Idealists: What does 'physical' mean to you?

[articulett]

You know, Pixy. I honestly wonder about you... First there is your claim that toaster ovens are aware - and modern ones are self-aware - then there is response to AkuManiMan in this thread (post #600) and now there's this response to Malerin.

Honestly, eh? I notice the people that use the word bizarrely like you are often engaging in a sort of double speak. They really mean "dishonestly".

Why would Pixy care what you "honestly" wonder about him any more than you would care what he "honestly" wonders about you?

Your communication is loaded with weird manipulations but very little substance. I suppose these helps you keep "believing in" whatever it is you "believe in". Too bad it keeps you from understanding some of the most fascinating things humans have discovered as you put down those who'd gladly share their knowledge with you.

 

[articulett]

Feelings are a feedback loop... your feelings produce your rationalizations, hypnopsi... it makes you uncomfortable to hold an irrational world view so you your brains seeks semantic ways to tell yourself that it's not irrational at all.

But all the belief in the world cannot make a false notion true. Wanting something to be true is a very good way to convince yourself it IS true, but a very bad way for finding out the actual truth.

 

[paximperium]

It sure looked like you were implying it when you said that because "materialist atheists" can't explain how the universe is self-sustaining, we must go with the more "parsimonious" explanation of a God-consciousness. So what, in your belief system, sustains consciousness? I'd tell you the medical explanation, but you're likely to ignore that.

You could easily replace his version of "god-mind" as sustainer of reality with Natural Laws of the Cosmos and it would be as "parsimonious" but that would just take all the woo out of it.

 

[rocketdodger]

What ulterior motives??? I want to know more about it. What's ulterior in that?

Because your arguments for why a God-mind is more parsimonious than alternatives are biased by the fact that you want to know more about NDE's and mediums, which will only happen if everyone agrees that God-mind is a more pasimonious view.

That is what "ulterior" means.

Your motive for generating the arguments you present on this thread is not, as you claim, to come up with a better explanation for existence. It is to reconcile the objective world with your desire for NDEs, mediums, psi, and any other supernatural stuff to be real.

They mean exactly what they mean. That the atheist Universe inherently and without purpose provides for it's own capacity to exist.

That is your conclusion. It isn't ours' -- as we have repeatedly told you. It doesn't make any sense to say something can fully provide for it's own capacity to exist.

So, what causes the Universe to exist according to materialism then?

We have no idea. We can't have an idea, according to mathematics. That is why materialists admit that what is simply is.

You refuse to accept this, but it is clear that you also run into the same problem. What is the cause of the God-mind? Hmmm? Is it "self-caused?" What in tarnation does "self-caused" mean to an organism that is only able to conceive of spatiotemporal cause and effect relationships?

What is happening here is that you, as a spatiotemporal organism, are "filling in the blank" of this cause and effect relationship with God. That fixes the temporary problem for you, because you are somehow able to delude yourself into thinking that self-causing makes sense. We can't delude ourselves like that. We just shake our heads and give up because it is mathematically impossible for us to make sense of it.

Maybe you don't know enough math yet to see this? I dunno. But if you can understand anything, understand that artificially merging a cause and an effect into the same event is nonsense from the perspective of a spatiotemporal being.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Once again. I am only saying that God is a more parsimonious explanation for existence than any atheistic theory that the Universe is self-sustaining for the very simple reason that God is predicated on something known (consciousness) while either information sustaining itslef or matter (as substance) sustaining itslelf isn't based on anything known.

~
HypnoPsi

And I'm once again providing the actual argument that your contention is bunk for the simple reason that the only reason we "know" that thought exists is because thought is a necessary condition for knowledge. This tells us nothing about what is or is not the fundamental existent. It is simply not true that your "explanation" is more parsimonious, since you must make the same leap that anyone else must make.

