Kairosfocus has a new OP at UD entitled Putting the mind back on the table for discussion. His argument begins thus:
Starting with the principle that rocks have no dreams:
Reciprocating Bill points out that since KF denies physicalism, he has no principled basis for denying the consciousness of rocks:
If the physical states exhibited by brains, but absent in rocks, don’t account for human dreams (contemplation, etc.) then you’ve no basis for claiming rocks are devoid of dreams – at least not on the basis of the physical states present in brains and absent in rocks. Given that, on what basis do you claim that rocks don’t dream?
Needless to say, KF is squirming to avoid the question.
I’ve got popcorn in the microwave. Pull up a chair.
Mind/spirit doesn’t make a rock or a human brain or any matter dream. It is the mind/spirit that dreams.Humans don’t have “something extra” that allows them to dream; they are that which dreams, not their physical body.
William,
Are you even trying?
If a human “mind/spirit” can
a) dream, and
b) associate itself with a physical human body,
then why can’t a rock “mind/spirit”
a) dream, and
b) associate itself with a rock “body”?
In other words, when you see a rock, how do you (and KF) know that it is incapable of dreaming?
Physicalists have good reasons for claiming that rocks don’t dream. What are your reasons?
To be clear, we are talking ‘rock the entity’, not ‘rock the
substrate’
Bill’s latest is great. It made me blurt out laughing on the plane, eliciting some strange looks. Bravo, Bill!
KF is tap dancing like mad, but he gives the farm away here:
No evidence?
Yes, I can see how that might be a problem. Not for ID, of course, but for completely different matters.
Glen Davidson
Um, William, asserting that is not demonstrating that!
Please demonstrate the truth of your claim in some way other then a mere assertion, just as you ask others to do in exactly the same situation.
Or, you know, don’t, and, um, what’s that word beginning with h again….
Reciprocating Bill’s question involves a categorical error.
Bzzzt. Meaningless philosophical buzzword alarm. You lose.
(Please, someone invent a Shallit’s law for “category error” the way Godwin’s law applies to Nazi references. “Category error” is just a cheap way of claiming a profound insight when none exists.)
Erm, William J Murray *is* a category error. Does that count?
RB’s latest riposte ends with this:
And there’s Joe Gallien clearly not following what Bill has said.
Latest:
RB sneaks in a reference to Mung and Joe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVcbasIb8lQ
Mung self-diagnoses:
I wish phoodoo were that perceptive.
KF posts 65 points over 3 posts that don’t address the question. He seems to be asserting that conscious entities MUST have certain entailments, but can’t support it.
Bill’s response is priceless.
Lurking and smiling.
And it continues!
This may well surpass latching.
..and it continues, KF has now engaged the Loudspeaker in the ceiling, which I believe was banned at UD historically (it is terrible form, must try harder etc).
We should show him some compassion. After all, it must be incredibly frustrating to not be able to feel intellectually superior even at UD.
I do wonder. Montserrat is in some ways an island paradise. Cut off from the instabilities and chaos of the wider world (apart from the very real chance that the volcano that created the island will erupt again soon) must give anyone living there a skewed outlook on reality. But how much influence does G. have? Who listens? Does the fact that we notice encourage and distract him from enjoying what he has? Does the fact that G. has never had a pat on the head from the ID hierarchy worry him at all? Am I being mean?
The hypocrisy is at such a mind-blowing level he can’t be aware he’s doing it?
He gets asked a simple question, goes in every possible direction (BATSHIT77 meets Gish Gallup) without remotely addressing it then calls out Bill for bad faith arguing / strawmaning etc. Straight to pearl clutching. Just admit Bill is right, KF, you’re embarrassing yourself like you did with your utter miscomprehesion of Dawkin’s Weasel.
Bydand! What a a terrible culture warrior. Funny to watch though. DON’T LET GO, BILL!
KF has written “game over” 4 times now, clearly it isn’t. He’s also taking to adding “loudspeaker from the sky” to the start of Bills post’s. This is frankly odious behavior and reeks of a desperate, unscrupulous and small-minded man.
Also: http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/evolutions-idiot-stepchild-evolutionary-psychology-this-time-without-the-stupid-comments/
“NEW RULE AT UD: No more bold insertions into existing comments. I’ve done it as has DaveScot. That’s now a thing of the past. One-comment-one-poster is now the rule.”
KF cannot live up to Dembski’s standards, apparently.
