If there's not a quorum how can the board take decisions? I thought a quorum was the minimum that need to be present for it to be considered a board for operating purposes. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
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Materialism - Devastator of Scientific Method! / Observer Delusion
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If there's not a quorum how can the board take decisions? I thought a quorum was the minimum that need to be present for it to be considered a board for operating purposes. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
OK, which bit don't you understand?
Maybe I could just get a little background...
Are you what Chalmers refers to as a Type A Materialist? If so do you believe that there is actually an observing self?
I hope you're not just another one of those skeptics who lurks in the shadows, muttering a bit, too scared to really put their cards on the table
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No, I agree. It does it anyway.
But this actually has little to do with what I'm saying here, which is... you can become aware of the process which is making it seem like there's someone writing this, someone observing this, someone experiencing this... and that awareness changes things.
Strict materialism is one way to deduce that we must exist in a selfless reality, however ridiculous such a proposition might, on the surface, sound.
But, as Parfit's Transporter demonstrates, there are actually precious few strict materialists around. Materialism is a philosophy which has a lot of "fair-weather friends!"
So, subjective observation is a useful back-up
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The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
I did say it was important….
To which you directly replied…
Horse hokey, look if you just want to have a conversation between yourself and, well, not yourself then you can just do that yourself. Otherwise I’d advise you actually pay attention to what you are responding to and how you respond. Yes, other people writing things does expand what was written, its call having a discussion. Though, trust me, I have no delusions about convincing you and/or even not you.
Do yourself a favor and understand what an axiom means.
Sorry, I have no stake in “Integrated Information Theory” so your “something for absolute nothing” was just nothing for nothing for me.
Thanks,
Heck, analogies are like excuses, everybody’s got one and they usually stink.
Who cares “who is writing about a selfless reality” if it leads to inconsistencies and direct contradictions. Stop mucking about your “back door” and step out front for a change.
Is that true, the "precious few" part? I'm surprised. I have no difficulties with the idea at all. In fact, I think the reluctance stems more from "the fear of the new" than anything epistemic. As soon as such transportation becomes normalized, all fear dissipates.
Here is a good description of the thought experiment: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/intro/PersonalIdentity.htm
Just ask people how they feel about falling asleep - extinguishing all sense of self - in the hope they will be reconstituted correctly tomorrow morning. We all do it and it's an accepted part of our lives. Habit does that for us quite nicely.
The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
No misunderstanding a quorum is the minimum number of members needed to conduct business.
What happens if you don't make a decision about something?
Usually you just continue the way you were before
Well, I've been in a heap of Transporter threads in my time. And it's very clear for me that many people who consider themselves to be materialists nevertheless baulk hugely at the idea of being painlessly disintegrated and replaced with an identical copy**. As I believe Pixy put it once "they tried to get me in the transporter but I said no, no, no!"
** ETA, well, either that or they start wittering on about property dualism or quantum states ad infinitum until everyone falls asleep
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tsig
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I hope you not just another of those woos who lurks in the shadows, muttering a bit while denying the "I" and wallowing in ego.
tsig
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The back door is where he throws out the uncomfortable questions like "If there's no "I" who's writing your posts?".
Well, let's look at the exchange...
You're the one who associates my points about "I" based statements for communicating with others to "internal communication", and then concludes that I'm saying the latter is insignificant. Even after I've explicitly stated that I'm not using the term "general" in this sense.
I know what an axiom is. I'm saying there's no point in starting a theory from an unchecked assumption, when you can check.
Would you start a modern theory of gravitation from the premise that the sun revolves around the earth? You apparently feel that Incompleteness makes this totally OK. Like I said, do me a favour!
Well, I'm glad to hear it. That stock deserves to crash and burn.
You have to distinguish between inconsistencies and direct contradictions that are occurring because of how we normally use language and those that reveal an actual, phenomenal inconsistency.
For example, if you say that it is impossible to have observation without an observer then as we have to learned to use language this clearly holds validity. On a phenomenal level that is not necessarily the case.
