Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

[Belz...]

Well let's pare it back to it's bare bones. To date, some 120,000,000,000 humans have lived. To date, all have died, barring the current 7,000,000,000. To date, no evidence suggests any have ever or will have survived. None. Zip. Nada. Rien du tout.

Now we have the null hypothesis.

Ah, but what about all those hypothetical humans? You can't argue with infinity, can you?

Once again we see that if you start with nonsense, sooner or later you end up with anarchy

Turns out he _didn't_ understand my point about positive claims.

 

[Jabba]

"There has always been something" fits perfectly with naturalism. It's just that "always" seems to be 13 or so billion years.



It probably doesn't exist.


That is not a reason to doubt science or naturalism. If I didn't exist there would be no "me" to wonder about the likelihood of my existence.

But this is all beside the point. Your original plan was to use Bayesian math to disprove the naturalistic explanation for consciousness. But your value for P(E|H) is not based on the naturalistic explanation for consciousness, it's based on the existence of a non-material, uncaused self.

Dave,
- This is where we keep tripping. My value for P(E|H) is based upon the naturalistic explanation, upon everything being physical, and also upon us not knowing E's causes. E is something we both experience, whether it is only physical or not...
- Currently, we're trying to figure out how we should determine E's likelihood, given H and ~H. What I'm trying to show now is that, since we don't think we can recreate the same E, we have to treat E's likelihood as totally random.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- This is where we keep tripping. My value for P(E|H) is based upon the naturalistic explanation, upon everything being physical, and also upon us not knowing E's causes.

That's a contradiction. In the naturalistic model for consciousness we do know E's cause and it's not random.

E is something we both experience, whether it is only physical or not...
- Currently, we're trying to figure out how we should determine E's likelihood, given H and ~H. What I'm trying to show now is that, since we don't think we can recreate the same E, we have to treat E's likelihood as totally random.

Then we have to treat the likelihood of my wife's 2013 Beetle as totally random, because we can't recreate the same 2013 Beetle either.

 

[Jabba]

Yes, we get it: you want souls to exist. You want to be immortal. Your argument seems to be based on nothing more than wishful thinking at this point. The fact that the existence of the soul is necessary to your argument is no reason to suppose that it exists.

You continue to invoke entities that are, if H is true, unnecessary.

You invoke the soul to make immortality possible, you invoke immortality to make the soul necessary. None of this has anything to do the likelihood of your existence if H is true.

Mojo,
- How about the likelihood of my current existence?

 

[Belz...]

Mojo,
- How about the likelihood of my current existence?

1.

We've told you this time and time again.

 

[jond]

Mojo,
- How about the likelihood of my current existence?

You may have missed this question, so I will ask again:

Why do you continue to to ignore the fact that however unlikely your current existence is, it remains far more likely than your scenario in which you not only have your body, but also have a soul which somehow must connect with your body?

 

[Jabba]

That's a contradiction. In the naturalistic model for consciousness we do know E's cause and it's not random.



Then we have to treat the likelihood of my wife's 2013 Beetle as totally random, because we can't recreate the same 2013 Beetle either.

Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).

And that's why your claim is inconsistent with H. Under H a perfect copy of you would not be missing anything.

 

[Jabba]

You may have missed this question, so I will ask again:

Why do you continue to to ignore the fact that however unlikely your current existence is, it remains far more likely than your scenario in which you not only have your body, but also have a soul which somehow must connect with your body?

Jond,
- I'll try to answer your question -- but, it will probably take awhile...

 

[jond]

Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).

Would it be the same color as his wife's beetle? If it was going 60mph would it be the same going 60mph as his wife's beetle? No, they'd be identical, but unique. Because like consciousness, these are emergent properties.

 

[John Jones]

Agatha,
- I just think that there are all sorts of reasons for suspecting that there is something more... that science is only at its beginning...
.

This is just another rendition of "Science doesn't have all the answers, therefore my woo is as likely as anything in science."

 

[JayUtah]

I just think that there are all sorts of reasons for suspecting that there is something more...

You were invited to present those reasons. After more than four years, the best you can come up with are:

1. You really, really strongly want to believe you have an immortal soul.

2. Near-death experiences, whose dubious sources you do not question, whose purported implications do not follow from the circumstances, and whose evidence always fails to pass muster.

Skeptics don't deny that there can't be any more, but at present there isn't any evidence of anything more.

cience is only at its beginning...

Of what? Compared to what?

You have a hard time here in part because you have let slip on so many occasions your low opinion of science and skeptics. So casting vague aspersions is probably not an effective strategy.

Scientific inquiry is perpetually ongoing. It is not a contention of rational skepticism that a scientific theory has, at any point, reached a status of non-contestability. A theory is forever tentative. That doesn't mean it lacks value. We can, today, point to a convincing body of evidence that says life ends at death, and that subjective consciousness is strongly correlated to the operation of a working brain and nervous system. It is convincing only because we have studied it long enough that we can believe that if there were so much more to it, we would have found it by now. Yes, the picture of evidence may change tomorrow. If that occurs, then tomorrow we will change our minds. That possibility doesn't compel us to change our minds today.

