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?
Why can’t an omnipotent God explain it in a way that is within human comprehension?
Sort of an emergent property of a particular physical thing?
Some people’s perspective is based on what they believe others say. Or what others say what others say.
“A world view or worldview is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual’s or society’s knowledge and point of view.”
1) Why would he want to?
2) He does this better thing instead
and this
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
(1Co 2:9-12)
end quote;
peace
No idea, maybe for the same reason He reveals anything else. But if He could if He choose then the idea of a personal God is incomprehensible because God choose for it to be.
Except it seems why the idea of a personal God is not incomprehensible.Just saying ,it must be something we need to take on faith even though it is logical.
Sounds almost too good to be true.
but wait there is more 😉
quote:
and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
(1Co 2:4-8)
peace
Are emergent properties reducible to physics?
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Do you honestly think posting excerpts from the bible helps to clarify your points?
To those with eyes to see it will for sure.
The rest of you can hopefully better understand what it is you reject even if you will never be persuaded.
That is really all anyone of us can ask from these sorts of discussions.
peace
I agree that we should not expect to persuade others, only to have a cordial and productive exchange that may not change views of any participant.
But I add one very important proviso: when people post quotes*, I think they should explain briefly in their own words why they quote is relevant and how what it is arguing supports a position.
I say that because for me productive discussions involve reasoning. But because you privilege revelation for knowledge, I suspect you don’t agree with that starting point.
———————–
*S/O to Mung.
Indeed. Posting unresponsive walls of text is akin to spamming.
Has it? Did the same person walk out of the transporter as the person that entered it? I think that the experiment shows that continuity is important for how we think about personal identity, because our experience tells us that disassembling a person into tiny bits tends to be lethal.
Man, this thought experiment really ruins watching old Star Trek episodes.
Is causal history supernatural?
You today are not the same at all physically as you as a child. Every physical aspect of you has changed. You are not the same psychologically either: Your personality and memories differ. If someone knew you only as a child, and then encountered you at random now, they likely would not initially recognize you as an adult as the same person as the child they knew.
But most of us would say that you as child and adult are indeed the same person.
Try this: Both physical and psychological are linked by a sequence of causally-related events. That would work for no-accident transported Kirk in normal circumstances too. So maybe physical or psychological causal history are possibilities for defining personal identity.
The Star Trek double Kirk episode poses this issue. Let K0 be Kirk at the start, K1 and K2 be the duplicates. If one says both are the real Kirk, K1=K0 and K2=K0, but one could claim that that K1≠K2 (since here physical and psychological nature are unrelated after the transporter accident). We normally expect a=c and a=b to imply b=c, so that seems wrong (technically, we expect equality to be transitive). .
But if one says neither K1 nor K2 is the real Kirk, then why is this case different from no-accident transport? You can add the condition that K1 falls into a volcano a day after the accident if that helps clarify the issue for the duplicated scenario.
Yes, I just posted an extended riff on that.
I post this one in memory of KeithS and a certain Swampman we both once knew:
Suppose a transporter malfunctions, starts to act completely at random. Just by chance it creates a pattern that exactly duplicates Kirk. The malfunction continues and this pattern is materialized. It’s the same pattern as the “real” Kirk. But is it Kirk? If not, what is different from the usual transporter scenario?
One could point to lack of continuity to resolve that. So add this: someone is watching the random patterns with an AI assistant. When the AI says the random pattern matches Kirk’s, the person has the pattern materialize. Is that enough to add the needed continuity?
These scenarios are fun, but in the end they make my brain hurt. I need a break. Maybe a movie. I was thinking Total Recall or Return of Martin Guerre.
So as a test for FMM 101, let me try that.
God does not explain. God reveals. Or not.
It’s missing some approaches (like the perspectivalism from the Aeon article KN linked), it is biased to the realist approach Psillos prefers, and it’s missing recent responses to the arguments he offers for realism. But I do still think it is a great starting point if one is serious about scientific realism.
SEP does tend to plunge into the deep end, and IEP (and Wiki!) are less reliable if one wants to be careful about peer review.
I dip into this one from time to time for up to date view:
They are fun, but also a little unnerving. Perhaps you should watch Blade Runner?
I came across a 2015 thread covering the same ground. I’ll post a link when I get home. I agree with you and Corneel that the best use of these scenarios are as plot lines. I recall that was offered as one reason for such thought experiments, might even have been keiths who offered it.
Did you try imagining yourself as K1 and K2 (not simultaneously 😉)?
Reason is involved but it’s not the starting point and it’s not naked human reasoning but reasoning sanctified by God so that God rather than man gets the glory.
Revelation might involve explanation but it does not have too. The point is that God can do what ever it takes.
It might be helpful to think of it as you would a conversation with any person. It often involves lots of different aspects but the end result is you know stuff you did not know going in.
peace
I have a slightly different reaction. I begin with the idea that one Kirk can’t be two. The different scenarios just seem like futile attempts to do the impossible from my perspective.
I think that either a working transporter is impossible or the result is always one or more new intelligent beings and a dead Kirk.
I am probably alone but I would go out on a limb and say that given enough time and effort Spock could tell the difference between Kirk he knew and what ever came out the other side.
peace
If one allows so-called supernatural approaches, then the soul is the best bet for personal identity. It would make sense for souls to be indivisible and unduplicatable in transporters.
Right, I posted about that earlier in another of my unfunny jokes (the one about me being sure I was the real one and the other one was wrong when he insisted he was the real one).
Of course, delusional people imagine themselves as many other people. The other Kirk would be delusional. Or so each Kirk would say. But should an outsider say both are or neither is?
The soul does not have to be some sort of immaterial thing that is added to the physical body of Kirk.
