Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

[MRC_Hans]

Pixel,
- Yeah. One of us is -- or, a bunch of us are -- missing something.

No. We all understand your position: You believe there is something apart from a property or process of the physical brain.

You also understand our position: We argue that there is not.

If anybody is missing something, you are missing an argument. You started out claiming you could prove immortality. With mathematics, no less.

How about you go back to trying that, or else call it a day?

Hans

 

[Pixel42]

Pixel,
- Yeah. One of us is -- or, a bunch of us are -- missing something.

The point I am making is that "it seems obvious" is not an argument in favour of a position, because lots of things that seemed obvious turned out not to be true, and lots of things that aren't at all obvious turned out to be a much more accurate description of reality.

I am not missing something about what you are saying - I understand it completely, and it seems just as obvious to me as it does to you. It's just that, when I look into it more deeply, it turns out that it doesn't make sense after all, and what does make sense is, at first, counterintuitive. Just as the counterintuitive "the Earth goes round the sun" turned out be a better description of reality than the obvious "the sun goes round the Earth".

At the moment you are hung up on an intuitive feeling, which you are clinging to despite the fact that you cannot find any evidence, or even a convincing argument, to support it, let alone counter the evidence and arguments others are advancing to refute it. You need to consider the possibility that this is because your intuition is mistaken, but you seem incapable of doing so.

 

[godless dave]

- It wouldn't have my sense of self. It wouldn't have ME. It wouldn't bring ME back to life. It would be different.

Would it be different, or would it be an identical copy?

If the former, what would be different?

 

[JayUtah]

- It wouldn't have my sense of self.

Yes it would. All that distinguished your experience of self from another's would be present in the copy. That's what it means to make a perfect copy.

It wouldn't have ME.

All that is distinctly you under materialism would be present in the copy. That's what it means to make a perfect copy.

It wouldn't bring ME back to life.

All that materialism defines as the processes of life would be present in the copy. That's what it means to make a perfect copy.

It would be different.

You haven't explained in what way, except by this frantically begged question.

 

[Agatha]

Agatha,
- I do appreciate your civility.
- Second question first: If our method of reproduction didn't allow us to mark the original, no one would ever know which was which.

I agree, and the obvious point that follows from this agreement is that there is nothing 'missing' from the copy. Both the original and the copy have what you are calling "ME". There would be two, unconnected but identical, YOUs.

Nothing is missing, nothing distinguishes the original from the copy.

The examples, based on the work of the renowned child psychologist Jean Piaget, are taken from books by philosopher-psychologist Ken Wilber. Here is an example involving a glass of water and a second, taller empty glass. Wilber writes: If you take [very young] children, and, right in front of their eyes, pour the water from a short glass into a tall glass, and ask them which glass has more water, they will always say the tall glass has more, even though they saw you pour the same amount from one glass to the other. They cannot ‘conserve volume.’ Certain ‘obvious’ things that we see, they do not and cannot see—they live in a different worldspace. No matter how many times you pour the same amount of water back and forth between the two glasses, they will insist the tall glass has more….
Marion, James. Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality (pp. 15-16). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.

- Seems to me that either me -- or you guys -- just don't recognize the logic in this situation. Your position just doesn't make sense to me; my position just doesn't make sense to you... Words fail us.
- Not that one of us is at the cognitive level depicted here, just that we are at different levels. I accept that I could be the one missing something...

- This ought to stir a lot of pots!

Wilber claims that experiments show that small children look at 2d shape and size to determine bigger/smaller & more/less, but as they get older, they learn to conceptualise volume. I don't have the time right now to check if this is the case, but I'm not sure what you are illustrating with this.

ETA I did just make a quick check on the book that you got this from, and also looked at the original experiments that Piaget and others did. It is not quite as simple as Wilber claims, nor does it follow that one must have a higher, broader or more developed understanding to believe in souls or immortality.​

Are you positing that you are unable to conceptualise materialism, or are you positing that sceptics are unable to conceptualise souls? And that one side or other needs to broaden their understanding? Because I don't think either of those is the case.

