science can't see feelings, not yet anyways. can perhaps see images created by feelings (brain scans)
Hawking says there are no gods
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science can't see feelings, not yet anyways. can perhaps see images created by feelings (brain scans)
David Mo
Philosopher
This is my criterion to know if an issue is scientific. Have you any other? Some example?
I have demand you the same twenty times. Without answer.
Like ringing a bell.
David Mo
Philosopher
This is so, in your own words. Thank you.
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David Mo
Philosopher
It is my criterion to know if an issue is scientific. Do you have another? (The twenty-oneth time)
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Belz...
Fiend God
Feelings ARE neurons firing, Larry. If science can see that and associate a pattern with a feeling or thought, then they can see that feeling or thought. It's really that simple.
I know it's uncomfortable to those who want thought to be special and untouchable by cold facts, but that it sucks for them isn't my problem, nor reality's.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah I almost PM'd you to place a bet about whether qualia would be next on the menu.
It just serves to show how empty of actual arguments that ideology is.
And now LarryS is going to make us do the whole "Okay I see the guy moving his legs rapidly in sequence causing forward motion... but I don't see the act of running anywhere" routine like we did we Jabba.
Belz...
Fiend God
Soul of the gaps, as usual.
JoeM brought up 'feeling' - I'm not sure of his motivation.
And no, science can not see feelings, no matter how many times you repeat it, it does not make it so.
It's not even that. We're not even being given the courtesy of actual gaps anymore.
"God/Soul/Woo of the Gaps" is intellectually dishonest even when there are actual gaps.
Pointing at... no gap that actually exists, pretending there is a gap there, and shoving God/Soul/Woo in there is even worse.
"$#@!ing magnets. How do they work?"
"Tide goes in... tide goes out. You can't explain that."
false comparison
Belz...
Fiend God
Yes it can, no matter how many times you deny it, it does not make it not so.
See how empty words can be, even when you find them convincing yourself? So let's try things differently:
How do you define what a feeling is? Do you think the definition should have something to do with how the feelings work, or instead how we perceive them? I ask because I suspect that your declaration quoted above relies on you not defining feelings as neural and hormonal functions, which we absolutely can detect and interpret, but rather on how the feelings... well, 'feel'. If that's the case, you've turtles-all-the-way-down'ed yourself into a situation where it's impossible to detect feelings scientifically, even in principle. Would that sound rational to you, were that done with anything else?
xjx388
Penultimate Amazing
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We also know that the brain is where thoughts come from because when someone’s brain is injured, their thoughts are altered. Chemicals can alter perception. There is plenty of evidence that consciousness and perception arise from the workings of the brain even if we don’t know exactly how yet.
There is zero evidence that consciousness arises from some invisible undetectable source outside the brain.
A reasonable person can conclude, without having to cite published research, that there is no such thing as the soul.
Now, one can do some Scientology level finagling and talk about how a soul is somehow entangled with the body in some way and that once the body dies the soul is released for reprogramming in space stations and then sent back down into a new body...I guess. Or one can redefine “soul” in countless, unfalsifiable ways. This is what we call gobbledygook. Such nonsense should form no part of rational discourse.
The same is true for god ideas. I have no quarrel with those who wish to engage in such mental masturbation as a way to pleasure themselves with “mind blowing” thought orgasms. I find no comfort or pleasure in such. There are enough mind blowing ideas in the real world for me.
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There is zero evidence that consciousness arises from some invisible undetectable source outside the brain.
A reasonable person can conclude, without having to cite published research, that there is no such thing as the soul.
Now, one can do some Scientology level finagling and talk about how a soul is somehow entangled with the body in some way and that once the body dies the soul is released for reprogramming in space stations and then sent back down into a new body...I guess. Or one can redefine “soul” in countless, unfalsifiable ways. This is what we call gobbledygook. Such nonsense should form no part of rational discourse.
The same is true for god ideas. I have no quarrel with those who wish to engage in such mental masturbation as a way to pleasure themselves with “mind blowing” thought orgasms. I find no comfort or pleasure in such. There are enough mind blowing ideas in the real world for me.
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Belz...
Fiend God
The problem with doing so, of course, is that it puts the soul so removed from its original concept as to make it both irrelevant and pretty much unrelated to the thoughts and feelings it's supposed to be generating.
Yeah that and we all know damn well, even the people doing it, that all that is is an escape clause. Nobody is really even pretending otherwise outside of the show they putting on.
Everyone knows people who do this just do to it to argue for that version when pressed into having to, but go on believe in and arguing for the "actually does something" version the rest of the time.
Again nobody actually "believes" in vague, vaguey vague things vaguey doing vague things in some totally walled off separate part of reality we can never interact with so it stays "unprovable."
In every practical, real world use of the term God does things. The soul does things. Woo does stuff.
That's why this "Okay but what if God/Woo/Soul doesn't refer to... the way literally everyone uses it but some other thing that's conveniently defined in a specific way to be impossible to argue against but totally isn't just a foot in the back door way to keep believing in the original version...." game is so dishonest and intellectual cowardly.
And apologetics have always bothered me more than just actual honest defense of wrongness.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Right. It's self-defeating, also. In trying to maintain belief in X, you make it so X is so far removed from any sort of detectability that you could never see or feel any effect from it, which makes it functionally non-existent.
Then they have to add more layers. God's undetectable? Right, but my soul can detect it too. Science can't see the soul and all of its functions are accounted for? Yeah ok but it's undetectable and has nothing to do with reality! Oh, wait, that means it does nothing? Oh, but what about qualia? Etc.
I agree with your careful use of word 'associate' - if there was even a half-baked guess or hunch offered as a causal relationship between nerve twitchings and a felling then I'd pay the full asking price. As it stands right now, if a subject is unable to communicate (like a giraffe), we have no idea if they expreience pain or just have the nerve twitchings.
you can throw words like Scientology, Souls, Magic and Woo all you want but it doesn't make your case any stronger - it's a sign of desperation.
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