It could just be a description of who Kirk is. Kirk is a person and not just a physical body. Rather than saying Kirk has a soul we could say Kirk is a soul.
peace
BruceS,
Dunno. Not sure how K1 and K2 would react together. They could compare notes and experiences. Could they learn to share? Whose money is in the bank account? Who gets to command the Enterprise?
As much as one can say anything really makes sense here, would it? Seems just a matter of personal preference. Never quite understood the attraction of an immortal soul.
If they are persons they could
Kirk’s, The imposter is not entitled to Kirk’s money
Kirk is the one entitled to command the Enterprise
Whether the imposter can steal the ship depends on his ability to fool the crew like he is fooling himself.
peace
Who said anything about the soul being immortal.
Kirk is dead when the transporter is switched on.
peace
If you do that, then you have to respond to the continuity arguments. ETA: I mean no one is the same physical or psychological entity they were a few years ago, but few would say they are not the same person.
ETA: I guess you could bite the bullet and say we are a new person with each breath (new O2) and each new thought, but that would be lead poisoning from my viewpoint.
fifthmonarchyman,
The scenario Bruce and I are discussing involves original Kirk, K0, dematerialised, and two new Kirks, K1 and K2, identical to the last particle when materialised. There’s either no imposter or both are.
All good questions. And I think they would both share life projects with K0, at least to start with, which is something that is important to Parfit as I recall. So that might make agreement easier. It would amount, however, to both admitting neither has claim to be the “real” Kirk, at least as far as any social conventions/implications go.
And does not really address the “should” bit of my previous question, namely what standards be used to make a decision on with neither or both is same person as Kirk, or perhaps to decide that no decision is possible.
So I flunk FMM 101! Seriously, maybe I can get at the core of the issue as I see it like this:
Does the theme of the book of Job still bear on your beliefs? If so, what is that theme?
My view is that the theme is that humans must not expect to understand God’s motivations and plans: God owes humans no explanation. That theme does play into my understanding of what type of God I could believe in.
I don’t need to worry because I think we are purely physical entities, so I conclude K1 and K2 are equally entitled to assets of K0. Would they agree? Might they prefer the toss of a coin?
You need to decide first what standards can be applied.
Why not?
Then that seems to be problem with your perspective.
That’s probably correct. But then people thought that about heavier than air flying machines.
Since K0 has dematerialized previously to this event, if the latest versions are imposters ,they would be imposters of an imposter.
Ah, but by analogy with
multiplying two imposters gets you back to real.
Oh yeah, forgot the inverse law of imposters.Thanks
On the contrary, that realization is the goal of FMM 101.If you are not confused you are not doing it right.
Extinction is scary.
Sorry, the more it seems too good to be true, the more I expect it is made up.
Good question, can we we feel with our fingers the immaterial?
It seems to be the exactly the same pattern. All their clothes seem to fit , memory is intact.
As demonstrated by “Fargo”.
Sometimes, one has to just let great art flow over you and not over analyze it.
But, as Bruce already suggested, this might be a swampman scenario. How can we tell for sure?
Come to think of it. In “Big Fish” that guy seemed to be fine again.
I think the core issue is this:
Does personal identity depend only on what structure and capabilities of the current state of the system? Or does it depend also on the system’s causal history?
I think the way to resolve this issue in general is to understand that the purpose and context of the question determines how to answer it.
Dennett’s example of a perfectly counterfeited quarter is a good starting point. By definition, its current state is indistinguishable from a real quarter. So if we wanted to know if it would work in a vending machine that takes quarters, then the answer is yes. But if we wanted to know if it is a real quarter (and not a forgery) the answer is no.
For personal identity, is this something that depends on causal history or only on current state?
It seems to me that the example of child to adult shows that the everyday understanding of personal identity requires a sequence of causal events of the right type. I think “right type” excludes randomness, or inserted memory by evil Martian terrorists, or soldiers faking memories. Butt it does include machines designed to read patterns and project them to the planet’s surface.
If we do not know the causal history, we should not answer the question.
OK, I’m not sure why that forces us to look for some sort of immaterial substance that we call a soul.
I’d say continuity results from God’s understanding a particular person to be Kirk.
The same way that I might change a handle on my axe when it breaks and later change the axe head when it wears out.
The object I own at the beginning of the process and at the end of the process is the same if I consider it to be the same.
peace
Logic
peace
I say the theme is that we should trust that God has good plans and purpose even if we don’t understand them right now.
I would certainly agree with that. god does not have to explain anything to us but sometimes he chooses to do just that
Any type of God that you or I could of ourselves believe in is guaranteed to be a false one 😉
peace
See my most recent comment to Bruce 😉
peace
Well, I think God is immaterial. Maybe material too at some times.
But that aside, I suppose you can suggest any answer you want if you are allowed to take that route. There’s a guy at PS who is arguing that basically anything he hankers after exists because it exists in God’s mind.
But it’s too cheap an answer for me. I’d want an explanation of when God would say it is the same person and when God would deny that. The answer Job got might work for theodicy, but relying on it for personal identity would be a bit much for me.
If you say it is up to you, FMM, then either you are saying God revealed it to you in a necessarily reliable manner, which then gets back to the above concern, or you are just stating your personal opinion. If you want me to take your opinion seriously (and you need not want that), then I’d want a detailed explanation.
First K0 then K1 and K2
There is only one Kirk any other K is an imposter.
I guess this gives me more of a headache than I thought it did. 😉
If you want to really make the thought experiment fun think of the resurrection.
Here God chooses to physically resurrect an individual in a way that may be analogous to what we are thinking with a transporter.
The point is that an individual that exists after the resurrection is exactly the same one who existed perhaps thousands of years earlier.
peace