There is nothing wrong with holding the opinion "I am immortal, I have a soul which will continue past my physical death" as long as you also recognise that it's a faith-based, evidence-free position.

 

[JayUtah]

Would I be reincarnated? Brought back to life?

"Incarnation" is a religious concept, the housing of a soul in an organism. Since materialism does not have the concept of a soul, the question is meaningless under materialism. Specifically it's a logical "complex question" that requires the answerer to accept first a premise that may not hold. The sense of self that you desire materialism inappropriately to attribute to a soul is a product of the organism. When the organism is brought into existence -- by whatever means, natural or hypothetically cloned -- the property is produced.

Life, like a sense of self, is a set of related emergent properties that arise in an organism. As such, under materialism, yes those processes would be manifest in the copy. You would be brought back to life, as materialism defines life. Trying to ask whether it would be brought back to some supposed religious concept of life is meaningless for reckoning P(E|H). Such a concept is not part of E.

 

[The Sparrow]

Sparrow,
- I don't.

Then on what basis can you claim YOU wouldn't be bought back to life?

 

[JayUtah]

Second question first: If our method of reproduction didn't allow us to mark the original, no one would ever know which was which.

Then there is no difference. All this thrashing about over "It wouldn't be 'ME'" has nothing to do with P(E|H).

Seems to me that either me -- or you guys -- just don't recognize the logic in this situation.

No, I promise you that your critics understand the concept of abstract thought. You have at several times made veiled accusations that your critics are simply not at a certain level of understanding to appreciate the logic in your claims. But then you dodged all further questions designed to test that accusation. Kindly don't resurrect that line of reasoning without being willing to support it.

Your position just doesn't make sense to me; my position just doesn't make sense to you... Words fail us.

Words do not fail us. Your arguments almost exclusively try to manipulate and equivocate the meanings of words to trick your critics into the semblance of agreement. This debate has devolved into a daily struggle to drag you back to the real meaning of words and the real concepts they represent. Maybe at some point you'll come to the realization that word games don't work here, or in any serious debate. You will always be caught. And I think you know this, based on whom you habitually choose to ignore.

You are not failing here because your critics are failing to appreciate some nuance in your argument. You are failing here because your arguments are blatantly wrong, from a factual and logical perspective. Not by some subtle mistake, but by huge, fundamental errors in logic. Question begging and the like are not graded, refined errors that can be simply corrected and left behind. They are huge, glaring errors that your critics invariably note and expect you to answer.

Not that one of us is at the cognitive level depicted here, just that we are at different levels. I accept that I could be the one missing something...

No, you really don't accept that you may be the one who just doesn't get it. No matter how much you acknowledge the validity of your critics' arguments, you still claim to be the one who's right. That is not a position from which you can expect much sympathy or mercy. It's insulting, arrogant, and has no place in what you claim ought to be a polite debate. You really need to stop being so rude.

This ought to stir a lot of pots!

Are you here to stir pots? Or are you here to present and defend the proof you promised oh so many years ago? This is probably the most telling statement of the half-decade in which you've pursued this nonsense.

 

[John Jones]

Agatha,
- I do appreciate your civility.
- Second question first: If our method of reproduction didn't allow us to mark the original, no one would ever know which was which.

The examples, based on the work of the renowned child psychologist Jean Piaget, are taken from books by philosopher-psychologist Ken Wilber. Here is an example involving a glass of water and a second, taller empty glass. Wilber writes: If you take [very young] children, and, right in front of their eyes, pour the water from a short glass into a tall glass, and ask them which glass has more water, they will always say the tall glass has more, even though they saw you pour the same amount from one glass to the other. They cannot ‘conserve volume.’ Certain ‘obvious’ things that we see, they do not and cannot see—they live in a different worldspace. No matter how many times you pour the same amount of water back and forth between the two glasses, they will insist the tall glass has more….
Marion, James. Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality (pp. 15-16). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.

- Seems to me that either me -- or you guys -- just don't recognize the logic in this situation. Your position just doesn't make sense to me; my position just doesn't make sense to you... Words fail us.
- Not that one of us is at the cognitive level depicted here, just that we are at different levels. I accept that I could be the one missing something...

