Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[JayUtah]

For me, it's because I know that the "something to that effect" is your attempt to insinuate consciousness as a countable thing under H.

Good catch. Happily we know that an emergent property isn't "something to that effect," no matter how desperately Jabba wants to think so.

 

[The Sparrow]

Jabba, some are straying and answering your other questions, which you will ignore. But we're still waiting for an answer to "how many going 60 mph are there"?

 

[theprestige]

Cato had his "Carthago delenda est."

I have my Quot "ire sexaginta milia passuum per hora" sint?

 

[Mojo]

- For the moment, I'll avoid the self concept, and stick with "organisms."

39 minutes later:

- I think you said that the duplicates would be identical, but not the same. I think that I agree -- in that, the duplicates would be "manned" by different observers.

Jabba, using yet another term to mean the soul doesn't make it a different concept.

So, back to the question: how many going 60mph are there?

 

[Mojo]

Yes, that's what I said, and I accept what I said.

How many potential "going 60 MPH" are there?

Dave,
- I think you said that the duplicates would be identical, but not the same. I think that I agree -- in that, the duplicates would be "manned" by different observers.

You still haven't grasped the meaning of 'emergent property', have you?

He doesn't seem to have grasped the meaning of 'How many potential "going 60 MPH" are there' either.

 

[abaddon]

Dave,
- I don't understand how you can believe that your body is not "manned" by an observer (or, something to that effect).

What? Do you think that Men in Black is a documentary?

Because that is where you are going.

 

[JayUtah]

He doesn't seem to have grasped the meaning of 'How many potential "going 60 MPH" are there' either.

To someone who is limited to concrete thinking, the question would sound nonsensical and could be written off as an irrelevant attempt at diversion.

However the purported countability of a property is essential to Jabba's argument. He states clearly that his argument is based on driving P(E|H), the probability that he could exist as he is under the scientific hypothesis, to as low a value as possible. So he clearly needs the denominator in that probability computation to be as large as possible. This leads him to scramble around the philoso-sphere of H, the scientific hypothesis, looking for something he can "count" to be infinite. If the thing he's latched into isn't countable and doesn't have a suitably large cardinality, then that's not at all an irrelevant diversion -- it goes right to the heart of his proposed computation.

I just laugh at the contradiction espoused by hearing someone who can't think of a property as anything other than a countable thing, yet relies on the argument that his critics are too "analytical" in their thinking and need to be more "holistic" to understand his claim. It's not as if it's hard to understand what it means to be a property.

 

[Hokulele]

For another way to put it, "self" is a verb, not a noun.

 

[jond]

And now, after all this, Jabba cannot believe that none of us believe in a soul. Staggering.

 

[godless dave]

And now, after all this, Jabba cannot believe that none of us believe in a soul. Staggering.

Despite many of us explicitly saying so.

 

[Dancing David]

Apparently there are not that many potential answers to 'how is a self like going 60 mph'?

 

[jond]

Apparently there are not that many potential answers to 'how is a self like going 60 mph'?

Yes, in his last post it became clear that, despite paying lip service to it, Jabba has no intention of ever considering the actual scientific hypothesis that the self is a process and not a separate entity.

 

[Jabba]

When I said I didn't believe in the existence of souls, what did you think I meant?

What did you think I'd been arguing all these years, that a person has a soul that exists distinct from his physical body, but that soul is mortal?

Here's what I - and most monists - believe:

The physical brain is what's doing the observing and experiencing. A whole lot of neurons in the right structures are capable of feeling, thinking, planning, and being aware of that feeling, thinking, and planning.

Is there anything about that that's not clear?

Dave,
- Yes.
- To me, one's self need not be equated with soul. One's self is one's particular, personal, awareness. We are each conscious, and we each have different consciousnesses. If we were able to duplicate your body after death, your particular consciousness/awareness would not return. We would produce a different consciousness/awareness.
- In that respect, your new existence would be different -- and number of selves would not be limited by chemistry.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- Yes.
- To me, one's self need not be equated with soul. One's self is one's particular, personal, awareness. We are each conscious, and we each have different consciousnesses. If we were able to duplicate your body after death, your particular consciousness/awareness would not return. We would produce a different consciousness/awareness.

