of your corpse. After a sufficient number of years, virtually ALL of those particles that were you as an infant will have been replaced. Does a different identity inhabit your body today? If you could disassemble your body particle by particle and move it 10 ft across the room and re-assemble it without perishing in the process, at which specific point in the process would you be 10 ft away from your origin?
Yes, but conditions dictate what experience existences will have. Disrupt the conditions and you change the experience. |
Agreed...what is your point?
| Admittedly my observations on life/death are pure conjecture. |
So you are Jack McNally? That wasn't clear to me before. |
No, I just ate a sandwich, now I am Napoleon.
| But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. |
Why would experience necessarily be conserved? |
All change is sequential, dependent upon the prior condition. As further change occurs, it becomes more and more difficult to detect what that prior condition used to be.
| If that fundamental element which is YOU has always existed and will continue to do so (a daunting thought, possibly unpleasantly so at first), cognition of some form cannot be ruled out. |
But there is no evidence that individuality is caused by a fundamental element, and great evidence against the idea that anything without a brain is capable of consciousness in any sense. There is no "fundamental" you. There is only the composite you. A temporary arrangement destined to disintegrate and cease to be you. |
If I experience and if it is true that something must exist in order to experience, unless a single existence can be conjured from a composite, the only logical inference is that I am a fundamental particle with the attribute of animation. The phenomenon of emergent properties as it is applied to explain thought and consciousness is the height of mysticism - to say the least. I require more than the unsubstantiated conjecture of pundits immersed in alphabet soup (whose publishing careers depend on it) before I will yield to the conventional wisdom on this..
But it's not sufficient to simply challenge conventional wisdom. It should build on what we already know, or provide evidence that what we know is wrong. Your hypothesis is unable to do either. It's armchair philosophy, an empty thought exercise that ignores contrary data while subsequently failing to provide any new data. |
There are some things (sic(k) microbes) that even in the absence of experimental data and observation can still be deduced.
Example:
Axiom - before something can change or be changed it must exist
Q: What does this mean?
A: Change (aka cause and efffect) is a function of existence
Deduction - If change is derived from existence, then existence cannot be derived from cause and effect (creation), for ordinately, no phenomenon can be derived from its own subordinate derivative.
So much for Big Bang and Genesis. No experiment needed. No trip to the event horizon, no epiphany (my epiphone is out of order anyway).
I find the logic behind the origin of life to be similar in its simplicity. Animated particles evolving about their environment. Intelligent evolution. No religion. Maybe a bit avant-garde as far as theoretical physics is concerned, but it is the application of simple logic. Call it metaphysics if you will, call it whatever you want. Lots of people have - as a fallback - asked me to 'prove it' knowing empirical evidence is impossible, but none have offered any valid logic to refute it.
Damn wikipedia. I don't know why links there always get fubared. You can locate the part in question by going to the "Dualism (philosophy of mind)" page and reading the section entitled "Arguments against dualism."
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I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 17:49:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by R.Wreck
Originally posted by THoR
But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. |
This sounds suspiciously like cosmic homeopathy.
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I AM NOT A HOMEO...I'd tell you to just ask my wife, but she's in the hospital with prostate problems. |
I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 17:53:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Damn wikipedia. I don't know why links there always get fubared. |
It's because for security reasons, we don't allow parentheses within URLs. They get processed into spaces, instead. So if you put inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind) What you get out is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_ philosophy_of_mind What you want to do is change the left-parens to "%28" and the right-parens with "%29," thusly:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 And it will work: Arguments against Dualism.
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Dave:
5Q+5Q......10Q (not 8X10^27) |
I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 18:26:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by THoR
We've been tinkering with the microcosm for over a century now. Even the finest minds in the field will admit they cannot show you a fundamental particle. Indeed, some of the particles are only on the books because they make the equations work...WECIB (What Else Could It Be). Our technology is not sophisticated enough yet to be definitive. Like blind men of science, pioneers in the field are well apt to experience a 'part' and think it is a 'whole'. There is a different model - one that in no way disagrees with the data and provides a new perspective - a new interpretation. |
An awesomely vague rejection of quantum physics. Brilliant! Why bother with rationality when you can just throw out huge compilations of evidence that contradict your preferred conclusions... er, axioms.
