If Darwinism fails then supernatural causes are back on the table and should be included in science.
I do not think there can be a science of the supernatural.
I do not think that if Darwinism fails that supernatural causes will become acceptable.
If the hope of ID is that supernatural causes will be allowed back into science if they can only just get rid of Darwinism, ID is doomed.
The tools and methods of ID cannot differentiate a supernatural cause from a natural cause anyways.
Thoughts?
No it’s logic. The law of non-contradiction requires that the individual Kirk can’t be two individuals. Because one can’t be two.
I would say that Kirk was always a he in the Mind of God at least.
I don’t remember it clearly.
That is why I introduced the thought experiment from Reid so there are no cinematic complications
peace
I would say that the convention that is challenged is the one that holds that Kirk is reducible to physics.
It seems silly to abandon logic in order to hold on to this presupposition
peace
I am talking about a subset of things that the resident philosophers appear to refer to as “qualia”: Bodily sensations and emotional states. Emotional states can be “shared”. Both require consciousness.
Clear?
Your dogs have a compelling tendency for you? That’s so sweet, Fifth.
I disagree. If animals are, as you say, “instinctual beings where X yields Y” then they are as worthy of love and protection as a robot or a machine. I don’t think they are entitled to the same rights as humans, but I do believe they deserve a little better than being treated as inanimate objects.
One of the conventions that is being challenged is that being Kirk is restricted to a single individual. Two times one equals two. That’s logic as well, right?
ETA: It is interesting that you think you know what the outcome of the experiment would be, were it possible to perform it. Question: when the teletransporter disassembles Kirk, does he die?
The law of non-contradiction does not mention “Kirk”.
It is human convention that maps what we call “individuals” into logical objects in our logical models of reality. And these mappings are imperfect.
Right. You can make a stab at answering this question because it is a given that humans exist, and also a given that environmental factors/equipment/material inputs exist. Knowing that these are possible explanations you can then evaluate and weigh up the evidence pro and con each of them, and arrive at a reasoned conclusion as to which one of them most likely caused the result.
This is a Bayesian approach, you work out the likelihood of a result given the priors (or rather, your estimate of the priors). When it comes to unidentified designers this approach fails until you have established with reasonable confidence that such an entity actually exists. This should be obvious, because unless the entity exists you cannot validly invoke it as the explanation.
Simply pronouncing the likelihood of an unidentified designer as ‘1’ and therefore making them a prior with equal likelihood as environmental factors/equipment/material inputs whose existence is known, is invalid.
Saying that there is a finite likelihood of an unidentified designer because of the nature of the result, and then use that likelihood of an unidentified designer to draw the conclusion that the result is designed, is quite obviously hopelessly circular.
Yes, he’s very good. I can’t help thinking that he’s wrong about everything, though.
I have to say that I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s getting at myself. This may well be my own fault: I haven’t been paying the closest attention. But in either case, it’s pretty clear that he’s having fun, and I don’t see why that should be downplayed. I didn’t really get it when my younger daughter was wildly interested in Pikachu either (though I did love the name of one of the characters (“Dark Rye”).
Block is definitely someone I enjoy reading. I liked most of his arguments against functionalism, in its most general form,as viable for explaining for phenomenal experience
But I do think neurofunctionalism is promising; Blocks 2007 on Functional Reduction makes metaphysical arguments against it, but they don’t appeal to me (even though they may be philosophically well-argued ).
I also enjoyed his 2007 Mesh paper and its commentary His 2007 on Witt was beyond me. I also agree with his 1999 paper with Stalnaker on scientific identifications, where they argue against a Chalmers/Jackson paper which differs is to my liking, although I have only read summaries of it.
Pretty clear. So according to that understanding I would say my dog does not have “feelings”. At least he does not have feelings that are like mine enough to say that he is a person like me with “qualia” .
This is that hostility that I often sense when I try to say that there is a difference between humans and animals.
I have a great dog. I like him a lot I like to think he likes me too. I spoil him. He eats better than me a lot of the time. Sometimes I think my purpose in life is to cater to his every craving and creature comfort.
but he is not a person.
The irony here is that that is exactly what Dennett and Alan think we humans are. They do not think that there is any more to us than physics. According to them we do just what our physical instincts tell us to do with nothing above the physical making choices.
I agree with them completely when it comes to animals just not persons. I’m sure Alan does not think of himself as a machine or a robot. By the exact same token I don’t think of animals that way either.
I Just think we humans are unique in the animal kingdom we are not reducible to physics we are supernatural.
I agree, I never suggested otherwise they are animals and as such have more in common with us than anything else in the universe. They should be treated with compassion and kindness. They are just not persons
peace
Are you really going to go down the same road as Zachriel the poster here who refers to himself in the plural?
It’s pretty simple really
If Kirk is a person he is an individual. That is because two individual persons can’t share the same consciousness.
