141 thoughts on “Stuck between a rock and an immaterial place”

1. I just commented on this at AtBC.

   Watching KF dance is priceless. He has of course (falsely) asserted he *has* answered the question – he’s done no such thing. This has the potential to be as good as the quasi-semi-latching weasel.

2. Kairosfocus: Again, I say

   Again, he says…

3. Given that, on what basis do you claim that rocks don’t dream?

   Because rocks don’t sleep?

   As good as anything KF will present.

   Glen Davidson

4. GlenDavidson: Because rocks don’t sleep?

   Are you sure of that?

   Maybe they never wake up. They could be always asleep (and dreaming), at least on the KF view of dreaming.

5. I said above that I absolutely agree with you that rocks don’t dream.

   What I am stating that while I can base my belief that rocks don’t dream upon knowledge of their physical structure (which precludes, among other things, computation), you can’t.

   That’s because you deny that the physical structure of human beings (e.g. of their brains) account for the fact that human beings dream (contemplate, etc.). If human physical organization doesn’t account for human dreaming, then the absence of similar/analogous organization in rocks can’t be a basis for the claim that rocks don’t dream.

   So, I know the basis for my belief that rocks don’t dream. On what basis do you claim that rocks don’t dream, and that with the certainty of “principle?”

   KF is hoist on his own peter.

6. Hey, I just remembered that Oxford, where I have stayed sometimes, is the “city of dreaming spires”. Matthew Arnold called them that, and the phrase has stuck. The spires are made of stones, presumably dreaming stones.

7. Joe,

   Hey, I just remembered that Oxford, where I have stayed sometimes, is the “city of dreaming spires”. Matthew Arnold called them that, and the phrase has stuck. They are made of stones, presumably dreaming stones.

   How interesting!

   I found a link to the poem: Thyrsis

8. http://crystal-cure.com/article-dreamstones.html

9. …

   keiths:
   I found a link to the poem: Thyrsis

   …

   Thanks, that is wonderful. Obviously the original phrase is not, as I had said, the “city of dreaming spires” but “that sweet city with her dreaming spires”.

10. Considering all of the brilliance housed at Oxford over the centuries, perhaps some of it did infuse “her dreaming spires”.

11. Stones dream of concrete sheep.

12. Meanwhile, KF hits on the brilliant solution of using the Glasgow Coma Scale.

    Yes, KF. See if the rock “opens eyes in response to painful stimuli”, or “utters inappropriate words”. After all, we know from clinical trials that the GCS is extremely effective in distinguishing conscious rocks from their comatose counterparts.

    Christ.

    Perhaps the real question is whether KF is conscious.

13. An
    Joe Felsenstein,

    Off-topic but I hope you can help me out Joe.

    Keiths and I have had a little misunderstanding over the germ-line/soma distinction with regard to eusocial insects, namely ants. Keith insists I am mistaken about this. As a person whose opinion I greatly respect, I wonder if you might just have a few moments to confirm whether I am indeed mistaken on the issue.

    Here and on

14. Alan,

    Our disagreement isn’t over the distinction between germline and somatic cells. It’s over these issues.

15. Alan Fox and keiths:

    I don’t have time to read all the comments on that thread, and it is OT here. Why doesn’t someone over there pose a question to me and I will see it there and try to answer it there? And please no questions like “Reading all of these comments, do you think my position is right?”

16. Well it is indeed our souls using our memories that is what dreaming is.
    Rocks have no souls or memories. So no dreaming.
    our memory is a part of our physical being while our soul is not or rather its just meshed to the memory.

17. Robert Byers,

    So when a human dies, something continues to exist that has no memory of before, thereby breaking the thread of continuity between the person before-death and after-death?

    So the person-before-death actually simply *dies* at death – ie. stops existing?

    Daing, that sucks.

18. In this case, KF’s phenomenology is certainly worth examining, if only to get an insight into how someone with his mindset joins the dots between cause and effect. The Reciprocator has found a critical point.

    If you are prepared to dig underneath the pompous windbaggery, I suspect you might get an understanding of why creationists believe that “In the beginning was the Word” is a sufficient basis for reliable knowledge about the natural world.

    Of course, I could be wrong. It might turn out that his arguments are nothing but an exercise in reifying mistaken ideas. There are infinitely many ways to be wrong if reification is your bag.

19. Kairosfocus: The manifest truth is that raw rocks are passive entities moved by blind chance and the mechanical necessity of physics and chemistry. They show no centre of volitional or even internally programmed algorithmic control, much less creative intelligent behaviour. When we shape rocks or process them, we may compose computational entities

    So KF is basically saying that rocks don’t dream because they have no brains, but that computers (“processed rocks” …) don’t dream either although they have “brains” – conclusion: brains don’t cause dreams. Am I getting this right?