- This ought to stir a lot of pots!

OK. Let's get this out of the way: You position is perfectly understandable. It's just wrong and logically inept. In five years you have not been able to produce a position that doesn't beg the question. Show us one of your interlocutors who has been as consistently illogical as you.

 

[Mojo]

- It wouldn't have my sense of self.

No, it would have its own sense of self, identical to yours.

It wouldn't have ME.

No, but it would have a sense of self (a property of the brain, remember?) identical to yours. Indeed, he would think that he was you.

It wouldn't bring ME back to life.

No, it would result in a second Jabba, identical to you.

It would be different.

There you go again with the equivocation. As has been explained to you repeatedly, under H the result would be two distinct but identical Jabbas. There would be nothing missing from the copy that was not also missing from the original.

 

[Jabba]

I agree, and the obvious point that follows from this agreement is that there is nothing 'missing' from the copy. Both the original and the copy have what you are calling "ME". There would be two, unconnected but identical, YOUs.

Nothing is missing, nothing distinguishes the original from the copy.

Wilber claims that experiments show that small children look at 2d shape and size to determine bigger/smaller & more/less, but as they get older, they learn to conceptualise volume. I don't have the time right now to check if this is the case, but I'm not sure what you are illustrating with this.

ETA I did just make a quick check on the book that you got this from, and also looked at the original experiments that Piaget and others did. It is not quite as simple as Wilber claims, nor does it follow that one must have a higher, broader or more developed understanding to believe in souls or immortality.​

Are you positing that you are unable to conceptualise materialism, or are you positing that sceptics are unable to conceptualise souls? And that one side or other needs to broaden their understanding? Because I don't think either of those is the case.

There is nothing wrong with holding the opinion "I am immortal, I have a soul which will continue past my physical death" as long as you also recognise that it's a faith-based, evidence-free position.

Agatha,
- Nice response. I'll have to get back to you.

 

[Hokulele]

Pixel,
- Yeah. One of us is -- or, a bunch of us are -- missing something.

No, a bunch of us are not missing something, we are simply not accepting your flat, baseless, assertions.

 

[Mojo]

If our method of reproduction didn't allow us to mark the original, no one would ever know which was which.

And yet you claim that there would be something missing from the copy.

 

[John Jones]

And yet you claim that there would be something missing from the copy.

Something with no characteristics or properties, no doubt.

 

[Mojo]

Something with no characteristics or properties, no doubt.

Funny you should mention that, because that is exactly how Jabba has described the soul.

 

[Loss Leader]

This entire thought experiment is ridiculous. You can't clone a person, you can't use his atoms to recreate him in his place.

All that is happening is that Jabba is trying to substitute an increasingly tortured hypothetical for evidence that the mind is separate from the body. We don't need silly logic puzzles. Present evidence now of a mind/brain separation.

If you can't do it, then accept the null position that whatever we are is physical.

 

[JayUtah]

No, a bunch of us are not missing something, we are simply not accepting your flat, baseless, assertions.

He's trying to declare a no-fault impasse rather than admit defeat. This happens a lot in fringe argumentation. The claimant fails to make his case, but tries to attribute his failure to some externality. Moon hoax claimants who begin, but cannot finish, an argument alleging an imsurmountable radiation problem often say the physics is just too complicated to determine the truth either way. Well, no, the physics aren't too complicated. The claimant is just no good at physics and can be proven wrong.

Here our claimant says words fail us. No, they don't. As we're very much aware, Jabba's arguments feature equivocation and other word games prominently. What's happening is not an impasse due to inherent problems in language, but Jabba's failure to catch anyone in his linguistic snares or maintain the argument in a hopeless state of ambiguity.

Our claimant insinuates we just must think differently. In a sense we do, but only in that Jabba seems utterly unable to conceive of life beyond a soul. As much as previously he counted himself a "holistic" thinking and much above his critics, his argument is the one that lacks imagination. He admits happily he can't conceive how anyone could think differently than he. That is a position from which, first, there can be little grounds to claim another is being irrational or unimaginative, and second, from which any suitable proof on such a matter as this can be concluded. If you can't understand how you might be wrong, your claim to be right is hollow.