I avoid giving UD page hits now, but I’m wondering if this is all about KF’s apparent inability to admit to being wrong in even the smallest matter. The whole “latching” fiasco seemed to stem from that one character flaw. Is this more of the same?
Out of curiosity, has he ever admitted making a mistake or, goddess forfend, changed his mind based on evidence and logic?
I think he gets the transitive property of infallibility from the designer. Worst kind of pulpit bully. He’s clearly in early stage meltdown, marking up Bills texts and dumping anything he can think of on the page, whilst declaring victory.
KF Still can’t answer the question:
Never let go, Bill.
more KF idiocy at 172:
Wait a minute, KF, you idiot! Why would Reciprocating Bi!! even begin to try to show a rock with se!f-awareness? Bill and the rest of us rational people know that rocks can’t be conscious because rocks don’t have the kind of complex flexible organization that we know is required to give rise to consciousness/self-awareness. It’s dupes like you, KF, not us, who think that consciousness is Magic superimposed onto some kinds of physical structures – such as human brains, but maybe also other physical structures. Like some kinds of rocks, maybe? Why not? What’s your explanation as to why your god could not or would not do that?
How could you tell, KF, if your god had decided to add its Magic to some otherwise-inert-appearing rock?
Your nonsense about human/computer intelligence tests is just a distractor. KF, what makes you stupid enough to think that the Glasgow coma scale can possibly indicate anything about a physical being without eyes, mouth, or inherent ability to show movement? That’s more stupid than somebody claiming we can’t possibly have color vision because we don’t respond by buzzing and circle-dancing when we’re exposed to the UV markings on flower petals. You need to invent a Rock Coma Scale that a “conscious rock” could actually respond to.
And you’d better be prepared to take a very very long time as you perform your test, KF. Maybe a geological scale of time. I’m pretty sure that rock consciousness, whatever it consists of, operates too slowly for us non-omniscient non-eternal humans to perceive.
KF. Try. Harder.
RTH:
As you can probably imagine, I’m getting pretty bored with the discussion. Although that could be the influence of a poltergeist.
How do you know you’re not a rock imagining being not a rock?
A rock in a vat?
Rocks may not even need vats. Because, non natural forces.
Bill, give me your Paypal. Ill fund this for ever!
Onlookers:
In a brilliant and decisive maneuver, KF has closed comments on that thread. Melding the sublime and the ridiculous, he did so after this exchange:
KF:
RB:
At which moment he thought it a wise to block my further comments. D’oh!
His final comments included the following bit of fiction:
KF:
My planned (now panned) reply:
—
You’re looking in the wrong place, KF. The OP to which I refer was the OP that kicked off this conversation, here:
My first comment on that thread:
Your reply:
The “we” in your statement obviously refers to human beings generally – unless you are not a human being, but rather a neural network computational substrate, in which case I apologize.
—
Alas, we will never know why rocks can’t also have the secret sauce.
Oh, i can think of a few more alternatives, so as to not make that a false dichotomy – but they’re none too flattering to KF, and a moot point anyways since I’m not commenting at UD. Well, just one I can’t resist: KF is a demon put in our world as part of a large plan to get us to hate ‘christian hypocrisy” in particular and christians in general. His intelligence, such as it is, is produced neither by natural biological organization nor by god/designer “special sauce”, which is what KF mistakenly believes; rather his intelligence/self-awareness is an emergent property of the demonic spell which animates the spit and paper from which he was assembled. Poor KF. How could he know? How could he tell that his own consciousness, which really feels like a product of godly-sauce to him, is no better than witchcraft?
Too mean? I’m not sorry. Almost everyone I know is at least nominally christian, and no-one I know personally is the sickening hypocrite that KF is. People like him deserve to be mocked and poked at (metaphorically) until they cry.
And he’s off Meandering again:
RB passes the baton to MF:
“327
Mark Frank
July 9, 2014 at 5:10 am
KF #321
I cannot find anywhere in this long comment where you show that is self-evident that there must be an enabling condition for an event which takes place in some possible worlds but not others. Clearly pointing to examples will not prove that it is self-evident.”
KF hoped to revive the discussion vis GIGO in a new thread. However, he’s only muttering to himself, as the eight of the thirteen entries are his, including the last five.
The Mullings Meander in full force. You’ll never escape the TL;DR maze of self referential but in no way grounded on the issue decretum.
KF gets his “circle squared”
Hilarity ensues.
Wow, what a load bullshit those so-called “fallacies” are. It’s like nitwit village over there.