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?
But your labeling of the “original” walto is based on uniqueness and continuity, the very things that are violated in the thought experiment.
Blessed be He who has granted FMM the ability to confuse himself into thinking his arguments for the existence of God are sound.
You are repeatedly fooled by bad arguments. I expect you would be fooled by an exact replica of your wife.
Yes, I agree that some kind of community if inquirers is needed. I should have mentioned this. In my original draft, I also brought in my standard “objective process”, which will emerge from the practices of successful communities, at least for scientific ones. Or so I think.
Geez, my attempts at humor are misfiring even more than usual this morning.
Oops, sorry. I was just agreeing with–and amplifying–your remark. If it was a joke, it was nevertheless true!
I agree, but there are a ton of new books and papers on him every year, even in this lesser world.
One thing that does seem to confirm you view is something that Jim Van Cleve (whose book “Problems from Reid” is excellent) recently expressed sadness about: the “Reid Studies” Journal name change (to “Journal of Scottish Philosophy”).
I remember (and miss) Sophistocat. What is PF? And maybe if you tell him/her that Keitrick has gone he/she will return!!
Re Putnam, his take on those issues are (were 🙁 ) a function of what period Putnam you are reading. He went back and forth on realism several times. I wrote about this in a paper on so-called “cognitive predicaments” that’s in my Hall book. I can send it to you if I haven’t already.
I can imagine that animals have similar emotions to me but I simply have no way knowing what they experience if anything. It’s possible that their responses are all instinctive reactions to stimuli.
If they are then they are persons and not animals.
OK so we disagree on this one.
Is there any empirical way to demonstrate that one of us is right and the other wrong or are we just left with our individual opinions?
Like I said before to Walto my position here is a religious one based on revelation.
I have no problem with you disagreeing with me. Unless you claim that your position is more than just your own subjective opinion.
peace
God’s existence is not proved with arguments. God is the thing that makes any argument whatsoever possible.
peace
They can’t be violated that is the kicker.
The thought experiment brings that to focus.
peace
It’s a real shame I don’t get to partake of as many of them as I’d like. I hope to spend a good amount of time after the Parousia doing just that.
😉
peace
Emotions require consciousness. Is that not evident?
Not seeing that. What’s so special about choosing?
Not that I am aware of. This is just me using empathy and the fact that our choosing our objects of affection does not require a lot of rational contemplation.
OK, clear.
So I am in error. Got it.
Degrees of error. Got it.
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/inaccurate
No, you are not serious. Serious people adjust themselves when found to be in error. Surely you expect this from others, but just not from yourself?
Why?
Now TSZ has a real claim to fame. Not real in the sense that Alan means real, though.
His dog is just a machine. And if you knew anything about cats you would know that it is his cat which is supernatural.
No. Do you think I could charge?
I think it is that why I don’t think that animals have the same emotions that humans do. I thought that was clear.
I would say that the ability to choose rather than having your actions wholly determined by instinct or programing is what separates persons from things like animals or zombies.
Do you consider owing a pet to be slavery and cattle ranching to be genocide?
If not your claims to emphasize seem a bit hypocritical. Especially since you bristled when you thought that the thought experiment implied that Walto’s dog was like Walto.
I tend to feel compassion and a sense of humane responsibility and protective impulses toward animals and empathy toward fellow persons.
peace
Well, yes I am regarding dualism and pragmatism.
Really? Is that how you define serious people?.
I change my mind about stuff in the light of new evidence. I hope and expect other people do too. Now what do you mean by “being in error”. My point mainly has been to point out the false dichotomy between truth/error, good/evil and natural/supernatural. As regards being wrong, for me, mostly it’s a case of making an effort to be less wrong – trying to have a more accurate model of reality.
Who would not be if the replica were perfect?
The “joke” was that each duplicate would say the same as “I” would, assuming of course the duplicates only background on fissioning was Star Trek and not eg Parfit.. So yes, neither’s intuition be reliable, as you say.
The fissioning scenario is part of the multiworld interpretation of QM. Another reason it is more fun than boring Bohm.
A physical replica can’t be perfect! simply because it’s not my wife.
That is what the thought experiment is about.
peace
We had a good discussion here surrounding the multiworld interpretation and quantum immortality.
I think that if you take a stance like Alan does on the thought experiment immortality is an inescapable implication.
Peace
Well, it depends if you suspend your disbelief and accept the “logic” rather than presuppose dualism (though when I think about it, that actually doesn’t matter) would be an issue. Thetransporter desroys the orignial Captain Kirk and normally* recreates an identical (in all respects including the supernatural elements as required). Kirk is in a new location. On one abnormal occasion, a glitch produces two new Kirks. There really would be no test you could apply to distinguish them. Because they are both Kirk.
I think thought experiments are often bollocks. Sentinel Islanders?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/
Some real philosophers. Many amateurs. Well moderated (including rejection of some OPs). More than its share of metaphysical idealists.
SC’s comments:
http://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/comments/255/sophisticat
Someone else with real philosophical chops
https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/comments/2355/snakes-alive
I as thinking of his stuff on conceptual realism and pluralism, some of which I think predated his Internal Realism period.
I have a Hall book you recommended, but not yours, so yes, please send yours
Did you notice this 3AM interview with a philosopher talking about Qunie’s naturalism? Brouight back memories from three years ago and another well-moderated forum.
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/quines-naturalism/
(Note to moderators: of course, TSZ is well-moderated too, within the limits of the rules).
Sort of, they were antithetical kirks .One good , one bad. The real Kirk was blend of both.
I don’t presuppose dualism and I’m not a cartesian dualist.
However If something leads you to believe that there are two of you then it’s certainly not logic.
We are not arguing if there is a test that could distinguish them. Perhaps there is perhaps there is not .It’s really irrelevant
That is pure absurdity.