I don’t think that you could disassemble a person’s body with out killing him.
peace
The law of non-contridiction holds universally if Kirk exists it holds for him too.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
Individuals are singular regardless of human convention.
They are individuals because one is not two (at the same time and in the same respect)………ever
peace
Right you only live once. Relax and enjoy the ride.
peace
It is a given that humans do exist (I like the term person better) but it is not a given that they are not reducible to physics. If it was a given then this conversation would not be happening.
You could, but you would be left with mere probability and probability arguments suck.
On the other hand merely to say that an object is designed because of the nature of the result is not circular because as you pointed out it’s a given that designers exist and we are not ascribing the design to anyone in particular unidentified or otherwise.
peace
It’s a law of logic. It isn’t a law of physics or a law of nature.
Then there are no individuals.
Human language depends on human conventions.
See the absurd implications of your worldview.
Nothing was distinguishable at all for billions of years until humans arrived to do the distinguishing.
Come to think of it the billions of years did not exist either because you can’t count to a billion with out starting with one.
There is an alternative viewpoint if you are interested. 😉
That is your opinion anyway.
I like fishing.
Those two statements are of about equal worth.
peace
And as such it works for physical things and things that are not physical. Anything that exists really, that necessarily includes Kirk.
peace
It’s not possible that there are two Kirk’s but it is possible that there is one Kirk who now has two bodies.
That would work the same way as one person having two different hearts before and after a transplant. or the cells in persons body being replaced over time so that the physical matter in an old man’s body is different than the physical matter in his body when he was a child.
All of this should serve to drive the point home that there is more to persons than the physical.
Now that strange state of two-body-Kirk only works if the two separate bodies share the same experiences in some way. That seems to be difficult given our present understanding of the world.
peace
I don’t agree with that. However, “individual” is meaningless without human conventions to give meaning to the word. And you have denied the role of human conventions. It is as a corollary to that denial, that I say there are no individuals.
As a law of logic, it works for logical entities. Physical things are not logical entities. We often treat them as if they are logical entities, but that is a matter of human convention.
I don’t recall writing the sentence attributed to me here.
Doesn’t he have feelings, or doesn’t he have feelings that are like yours? There’s an important difference.*
Sorry if you thought that comment sounded hostile. I wasn’t trying to be mean-spirited. Merely trying to drive the point home that the paragraph above does not harmonize with the detached description of your dog’s affection as “a compelling tendency”.
That’s good. It’s just that it is the being conscious part that justifies the compassion and kindness towards animals.
ETA: * and why do we refer to your dog as a “he”, when he is not a person?
Quite right. So according to you, when the teletransporter reassembles the exact molecular configuration that was Kirk’s body, all we get is an inanimate corpse, right?
Can’t speak for Dennett, but the most important and interesting question is: How do our brains work? Whilst we can slice the problem in all sorts of ways, from the bottom up and biochemistry, top down and psychology, evo-devo and comparative physiology and ways I’ve not thought of and others are working on, we’re a long way off exhausting all the possibilities of scientific research.
This is an inaccurate summary of my position. E. coli can make simple choices. Do they have an immaterial element involved in the process? I say we don’t need to consider that until we understand the physical processes well enough to show they are inadequate.
More black-and-white thinking. Awareness is a continuum.
That’s one assumption that’s fairly accurate. I was faced with reality many years ago when, having cracked a bone as a kid, the doctor showed me the X-ray of my leg. I was somewhat shocked to see that I had bones in my leg just like the skeleton in biology lab.
I have to say, your comments are full of non sequiturs. I’ve no problem that you disagree about whether we need supernatural stuff to address the “how do our brains work” question but It is somewhat irritating when you claim you can demonstrate “the supernatural” scientifically while continuing to fail to do so.
You do have a point here somewhere, but we need to unpack it a bit to see what it is, and how it might relate to supernatural science.
Let’s go to that familiar ID thought experiment, the unidentified object we find on Mars. It is a complex non-human looking machine that we don’t understand, so we conclude it has been designed.
Well, yes, but why do we conclude that? The first thing we will check is if this is indeed an artefact or an organism (living or dead). Why is this important? Simply because artefacts are manufactured, constructed, whereas organisms are born, or hatch, or grow from seeds or use any of the many forms of propagation. If the object has been screwed, welded or glued together it clearly needs someone or something to do that, someone with a plan, a design. Organisms don’t need that, they grow of their own accord (albeit often with some outside help). After all, parents don’t construct their children in a workshop, they seed them.
If we conclude that the object is an organism we don’t need to posit a designer, just like we don’t need to posit a designer every time a chicken egg hatches. If it is manufactured we will posit a designer because that is the only way it could have originated.
We don’t know the designer, but we can have some theories abut them: it could be the Chinese, who built it and managed to put it on Mars without anyone noticing; or it could be Ernst Blofeld’s organisation SPECTRE who put there and it is a device to blow up the Earth; or it might indeed be an artefact built by aliens. We could try and find out by talking to the Chinese, or by sending in James Bond, or by carefully studying the object to see if it might give us some clues as to the conditions it was built under.