    I wish Bill good luck in arguing this one; I have no idea how he should go about it. It’s not as if we can demonstrate that sufficiently complex computational systems can produce anything like consciousness or dreams. There’s just no way that you can get rejectionists to go for the default argument: Ockhams Razor. I’m not even sure I know how to defend Ockham’s Razor… Any good posts about that on this site?

20. Gralgrathor,

    So KF is basically saying that rocks don’t dream because they have no brains, but that computers (“processed rocks” …) don’t dream either although they have “brains” – conclusion: brains don’t cause dreams. Am I getting this right?

    KF is claiming that no purely physical system can contemplate or dream…

    Yet again, I say: contemplative mind is categorically different from blindly computing matter, as a rock has no dreams.

    …therefore, humans must be more than mere physical systems.

    Reciprocating Bill is pointing out that while a physicalist has a basis for denying that rocks dream, KF himself does not:

    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?

    It’s KF who needs the luck, not RB.

21. keiths: KF is claiming that no purely physical system can contemplate or dream

    Only just managed to read through the relevant part of the comment thread under that post. Boy, but this guy’s meandering around the issue makes one dizzy.

22. Joe, posting on UD: The physical states exhibited by our brains are necessary but not sufficient to account for human dreams.

    If this is true, then we won’t be able to dream after we die. What a disappointment.

23. Gralgrathor: If this is true, then we won’t be able to dream after we die. What a disappointment.

    He’s trying to have his CAEK and eat it, all assertion with no support, because there are (surprise) no mechanisms. Although KF and RB both think that cognition facilitated through the physical substrate is necessary for dreaming, RB has made the substrate a mechanical entailment,which KF has not. Without the mechanical tie there is no reason to believe that dreaming requires a “brain” at all, which has KF dancing.

24. Richardthughes: which has KF dancing.

    It’s all wonderfully embarrassing.

25. Gralgrathor: It’s all wonderfully embarrassing.

    But nothing new for KF or UD.

26. Bill is back:

    Putting the mind back on the table for discussion

    Poor old Mung, still has a hard-on for Bill after the beating he got. He’s going with “You can then perhaps justify your reason(s) for demanding that kairosfocus justify the premise of an argument in which you both agree upon the truth of the premise.”

    This is bad logic because although they agree, their premises come with different entailments. Funny to watch them dance, though.

27. It’s undeniable: The malevolent supernatural caught on film:

28. For those who aren’t following the thread at UD, RB is referring to this:

    kairosfocus:

    PS: For those pondering the malevolent supernatural, all I will say is that I have personally and in company of dozens, seen that in action in violation of known physics; and I mean basic reliable laws. Things I used to laugh at when as a kid I saw on cartoon Saturdays, I no longer find so funny . . . I begin to wonder about just what lies behind some of those cartoons.

    [Emphasis added]

    LOL. The rest is pretty good, too:

    I cannot deny what I have indisputably seen under circumstances that make convergent mass hallucination from multiple perspectives by people of diverse backgrounds etc essentially a non-starter, and have had to deal with and process those facts. I think we had better begin to think about a world of oracles that can interface with MIMO cybernetic entities, sometimes in very strange ways. Whether or no this sits comfortably with a nice mid-C20 smugly “scientific” mindset.

    Mapou:

    kairosfocus @85,

    Strange post. Please clarify.

    kairosfocus:

    Mapou, that is one I don’t wish to detail. All I will say is that I have recently witnessed the malevolent supernatural in action in ways beyond the reach of physical law, held down to a limit by the Benevolent Supernatural, in the context of rescue of a victim. Along with dozens of others, literally. Here, there be dragons, and I do not mean in the sense of ignorance. KF

    And de duppy shouts “BOO!”

29. keiths,

    Right. So we should probably stop this. Come on, people, the guy needs professional help, not our ridicule.

30. Mapou, that is one I don’t wish to detail. All I will say is that I have recently witnessed the malevolent supernatural in action in ways beyond the reach of physical law, held down to a limit by the Benevolent Supernatural, in the context of rescue of a victim. Along with dozens of others, literally. Here, there be dragons, and I do not mean in the sense of ignorance. KF

    Yes, but it could be aliens instead of the supernatural.

    As long as it’s ID, not creationism.

    Glen Davidson

31. Gralgrathor:
    keiths,

    Right. So we should probably stop this. Come on, people, the guy needs professional help, not our ridicule.

    DON’T SET OFF HIS PERSECUTION COMPLEX.

32. Richard:

    DON’T SET OFF HIS PERSECUTION COMPLEX.

    Oh, God. You’ve done it now, Gralgrathor.

33. What’d I say? What’d I say?

34. This is where hotshoe and petrushka swoop in to tell Reciprocating Bill that he has asked his question too many times.