According to reductive naturalism, nothing really makes sense. If there was nothing, now that would make sense. However, either, at one time there was nothing or there has always been something -- and neither fits with with reductive naturalism.

Materialism doesn't try to determine what, if anything, may have preceded the Big Bang. But from then onward there was always something. What's the problem?

Free will is logically impossible

Which is a topic for a different thread.

We take our current, personal existence for granted, when it's totally unlikely.

No, you're begging the question of the objective significance of the sense of self. Is a blade of grass taking its greenness for granted? Because you experience the sense of self subjectively and it seems very profound to you, you believe this means it has to be objectively different from other emergent properties of any entity. Under materialism that's just not necessary. Conscious organisms having a sense of self need be no more profound a property than breathing or farting. This piled-up mysticism leads you to assume problems with materialism that just aren't problems.

 

[jond]

Jond,
- I'll try to answer your question -- but, it will probably take awhile...

When you answer, bear in mind that we know absolutely without question that the sense of self is directly connected to the brain. We can shut it off, we can alter it chemically or physically in very well understood and repeatable ways. So, even if there is a self (soul) that is a separate entity, it absolutely positively without doubt is connected with the brain. So when calculating the likelihood of your existence, you MUST take your physical body into consideration as well as the likelihood of your soul, and you MUST account for the connection between them.

 

[JayUtah]

Jond,
- I'll try to answer your question -- but, it will probably take awhile...

How long? These are not new questions.

 

[John Jones]

Mojo,
- How about the likelihood of my current existence?

It's 1. Are you going to do multiple fringe resets each day?

 

[jsfisher]

Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).

Jabba,
This takes us back to the Clone-a-tron-9000^{[SIZE=-3]TM[/SIZE]} thought experiment:

-You enter the Clone-a-tron-9000 and are immediately rendered unconscious.
-While unconscious, an identical copy is made of you.
-Some time later both versions of Jabba awaken and discover the second, identical Jabba.

How can the two determine which is the original and which is the copy?

If, as you claim, something is missing from the copy, it should be an easy task to distinguish the two.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

...Conscious organisms having a sense of self need be no more profound a property than breathing or farting.

Darn. There I was thinking "I think, therefore I am" meant I was cool. Now, you go and spoil the mojo. My special-offer, coolest, so-hip AAAS T-shirt (rinky-dink member category ) is in the mail, though; that'll show ya.

/which I mention in passing... wind.

To stay on topic: I was just googling for something I saw some time back about a new cross-disciplinary science-based effort to define consciousness, and my search gave me heart-breaking stuff like this little item at Dartmouth, and this piece, which looks good for a second, and seems to end in a Penrose-like veer to the wild. Sigh.

 

[JayUtah]

My value for P(E|H) is based upon the naturalistic explanation...

No, it isn't. It's based on the materialist theory being unable to explain all the things you think a soul is (even though you're not calling it that). You need to reckon P(E|H) based on how well H fares according to its own explanation for the self. This is where we keep hanging up. You don't know how properly to formulate the conditional.

E is something we both experience, whether it is only physical or not...

And that's why you have to come up with both P(E|H) and P(E|K).^[1] P(E|H) is the probability of the self given materialsm. P(E|K) is the probability of the self given some other hypothesis -- say, reincarnation. E has to be the same in both cases, so you don't get to use that to sneak the notion of a soul into P(E|H) by folding it into E. The underlying nature and cause of the sense of self differs between H and K. Therefore you can't include either framework in E. E is the subjective sense of self without regard to what you think it's made of or where it came from. Where you think it came from is part of K. How materialism explains it is part of H.

Read that paragraph until you understand it.

What I'm trying to show now is that, since we don't think we can recreate the same E...

P(E|H) means "the probability that the self exists, assuming materialism is true." If materialism is true, we can recreate the same self because H explains the self as nothing more than a property of the physical being. Reproduce the physical being and you necessarily reproduce its properties.

____________________
[1] I'm taking this opportunity to remind you that ~H is not a single conclusion but rather a set of dissimilar and incompatible conclusions, one of which I've chosen and assigned the label K.

 

[JayUtah]

My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).

Under H a perfect copy of you would not be missing anything. The "something" you think would be missing is the thing you're trying to prove exists. It seems you think that "something" is part of E, not part of ~H (or K). There is no such "something" is E, nor in H. You don't get to include that "something" when reckoning P(E|H). That doesn't mean you have to dispense with self-awareness. Under H, self-awareness is just part of the emergent property of the self that comes from a fully functioning brain. You don't get to assume that your "something" is necessary excluded from H. That's eminently cheating.

 

[Mojo]

Mojo,
- How about the likelihood of my current existence?

That was the existence we have been talking about all along. As with the soul, calling it something else, or underlining things, or otherwise messing around with formatting, doesn't change that.

Your current existence, as an observable event, requires your body to currently exist. If H is true, that is all it requires.

If your favoured hypothesis is true, your current existence requires your body to currently exist, your soul to currently exist, and your soul to currently occupy your body.

Do you claim that any of these has a probability that is more than 1?