Well, nevermind I said anything, then. If you're willing to go so far to protect your hypothesis, I can't follow you. In other words, I'm not willing to toss a century of science on the scrap heap just to find some common ground with you in order to maybe agree with your ideas. We can't even begin to reach an understanding on these points if you're asking me to ignore billions of man-hours of solid research. |
So you don't object to us throwing out 2000 years of conventional wisdom and millions of hours of solid Biblical research? Many a celebrated scholar has gotten his pants scorched since then. BTW: Earth IS the center of the universe (see previous post).
| So, 8X10^27=1 ??? No, I understand quite well what you are claiming, but not the magic that makes it happen...I am always skeptical of magic, so please explain the process that makes 8X10^27 = 1...OR does it become 8X10^27+1?? |
If you have to ask those questions, then you understand nothing about what I am saying. |
Au contraire, I understand, I just don't believe what you are saying. The onus is upon those who invoke the supernatural. Enlighten me as to how emergent properties applies to thought and consciousness (although I've probably already read those sites), will you.| Not having access to CERN nor the technical training to use it if I did, I have been forced to resort to simple logic applied to accepted principles...rhetoric I guess you call it. |
My point is that anyone who accepts the principles you put forth as axioms is denying reality. Your "accepted principles" are obviously false. And since you seem to be unable to defend them in any positive fashion, I can only conclude that your hold on them is dogmatic, and not supported by any reason or evidence. |
En garde! Ready to defend. I shall let you strike the first logical blow...please proceed.| If you wish me to believe 8X10^27= 1 (or 8X10^27+1), I'm afraid it is you that bears the burden of proof. I am not the one conjuring up the supernatural. |
No, actually, you're the one who came here and claimed that dualism is alive and well and offered this illogical, unrealistic nonsense to support it. Emergent phenomena are real. They exist. They happen all the time. Your refusal to even attempt to dismantle an example as simple as water demonstrates your unwillingness to concede the point in the face of real counterexamples. You can't save your hypothesis by ignoring reality. Not here. It may work in a smoke-filled dorm room, but not in a forum dedicated to critical thought. |
If I dismantle water, I get hydrogen and oxygen...cuz that is what it is made of. If you mix the O with Fe you get rust. If you mix the H with two parts of Scotch and two cubes of ice - then discard the H - you get a good stiff drink. What's your point? I am not Hamiltonian and I do not dual - what I propose is simple mechanics (see prior post). Emergent properties is being used as an escoteric buzzword to cover the inability of science to explain thought and consciousness. I find it lacking, to say the least. It would be much more noble just to admit we are cows trying to study calculus...but I repeat myself myself.
The real nail in your metaphysical coffin, though, came when you said this to H.:| Every element in your corpse pre-existed your birth and will remain after your demise. Conditions have a beginning and an end. Existences do not. |
That's a laugh riot. No wonder you feel free to ignore physics and chemistry and biology: you don't understand them. Not enough to say what you've said right there, yet repeat that 8x1027 number like a mantra.
Really, if existences do not have beginnings or ends, then "Carbon" must simply be a condition, and not an existence. A Carbon-14 atom undergoing radioactive decay ends the condition "Carbon," and replaces it with the condition "Nitrogen," but the underlying existence (energy) still remains. Energy must be the only "existence" in the entire universe, then, because it is the only thing that is eternal (thank you, laws of conservation). Therefore, your body isn't a collection of 8x1027 anythings. It cannot be, since those are just 8x1027 conditions of energy, and have no existence on their own. Consciousness, too, must be nothing more than energy, so instead of there being over six billion consciousnesses on the planet, there is nothing but energy in a wide variety of conditions.
In other words, if you'd really thought your logic through to its bitter end, you could have proven that nobody exists at all. You certainly don't exist, you're just a condition of energy, by your own definitions.
How this related to ID in any way, I no longer know.