Because two is more than one.

If you can understand the concept of two identical organisms, then you should be able to understand the concept of two identical "selves".

- In that respect, your new existence would be different -- and number of selves would not be limited by chemistry.

Neither would the number of bodies. Or the number of anything else. The limit would be the amount of matter in the universe and the ability to rearrange that matter.

How many going 60mph are there?

 

[jond]

Dave,
- Yes.
- To me, one's self need not be equated with soul. One's self is one's particular, personal, awareness. We are each conscious, and we each have different consciousnesses. If we were able to duplicate your body after death, your particular consciousness/awareness would not return. We would produce a different consciousness/awareness.
- In that respect, your new existence would be different -- and number of selves would not be limited by chemistry.

Awareness is a process. Consciousness is a process. They are ongoing processes in the brain, not separate entities. You continue to insist that your "self" exists as an entity. In the scientific model, your self and your brain are the same thing.

Asked before and ignored: can you provide an example of a process that continues when the parts that give rise to it stop functioning?

 

[JayUtah]

To me, one's self need not be equated with soul.

But that's effectively what you're doing by trying to say that under H, the scientific hypothesis, the "consciousness" or "awareness" (today's synonyms) inhabits the organism as an observer.

There is no such concept in the scientific model.

You're playing silly word games to try to shoehorn your dualist concept of a soul into monism.

I grant that it's difficult or impossible for you to grasp that the sense of self under H is not a "thing," but frankly that's your problem. You don't get to solve it by begging the question that what you can't grasp must therefore morph into something you can grasp. The scientific model is very different at the conceptual level from the dualism you're trying to prove.

In that respect, your new existence would be different --

But that respect has nothing to do with the scientific hypothesis. I grant that it's a reasonably logical outcome of what you're trying to foist onto the scientific hypothesis, but the problem with that is the foist.

Several people, including your interlocutor of choice, have asked you an extremely important question about the countability of a property. This is absolutely essential to your case, as you are asserting that a property is countable so that you can use its cardinality to falsify H. A property that arises under H is not a countable set, and you have previously conceded it is not a set at all. You are being asked questions designed to challenge your assertions and reconcile your contradictory claims. Please answer them.

 

[The Sparrow]

How many going 60mph are there?

Your continued refusal to answer only confirms you recognize a crucial flaw in your 'proof' and are just hoping we all forget.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Dave,
- Yes.
- To me, one's self need not be equated with soul. One's self is one's particular, personal, awareness. We are each conscious, and we each have different consciousnesses. If we were able to duplicate your body after death, your particular consciousness/awareness would not return. We would produce a different consciousness/awareness.
- In that respect, your new existence would be different -- and number of selves would not be limited by chemistry.

...primarily because (of course) there is no evidence that such a thing exists.

You have even , yourself, by your own rules, AGREED that there is no evidence, none, of a "soul", much less of its "immortality".

 

[JayUtah]

How many going 60mph are there?

Your continued refusal to answer only confirms you recognize a crucial flaw in your 'proof' and are just hoping we all forget.

Which, in all fairness, is something he's admitted having done before. I sense we're in the same dregs as the Shroud of Turin thread, where he conceded years ago that he had lost the actual debate. He spent all the rest of his time trying to argue that his critics had won unfairly.

 

[Hokulele]

Dave,
- Yes.
- To me, one's self need not be equated with soul. One's self is one's particular, personal, awareness. We are each conscious, and we each have different consciousnesses. If we were able to duplicate your body after death, your particular consciousness/awareness would not return. We would produce a different consciousness/awareness.
- In that respect, your new existence would be different -- and number of selves would not be limited by chemistry.

This is completely incorrect. We do not have a consciousness (thing), we experience consciousness (process). The "number of selves" is a meaningless statement.

Can you count the number of "going 60 mph"?

Are you unable to address this simple question?