TM said:
N said:
TM said:
N said:
TM said:
You're the one who associates my points about "I" based statements for communicating with others to "internal communication", and then concludes that I'm saying the latter is insignificant. Even after I've explicitly stated that I'm not using the term "general" in this sense.
I know what an axiom is. I'm saying there's no point in starting a theory from an unchecked assumption, when you can check.
Would you start a modern theory of gravitation from the premise that the sun revolves around the earth? You apparently feel that Incompleteness makes this totally OK. Like I said, do me a favour!
TM said:
Well, I'm glad to hear it. That stock deserves to crash and burn.
You have to distinguish between inconsistencies and direct contradictions that are occurring because of how we normally use language and those that reveal an actual, phenomenal inconsistency.
For example, if you say that it is impossible to have observation without an observer then as we have to learned to use language this clearly holds validity. On a phenomenal level that is not necessarily the case.
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The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
So in the analogy...
"....the various individual sub-divisions still proceed upon their latest business model or corporate strategy."
Mojo
Mostly harmless
MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
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Well, I understand those of your statements that actually parse. I just don't think they make sense.
From what I read of Chalmers, not precisely.
There obviously is. What constitutes that self is the question.
If you hope to scare me, I have to disappoint you....
Hans
The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
Who the heck is "TM"? Look if The Man is too bothersome for you I also reply to Dan. Though I still recommend not messing with people's user ID when using the quote function.
OK, you should probably learn what "explicitly" means. For example "I'm not using the term "general" in this sense" would have been an explicit statement that you're, well, "not using the term "general" in this sense". While you're at it you might also want to learn what "Apparently" means as well.
So now that we have explicitly established that you do feel internal communication is significant to research on consciousness, is "I" valid for that internal communication and if not why not?
If not generally, exactly what sense were you using "generally" anyway?
Evidently you still don't.
In a way that is how the "modern theory of gravitation", General Relativity, came about. An extension of Galilean relativity, that motion (among other things) is relative to ones selection of a coordinate system. Again do yourself a favour.
Direct contradiction is a form of self-inconsistency, while a "phenomenal inconsistency" or an inconsistency with phenomena would be a general inconsistency. A theory or notion can be self-consistent but not generally consistent. It agrees with itself but doesn't agree with what happens. While a theory that can't even be self-consistent can't agree with even just itself.
Now what might appear to be a direct contradict may just be the result of an inconsistent use of language.
So is your claim that you're not being contradictory but just inconsistent?
Again, as already asserted it is just being consistent in the root meanings of the words. If you don't actually want to use language or just don't want to use it consistently then don't, but again that's just being inconsistent. Again if that is all you are striving for then just own it.
The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
Yep, mementic tropes, words games and figures of speech all to embrace an inconsistency that can't be embraced. Heck, with nobody home or minding the store that inconsistency can be as consistently inconsistent as it wants.
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
I think I'll be a little annoying and pretty much ignore most of what's already been posted in favor of getting a couple things clarified and commenting a little.
Given that materialism and the scientific method rather seem to work very well together in general and, given that they have rather different base natures that nearly cannot actually be in conflict in the first place... probably not. The end for the scientific method probably wouldn't come even if it were that reality blatantly isn't actually in line with philosopical naturalism, so long as methodological naturalism, which is what science actually is, was demonstrably useful. The end of the scientific method, in other words, will come when methodological naturalism is demonstrated to be ineffective.
Incidentally, I generally don't consider myself a materialist, specifically. I generally prefer to call myself a methodological naturalist.
It's good that you're discussing it, though it's quite worth remembering that when one ponders something like this, it's very easy to get into a rut, especially when you don't have relevant information that others could provide, and ruts can be hard to get out of.
This would seem to be rather dubious. Would you kindly back up why you think that neural processing is inherently what we normally consider consciousness? Neural processing is certainly extremely important for consciousness, but under most of the versions of consciousness that I recall, there's a general distinction made between conscious and unconscious. If you actually are trying to lump everything together completely, one of the consequences is that the version of consciousness that you're talking about... just isn't particularly useful for anything.
