Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba, could you provide some clarity about what you mean by your "existence"? You oscillate between "sense of self" and "existence" as if the words were synonyms. They are not.

I am not seeking exact definitions, just some understanding. I will assume you meant "sense of self" in all recent cases, and your use of "existence" is just a throw-back to terminology from many years ago.

So, what's included in this sense of self?
-- It must have a bit of "I think therefore I am" aspect.
-- It must include the sensory perception of you and the world around you.
-- Does it include your memories?
-- Does it include your moral character?
-- Your likes, dislikes, ...?
-- What all is included?
 
Jabba said:
From 1365 by Caveman:
Originally Posted by Jabba View Post
- There is no 10.
WTF? It's right there:
Originally Posted by JayUtah View Post
Fatal flaw 10: You err in attributing mathematical countability to an abstract concept.
You can ignore it of course, but it is there...
- You're right. I had forgotten that Jay entered more claimed fatal flaws after he started with the "dishonest tactics."
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And thus Jabba sinks even lower.
 
abaddon said:
OK, is it your claim that Jabba could be going the pre-suppositionalist route?

I could sorta buy that.
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Essentially, although like everything else with Jabba trying to figure out exactly where the forced affects ends and the real person begins or trying to decide if it's a trait of the real Jabba or one or more of his personas gets tricky. We're dealing with someone who's having a discussion, a meta discussion about discussions, a performance piece where he proves skeptics are closed minded poopie heads, and is the writer, director and star of a passion play where he's the grand old wise mentor showing a bunch of naive students the one true way all at the same time. It's a mess that no one trope can explain.

But yeah the pre-suppositionalist spark is in there somewhere in some fashion.

When you combine Jabba's argument and performance art character roleplay into something vaguely complete you basically get:

1. Souls obviously exist and we all know it. We're just too narrow minded to admit it, even to ourselves. (This is where the pre-suppositionalist is purest)

2. We see everything in cold, hard narrow view of "science" so Jabba, playing the wise old mentor, has to trick us into seeing the soul in "scientific" language so we'll admit that deep down we always knew the truth. This is a subtle bit of pre-suppositionalism or at least because as I've noted before Jabba isn't technically trying to convince us of anything, he's trying to get us to open up and admit, again even to ourselves, that part of us knew the truth all along. He's trying to herd us toward a personal revelation.

This is the only context this trainwreck of a thread makes sense. Nobody is this bad at arguing. It's too deliberate. Constantly saying the same thing over and over, rewording things again and again for no reason, constantly stopping to "recap" everything all the damn time, cycling through the various Jabba personalities... none of this makes sense either in bad argumentatives or even in traditional trolling. This isn't an argument, it's witnessing with theatrics. It's a Jack Chick track trying to be a Michael Bay film.

So when all is said and done is this a real philosophical or theological theory (however amateurish) of pre-suppositionalism or an after the fact rationalization for stubbornness and low intellectual standard approximating it or some unholy combination of both jumping from persona to persona and argument to argument? *Shrugs* Damned if I know.
 
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Just wishful thinking.

The idea that there are souls is really just wishful thinking that we exist beyond our living organisms that we are attached to. I understand why people want to believe this, I just see no evidence for it.
 
JoeBentley said:
He's trying to herd us toward a personal revelation.
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The one he had when he was 14, yes. The one we all had at about the same age. The one the rest of us realised was based on a mistake when we reached emotional maturity, but Jabba is still desperately clinging to.
 
Jabba said:
I shouldn’t be here right now because there must be an infinity of potential “selves,” and only 7 billion existing selves. So, the odds of me currently existing is 7 billion to infinity
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Why would the number of potential selves or the number of selves that exist 70 years after you were born have anything to do with the likelihood of you existing?
 
Jabba said:
[COLOR="Red"]I shouldn’t be here right now because there must be an infinity of potential “selves,” and only 7 billion existing selves. So, the odds of me currently existing is 7 billion to infinity – or, virtually zero…[/COLOR]
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Since you are attributing these odds and your formulation to the materialist model, then you must use the same logic for everything.

The odds of any mountain or Volkswagen existing are also "virtually zero" using your "logic".

So?

(Your formulation is incorrect, by the way)
 
Jabba said:
Fatal flaw 7: You beg the question that existence is improbable without immortal souls, and use this begged question as a premise in your argument.

Quote:
I shouldn’t be here right now because there must be an infinity of potential “selves,” and only 7 billion existing selves. So, the odds of me currently existing is 7 billion to infinity – or, virtually zero…
No, and it has been elaborated ad nauseam why not.

- Again, it has been claimed ad nauseam that it's not. Give me just one valid reason why it's not.
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Yours was the a priori claim - that the odds of you existing are 'virtually zero'. You haven't given a valid reason after 5+ years why that is so.
Do it now, or park your lame arguments on their kickstands outside the door.
 
John Jones said:
Yours was the a priori claim - that the odds of you existing are 'virtually zero'.
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Indeed. Specifically, he claims that even for a hypothesis under which the only requirement for his existence to be observed is that his body exists, the likelihood that his existence is observed is 'virtually zero'. He ha also conceded the his "self" is only observable if it happens to be occupying a body, and that the characteristics of his "self" are entirely determined by the body it occupies. This means that observing his existence requires his body to exist, whatever hypothesis we are considering. But, according to Jabba, it is 'virtually impossible' for a hypothesis under which his body is required for his existence to be observed to be true. Therefore, according to Jabba's own argument, it is 'virtually impossible' for any hypothesis under which his existence can be observed to be true.

So which is more likely:

a) a 'virtually impossible' hypothesis is true, or

b) that Jabba is mistaken, or lying, about the observation of his existence?

Jabba, I put it to you that as option b) is far more likely, we should reject the observation of your existence as false.

There is, of course, a third option, which is that your argument is fatally borked, but I don't really see you accepting that.
 
Copy and paste the text into a new reply. Select the text that should be quoted. Press the button that says "Wrap QUOTE tags around selected text".
 
godless dave said:
Why would the number of potential selves or the number of selves that exist 70 years after you were born have anything to do with the likelihood of you existing?
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Dave,
- I've tried to explain my logic re this maneuver more than once. No one here accepted any of my explanations. Whatever, I'm still convinced that it makes sense, and I probably can't express my argument any better than I already have. So, I think I'll leave it there, and get on with other sub-issues...
 
Jabba said:
.http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11871278#post11871278

- I haven't figured out how to quote something directly from a previous chapter. Here, I just want to quote fatal flaw 11. How do I do that?
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Like this:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11825460#post11825460

Worth reading your post from May 4th again, in light of the fact that back then you agreed that two unlikely events cannot be more likely than one single unlikely event and you assumed the existence of the brain as a given. Now you're claiming that the likelihood of the existence of your brain is virtually zero. Which means that you must agree that however unlikely the existence of your brain is, it is absolutely more likely than your body AND a soul.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- I've tried to explain my logic re this maneuver more than once. No one here accepted any of my explanations. Whatever, I'm still convinced that it makes sense,
Click to expand...

Why? What do either of those things have to do with the likelihood of you existing? If you wanted to calculate the likelihood of a loaf of bread existing, would you base it on the number of potential loafs of bread and the number of loaves of bread that exist at the same time as the one you are calculating the likelihood of?

Probability just doesn't work like that.
 
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