If Kirk is an individual, and he is there can by definition only be one of him.
Think man
You are entitled to think what ever you please.
I know that nonsensical statements like “they are both Kirk.” are always bollocks.
peace
So then one could tell them apart.
Even seventies science fiction understood that a person is not reducible to physics.
peace
Quick question, FMM. When did Kirk, the individual, come into being? Was it at conception?
Asking for a friend.
I’m not sure what you mean by come into being.
An elect individual at least exists in the mind of God since before the foundation of the word. Long before conception
Peace
BruceS,
Thanks. I registered there.
Life basically ends at conception, I understand.
BruceS,
That’s a really nice interview about Quine!
To the best of my knowledge, Putnam never figured out how to reconcile his pluralism about conceptual schemes (which, to be sure, he did ably defend against Davidson, though hardly anyone noticed) and the direct realism about perception he took over from McDowell. I’m not even sure he saw it as a problem.
One of the issues I’m trying to work through now is whether Sellars’s commitments to scientific realism are undermined by Putnam’s arguments against metaphysical realism. For me, it all turns on whether we can use the recent work in cognitive neuroscience on structural representations to salvage what Sellars meant by picturing. If not, then something like Putnam’s conceptual pluralism (which more and more doesn’t seem that different from Rorty’s “pragmatism”) is the only game left in town.
So jock by “come into being” meant when a child can be said to be alive? To that I would say…… it depends
The whole question of when exactly life begins is complicated and good people can disagree.
Therefore like all such questions I think that it should be calmly debated with as open a mind as possible. I think that removing any controversial issue from public debate by judicial fiat is never a good idea. It causes hard lines to be drawn and sides to become needlessly entrenched.
That is of course just my personal opinion. Your mileage may vary
peace
The only problem I see is that you need to presuppose from your human vantage point that it is both logically possible and God choose to do it. Other than that it is foolproof.
Whenever I teach the abortion issue in my contemporary moral issues class, I tell them a (mostly) true story. Long ago, when I was much more green as a teacher, the question “when does life begin?” came up in class. Without missing a beat, I quipped, “life began 3.5 billion years ago and hasn’t stopped since.” (The students hated that response.) I then ask my students why that’s not the right kind of answer. That gets them thinking about what kind of work they are using the word “life” to do. From there we can get past talking about “life” and talk about morally relevant concepts: personhood, sentience, suffering, potentiality, etc. “Life” is just a red herring.
Definitely, but they were not exact replicas, it was a malfunction. The whole idea of a Transporter is that persons can be reduced to physics anyway, “refuting” the thought experiment.
Worse still, it reduced morality to physics. A machine could separate a person into a good version and a bad version.
Nope, but there was an episode where Kirk was swapped with an alternate Universe Kirk. He passed as the alternate version of himself .His bad version did not in this Universe. Spock was the same in both universes, except for a goatee.
peace
It would different if an error occurred during the copying process?
Did you mean to say that a physical replica can’t be a perfect replica?
Might result in discovery of an error. So no thanks.
Did you happen to notice that J-Mac was the next one to register there right after you?
Is that because non-living things can also experience suffering, personhood and sentience?
LOL.
I didn’t stay long. I was daunted by all the discussions–as I generally am when I look at a site I’m not familiar with. I’m not too interested in most of what goes on here, but it’s…you know…comfortable. Like just putting margarine and salt on egg noodles and watching a rerun.
If you have not seen Ebbs book on Quine, Carnap, Putnam then it might be relevant to your work. I got a copy (by colluding with the Russkies) but it’s beyond my paygrade because it assumes too much background knowledge.
I saw the latest NDPR but did not understand the (brief) criticism of the way neuroscience of picturing was applied to Sellars.
Yes — they even had “Heisenberg compensators” because someone must have mentioned the problem with the uncertainty principle and making quantum copies. FWIW, quantum teleportation is a real thing, at least for quantum entities and entangled systems. That part of the process would seem to present an issue with the Star Trek version.
There was also the TNG episode on the duplicate Ryker’s.
I don;’t follow the site, only a few authors like SC through the search links I posted. I trust their curation for selecting posts on interesting topics.
indeed.
surely you know by now to pay attention to what I mean and not what I say. 😉
peace
All emotions require consciousness, also animal-emotions. If animals don’t experience anything, they can’t have emotions either.
Why? A dog approaches a lamp post. It chooses to pass it on the left side, instead of the right side. A cat is offered two bowls of food. It chooses the bowl with its favorite food. What’s the big deal?
Whoa, I suddenly get accused of slavery, genocide, hypocrisy and worst of all … bristling. where did that come from?
Perhaps something got lost in translation? What is the difference between compassion and empathy? I consider them to be the same thing, but you reserve empathy for humans.
Also, why do you feel compassion towards animals when you consider them to be non-consciousness beings? That doesn’t seem like a rational thing to do.
How do you know this?? Animal emotions if they exist might be very different from personal emotions. They might be more akin to instinctual urges and aversions.
A river encounters an obstacle and chooses to flow on the left rather than the right.
A pair of dice chooses to land on seven.
A computer chooses to time out after 2 minutes of no use.
How do you know that your examples are any different than mine?? How can you know??
The big deal is the difference between physical determinism and personality.
No you got accused of hypocrisy in that you say you think that animals are like you yet don’t think that they deserve the same rights as you do.
I don’t think that pet ownership is slavery because I think that humans are unique in the animal kingdom.
Compassion is sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others:
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another:
I can have compassion for a dog with out thinking he experiences the world like I do or sharing in his feelings some way.
peace
The teletransportation thought experiment doesn’t teach us anything about physics, consciousness or identity, but it does teach us how we think about those concepts.