An observing self? For what purpose and of what nature seem to be points that you're conveniently ignoring here. This particular "cannot" seems to be rooted in little more than your lack of understanding of the relevant concepts.
This seems little more than a basic flaw in reasoning. If a rock is rolling down a hill, is the movement real? According to what you're arguing here, it's not, which honestly should get you to at least step back and more carefully consider how you're wording things, which, ideally, should help you understand things a bit better. In more normal usage, the movement is certainly quite real, after all, and is very certainly part of reality, even if it is not a particular object.
And... this would be flawed logic, again. An easy problem is that you didn't actually say when and where they would be replaced by an identical copy and what the consequences from the death actually were. There's a lot of leeway for very reasonable objection in your scenario. Going past that, you're treading in much more subjective territory here by the very nature of this, which further reduces the meaningfulness of this argument.
Incidentally, this is still rather irrelevant to how you're trying to use it.
Pretty much nothing, given that the only ways that illusion could possibly be accurate here could not impact the scientific method at all, given that they can be considered to have been taken into account from the start. At best, all you're actually doing is referencing the fundamental uncertainty when it come to how accurately subjective perception describes objective reality, which affects all methods of trying to understand reality equally and so cannot be validly applied to the scientific method alone, like you seem to want to be effectively doing.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
Such is very highly unlikely, given the inherent natures of materialism and science.
Given that materialism and the scientific method rather seem to work very well together in general and, given that they have rather different base natures that nearly cannot actually be in conflict in the first place... probably not. The end for the scientific method probably wouldn't come even if it were that reality blatantly isn't actually in line with philosopical naturalism, so long as methodological naturalism, which is what science actually is, was demonstrably useful. The end of the scientific method, in other words, will come when methodological naturalism is demonstrated to be ineffective.
Incidentally, I generally don't consider myself a materialist, specifically. I generally prefer to call myself a methodological naturalist.
It's good that you're discussing it, though it's quite worth remembering that when one ponders something like this, it's very easy to get into a rut, especially when you don't have relevant information that others could provide, and ruts can be hard to get out of.
This would seem to be rather dubious. Would you kindly back up why you think that neural processing is inherently what we normally consider consciousness? Neural processing is certainly extremely important for consciousness, but under most of the versions of consciousness that I recall, there's a general distinction made between conscious and unconscious. If you actually are trying to lump everything together completely, one of the consequences is that the version of consciousness that you're talking about... just isn't particularly useful for anything.
An observing self? For what purpose and of what nature seem to be points that you're conveniently ignoring here. This particular "cannot" seems to be rooted in little more than your lack of understanding of the relevant concepts.
This seems little more than a basic flaw in reasoning. If a rock is rolling down a hill, is the movement real? According to what you're arguing here, it's not, which honestly should get you to at least step back and more carefully consider how you're wording things, which, ideally, should help you understand things a bit better. In more normal usage, the movement is certainly quite real, after all, and is very certainly part of reality, even if it is not a particular object.
And... this would be flawed logic, again. An easy problem is that you didn't actually say when and where they would be replaced by an identical copy and what the consequences from the death actually were. There's a lot of leeway for very reasonable objection in your scenario. Going past that, you're treading in much more subjective territory here by the very nature of this, which further reduces the meaningfulness of this argument.
Incidentally, this is still rather irrelevant to how you're trying to use it.
Pretty much nothing, given that the only ways that illusion could possibly be accurate here could not impact the scientific method at all, given that they can be considered to have been taken into account from the start. At best, all you're actually doing is referencing the fundamental uncertainty when it come to how accurately subjective perception describes objective reality, which affects all methods of trying to understand reality equally and so cannot be validly applied to the scientific method alone, like you seem to want to be effectively doing.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
No. Only fundamental misunderstandings of various things could lead one to this conclusion with the concepts you've presented.
Such is very highly unlikely, given the inherent natures of materialism and science.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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All your measurements are belong to us.
Scientist might be an ist too.