    Don’t listen to ’em, RB. You’re doing great.

35. Congratulations are nice from wherever they come. But oh, how sweet are self-congratulations!!

36. Kairosfocus: You and R-Bill were saying that a brain is one means of interfacing to the world

    Okay, so KF is saying that our minds are out there somewhere, dreaming and cogitating away, and that brains are just the receiver.

    I’m lost. What does that do to KF’s story?

37. “Interface” suggest that it sits between two things. I think Bill is suggesting that the brain is the final point ‘where the magic happens”.

38. I would say the key question is whether a brain is necessary.

    And if not necessary, why is it there?

    Religion usually treats life as a great gift, but makes it unnecessary. At best it approaches zero percent of the total life of the presumed soul.

39. Mung: Thanks. A brain IS a rock, or more accurately, refined reorganised dust — stardust. That is precisely why it is a GIGO-limited, blindly mechanical computational device and not the credible source of contemplation. It may be very important in processing and interfacing to the world [and the source of confusion where it is damaged or deranged, as in the mad are often very logical but disconnected from reality and a lot of senile dementia can be seen in terms of breakdown of ability to process i/o info flows leading to confusion about, frustration with and gradual isolation from the world* (e.g. losing ability to accurately perceive text** or be able to communicate verbally) . . . ], but that is very different from being the causal root of self-aware, contemplative mindedness. This is of course exactly the point that R-Bill et al struggle to see. KF

    As I get older, my rock gets less and less able to transmit and receive names and seldom-used words.

40. petrushka,

    If they were children, their parents would smile and marvel at their creativity. When a child thinks up such marvellous nonsense, it’s a sign that he’s imaginative, and he’ll do well in school. But it’s truly stunning to think there are probably adults among that crowd.

41. petrushka,

    I would say the key question is whether a brain is necessary.

    And if not necessary, why is it there?

    It’s a question they would prefer not to answer. The brain burns about 20% of our energy, which is a lot of energy to waste on something that is unnecessary.

    The same question applies to bodies. Why do we need them if our souls can function perfectly well without them?

    Religion usually treats life as a great gift, but makes it unnecessary. At best it approaches zero percent of the total life of the presumed soul.

    And in the case of most evangelical Christians, that zero percent — that mere flicker of time spent on earth — is so inflated in importance that it determines whether you spend the other hundred percent in bliss or in agony.

    The wages of sin is death. You stole a candy bar and didn’t repent? An eternity in hell is your just punishment.

42. keiths: It’s a question they would prefer not to answer

    Surely “God The Designer works in mysterious ways” is all the answer you’ll ever need?

43. Gralgrathor,

    Okay, so KF is saying that our minds are out there somewhere, dreaming and cogitating away, and that brains are just the receiver.

    I’m lost. What does that do to KF’s story?

    I did an OP on that recently:

    The shortcomings of the ‘brain as radio receiver’ model

44. keiths:
    Gralgrathor,

    I did an OP on that recently:

    The shortcomings of the ‘brain as radio receiver’ model

    Yeah, but Kairosfocus will never join the conversation here because the heavy handed moderation and bannings for disagreeing with the orthodoxy make it impossible to have an open, honest, rational discussion.

    Oh, wait, that’s UD….

45. This thread reminds me of an old Star Trek joke that begins, you can lead a Horta culture.

46. Gralgrathor:
    keiths,

    Right. So we should probably stop this. Come on, people, the guy needs professional help, not our ridicule.

    The exchange between Vince Torley and aiguy is is much more the sort of thing I’d like to see happening here.

47. As Lizzie said

    There are plenty of blogs and forums where people with like priors can hang out and scoff at those who do not share them.

    Then generously adds:

    There’s nothing wrong with those sites, and I’ve learned a lot from them. But the idea here is to provide a venue where people with very different priors can come to discover what common ground they share; what misunderstandings of other views they hold; and, having cleared away the straw men, find out where their real differences lie.

48. What Lizzie missed, I think, was how much some people enjoy the self-congratulatory aspect of these types of spaces. I mean, I take it people “pity” atheists at religious sites, so how are people not going to fire back with ridicule at non-religious sites? And then everyone can revel in how much better and smarter, etc. they are than those other nincompoops.

    That’s basically what the internet is for these days, no?

49. There’s an important distinction to be drawn between ridicule for the sake of ridicule, versus ridicule in service of a legitimate purpose.

    Here’s a great example of the appropriate use of ridicule:

    On the Effectiveness of Ridicule and Mockery

50. Alan Fox: The exchange between Vince Torley and aiguy is is much more the sort of thing I’d like to see happening here.

    I see why. That’s actually very good. Not an average ID-nut either, that VJ.