The no-fault impasse tries to beg a conclusion that while he cannot prove himself right, his critics are similarly hobbled by the supposed externality from proving him wrong. Here that is simply not the case. The errors in Jabba's argument are not mere ambiguities. They are obvious, glaring failures in logic. The problem is not that this is an unentertainable debate. The problem is that Jabba is no good at debating it.

 

[JayUtah]

Something with no characteristics or properties, no doubt.

Funny you should mention that, because that is exactly how Jabba has described the soul.

Indeed, he was trying to argue that science was powerless to see the soul. That was how he hoped to explain the lack of evidence for one. Expect that argument to rear its ugly head again.

 

[JayUtah]

This entire thought experiment is ridiculous. You can't clone a person, you can't use his atoms to recreate him in his place.

All that is happening is that Jabba is trying to substitute an increasingly tortured hypothetical for evidence that the mind is separate from the body.

It was a useful thought experiment at one point. But instead at this point you're right; it has devolved into meaningless distraction. This happens in almost every genre of fringe argumentation. Knowing he cannot prevail on a discussion of the facts, and not wishing to fail, the claimant pushes the discussion into hypothetical or unempirical realms so that supposition can be thrown around all day with no hope for factual resolution. Since no empirical facts refute him, he can prolong the discussion as long as is necessary to assure his ongoing relevance.

 

[Mojo]

He's trying to declare a no-fault impasse rather than admit defeat. This happens a lot in fringe argumentation. The claimant fails to make his case, but tries to attribute his failure to some externality. Moon hoax claimants who begin, but cannot finish, an argument alleging an imsurmountable radiation problem often say the physics is just too complicated to determine the truth either way. Well, no, the physics aren't too complicated. The claimant is just no good at physics and can be proven wrong.

Here our claimant says words fail us. No, they don't. As we're very much aware, Jabba's arguments feature equivocation and other word games prominently. What's happening is not an impasse due to inherent problems in language, but Jabba's failure to catch anyone in his linguistic snares or maintain the argument in a hopeless state of ambiguity.

Our claimant insinuates we just must think differently. In a sense we do, but only in that Jabba seems utterly unable to conceive of life beyond a soul. As much as previously he counted himself a "holistic" thinking and much above his critics, his argument is the one that lacks imagination. He admits happily he can't conceive how anyone could think differently than he. That is a position from which, first, there can be little grounds to claim another is being irrational or unimaginative, and second, from which any suitable proof on such a matter as this can be concluded. If you can't understand how you might be wrong, your claim to be right is hollow.

The no-fault impasse tries to beg a conclusion that while he cannot prove himself right, his critics are similarly hobbled by the supposed externality from proving him wrong. Here that is simply not the case. The errors in Jabba's argument are not mere ambiguities. They are obvious, glaring failures in logic. The problem is not that this is an unentertainable debate. The problem is that Jabba is no good at debating it.

It's essentially an example of what Stephen Law calls "going nuclear":

Suppose Mike is involved in a debate about the truth of his own particular New Age belief system. Things are not going well for him. Mike’s arguments are being picked apart, and, worse still, his opponents have come up with several devastating objections that he can’t deal with.

Sounds familiar?

How might Mike get himself out of this bind?

One possibility is to adopt the strategy I call Going Nuclear. Going Nuclear is an attempt to unleash an argument that lays waste to every position, bringing them all down to the same level of “reasonableness”. Mike might try to force a draw by detonating a philosophical argument that achieves what during the Cold War was called “mutually assured destruction”, in which both sides in the conflict are annihilated.

But Jabba's problem here isn't just that he's been rumbled.

Jabba is trying to prove something here, so a stalemate means that he fails, and also it doesn't matter what evidence Jabba can or can't produce for the existence of souls, or whether or not they can be shown to exist: he's supposed to be calculating the likelihood of his existence if H is true, and if H is true souls don't exist.