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Energy is a condition. Mass is a condition. They are interchangeable. Existences attain conditions - conditions can flow through existences (most of the electromagnetic spectrum for example) changing each existence in its path until something absorbs or redirects it.
CONJECTURE::::BEWARE::::
Consciousness has a very real physical representation. It is a process - a continuing change in condition in that thing you don't think exists. It likely begins somewhere between the ears for some humans...and somewhere between the glutei maximi for others. |
I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 19:44:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
Originally posted by R.Wreck
Originally posted by THoR
But the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it. |
This sounds suspiciously like cosmic homeopathy.
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I AM NOT A HOMEO...I'd tell you to just ask my wife, but she's in the hospital with prostate problems.
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Yuk Yuk 
Do you have any evidence to support your claim that "the present condition of any element is built upon an eternity of experience and each experience has engraved some form of change upon it"? |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2009 : 20:25:24 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
So you don't object to us throwing out 2000 years of conventional wisdom... |
Weren't you the one who said that common sense is unreliable? I mean, I agree with that.| ...and millions of hours of solid Biblical research? |
Biblical research is largely blind attempts at wish fulfillment, nothing more.| Many a celebrated scholar has gotten his pants scorched since then. BTW: Earth IS the center of the universe (see previous post). |
Actually, a sphere with infinite radius has no defined center. That doesn't mean that you get to pick one.| Au contraire, I understand, I just don't believe what you are saying. |
You don't believe it because you only think you understand what I'm saying. You clearly do not, however. You've got a caricature stuck in your head that you're beating on, and thus you think you're doing well in this discussion.| The onus is upon those who invoke the supernatural. |
Which is you. Enlighten me as to this "entity" which you think conveys consciousness.| Enlighten me as to how emergent properties applies to thought and consciousness (although I've probably already read those sites), will you. |
Nononono. You've eliminated emergent phenomena from everything. We can demonstrate many emergent phenomena, however, so you're simply denying reality. But because we've got tons of evidence for emergent phenomena all over the place, we can't rule out consciousness being another example of one. You have done so, with an alleged "axiom" which you refuse to defend, probably because it's so obviously false.| En garde! Ready to defend. I shall let you strike the first logical blow...please proceed. |
I already have. You've refused to defend your logic.| If I dismantle water, I get hydrogen and oxygen...cuz that is what it is made of. If you mix the O with Fe you get rust. If you mix the H with two parts of Scotch and two cubes of ice - then discard the H - you get a good stiff drink. What's your point? I am not Hamiltonian and I do not dual - what I propose is simple mechanics (see prior post). |
See? No defense there. Just nonsense.| Emergent properties is being used as an escoteric buzzword to cover the inability of science to explain thought and consciousness. |
"Water" is an emergent phenomenon of hydrogen and oxygen. It's not an esoteric buzzword at all when applied to water. You've ruled out, a priori, any possibility of them anywhere, and thus you'll either need to show that hydrogen and oxygen do possess all the qualities of water, or that there is some "water entity" that pervades the universe, just waiting for two hydrogen and one oxygen atom to become joined (just like you seem to want there to be some "consciousness entity" that applies itself to correctly configured brains).| I find it lacking, to say the least. |
Your incredulity is evidence of nothing.What is it a condition of? To what does the condition "energy" apply?Yes, it is.| They are interchangeable. |
No, actually, mass is a condition of energy. They are only interchangeable if a man is interchangeable with the suit he wears. Mass is energy. That's what E=mc2 is all about.| Existences attain conditions... |
I agree.| ...conditions can flow through existences (most of the electromagnetic spectrum for example) changing each existence in its path until something absorbs or redirects it. |
Not according to any modern physics of which I am aware. Of course, you want to throw away the last century of progress (measurable, utilitarian progress), so why not go back to the days when electromagnetic waves were actually waves in some alleged aether?CONJECTURE::::BEWARE::::
Consciousness has a very real physical representation. It is a process - a continuing change in condition in that thing you don't think exists. |
A change in condition isn't even a condition, much less an existence. But I already proved that you don't exist, so what's the point of this again? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Evolution vs. ID: 6 Bones of Contention