What we wouldn’t do is conclude that, because we don’t understand how it works and we don’t know the identity of the designer, is conclude that it must be a supernatural object.
Or perhaps you get an entirely new person who just happens to look and act like Kirk did.
peace
Again that is your opinion. I think It’s God who gives meaning.
That presupposition does not have the sorts of absurd implications we were just discussing.
Your position simply assumes with out warrant that there are no other possible persons to give meaning to language. That assumption leads to the implication that there was no meaning before the arrival of humans and also that humans can manufacture meaning out of whole cloth.
I just don’t find that position to be tenable
peace
Dennett definitely believes biological evolution is not physics. He wrote books about evolution on how important it was to science. One can argue that he takes it too far in his ideas of memes and cultural evolution; such arguments are more in Gregory’s territory.
Or see YT video links below (in particular the emergence one).
I read FMM’s comments on Dennett’s ideas on qualia and evolution as attacking a strawman Dennett bogeyman for rhetorical purposes
See emergence video on playlist at right
You say human convention I say revelation.
The one position can never rise above subjective personal opinion the other can reach objective certainty.
peace
Doesn’t have feelings like mine. I’m a person he is an animal. For some reason when I say feelings you think qualia. That is not what I mean when I am talking about animals
Why?? Aren’t you justified in being kind and compassionate to someone who is asleep or in a persistent vegetative state??
For folks like Dennett and Alan no one is conscious the way I understand it surely you don’t think that they are unjustified in treating folks with kindness and compassion.
peace
It’s also proper to refer to things like cars and boats with personal pronouns I would not read a lot into it.
peace
I never once said that I could demonstrate “the supernatural” scientifically. Science is not the only way to demonstrate stuff as witnessed by the thought experiment.
peace
See Corneel it’s just as I said.
Alan thinks that what humans do when they choose is like what E. coli does. That does not stop him from treating humans with compassion.
I would just say that what my dog does is similar but vastly more complex than what E. coli does but what humans do is different.
peace
I just don’t think you can come to a conclusive conclusion based on a singular object all you can really do is say that it’s very improbable and make educated guesses as to it’s origin.
I think some of us would do just that.
But it could never be more than a educated guess based on experience when looking at a singular object.
My method does not look at single artifacts but at contiguous behavior over time or space.
peace
BruceS,
I wonder if we are at cross-purposes. Does Dennett think it will be impossible to account for human awareness without involving “supernatural” elements? I’m tempted to email him. 📃📝💻👲
(Just found how to add android emojis. I’ll get over it.)
Have you had any experience of the supernatural?
Evolution may not be physics for the materialist but it can be reduced to physics.
If it couldn’t they would not be materialist.
peace
Yes.
I’m talking to you right now and you are supernatural.
peace
I think it’s a presupposition for him that there are no supernatural elements.
By the way what exactly is a supernatural element?
Elements are natural, persons are supernatural
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I did not know that! I suspect it’s how you define the word.
Oh dear, Fifth, “element” as in item, part of an idea or argument.
👺
Have you not been paying any attention at all??
This whole discussion began with the definition of supernatural
peace
OK those things may or may not be supernatural depending on if they are reducible to physics.
I’m not a cartesian dualist I don’t think persons are composed of two different parts one physical and another supernatural.
I think that persons in their entirety are supernatural.
peace
If you say so. What do you mean by “supernatural”? Other than for reifying, I can’t see much point in the word.
What does that really mean?
ETA I mean the use of “supernatural” in the above sentence.
I mean people are real, part of observable reality. If you cut us, do we not bleed? I suspect an idiosyncrasy lurking.
You are incorrect about materialism: it only requires our explanations be compatible with physics, not that they are expressed using the language physics. That is where you misunderstand Dennett’s accounts for evolution.
He believes it is impossible to account for human awareness and evolution using only physics.
The videos start to explain his understanding of “account for” (which I take as referring to scientific explanation)
He does not deny that such accounts have to be compatible with physics — no ‘supernatural’ entities for example (my views on this term above). Instead, he describes how we humans cannot account for biological evolution using physics (and neither could a Laplacian quantum demon as explained on the video).
For Dennett’s understanding of qualia, see the Frankish paper I linked (which he praises in comments on it).
Also see Dennett’s latest Bacteria to Bach and Back, Chapters 7 and 8, for his ideas on evolution (7) and the key role of neurons in understand brain function (8); I refer to this as neofunctionalism. Also see chapter 8 in the roles/need for living neurons as part of best current accounts for brains and then qualia. (But I still like Frankish better for explaining illusionism.)
I’m not sure what “only physics” means. Do you mean impossible without including more than current and potential reality?
That’s surprising. I didn’t think you would consider that to be an option.
How would the required non-physical ingredient become part of new-Kirk? Where would that come from?
BruceS,
Oops! I reread your comment and I see you clarify this.