The thought that is demonstrated by the cogito is not God-consciousness however you want to spin it; we know doubting because that is what we do everytime we re-engage in the cogito. The only thought that we know for certain is the ability to doubt everything. Are you really ready to found an entire ontology on the process of doubting?

And you neglected to address my other point -- the very idea of energy (the ability to do anything) seems to undergird even the existence of thought. The ability to think surely subsumes thinking itself? Why is this not the fundamental existent, some form of energy?

ETA:

Wow, I gotta tell you thanks, man. You've actually helped me, from your earlier contention, to see exactly why and where you are wrong, which, of course, helps my thinking along.

We know that thought exists. OK. We know this because thought is prior to knowledge; knowledge cannot exist without it. But there actually is something prior to thought itself -- the ability to think, as I mentioned above. Thinking is a form of work, consciousness is a form of work. The ability to do work is prior to the work itself, so energy is prior to thought, prior to consciousness.

You have inadvertently proved materialism. Thank you.

ETA ETA

Unless, of course, you want to argue that consciousness has no mechanism. But since it clearly does more than one thing -- this thing we call consciousness -- it must act according to some rules. Those rules must be prior to it, must be more fundamental. If they do not involve an underlying mechanism that we can understand, then you have proved the alternative -- magic.

So, since it is not possible that consciousness is the fundamental existent, which is it? Energy or magic? Take your pick.

 

[articulett]

Hypnopsi, you have asked no-one of their expertise...you have just presumed you know more than them. You are getting information from very knowledgeable people who are tailoring their answers specifically for you in a way that the highest paid professor could not, and yet you cannot hear it, because you believe that you have something to teach us, and we have nothing to teach you.

It's arrogant. And to any of us who have ever spun delusions for ourselves, it's obvious that you are using words in a weird way and talking down to others, because you desperately want to believe that NDE's are real. I once wanted very much to believe it too. At some point you either want the truth more than you want to keep believing you have it or you don't. This is not the forum for you if you have a vested interest in keeping your belief that NDE's are true.

This puts you in the same category as those diviners who, even after they fail the MDC, continue to believe in their powers.

 

[Dancing David]

Ok, at least this has the form, if not the content, of an explanation.
Now please provide an example of a proposition which is 'without referents to something, either experience or what have you'.

'god is an old man in a white robe'
'the idea of a self sustaining god that creates the universe is more parsimonius than a self sustaining universe'
'I know I am conscious'

 

[Dancing David]

I think his whole point is that he can't. It would have no meaning. We can't speak in terms of propositions that have no other referent, and that is why we can't speak of ultimate reality or know ultimate reality.

I gave a foolish answer anyways.

All we can know is what there appears to be in the universe. Which may or may no be.

 

[Dancing David]

Little point in that, I'm afraid.

One side has observed that all self-consistent ontologies that accurately reflect reality are of necessity functionally equivalent.

The other claims that Rupert Sheldrake proves the existence of God.

One side is right; the other side is not even wrong.

Badges, badges? We don't need no stinking badges!

Neither side is right, both sides are wrong. Some kinds of wrong are more equal than others.

Some people just are not comfortable doubting their deeply help beliefs. But hey, i doubt everything, most of the time.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

All we can know is what there appears to be in the universe. Which may or may no be.

Yes, I agree.

 

[Dancing David]

I have never claimed that reality requries a sustainer. I have only ever made it clear that God is a much more parsimonious theory, being predicated on consciousness, than reality being self (or auto) sustaining (as either information or "uncuttable" matter) since this is predicated on nothing but itself.

~
HypnoPsi

Only because you make the same mistake a materialist makes, you assume that you know what 'consciousness' is, just as a materialist assumes they know what 'matter' is.

Neither has any more reality than the other.

I state in all serious, i can not prove that i am not a p-zombie. I exhibit all the behaviors of consciousness, but i can not prove that I am conscious.

If the fact that i exhibit the behaviors means that I am conscious, then so is a toaster, Albeit a different order of magnitude.

When Paul A. carefully explained to me that i just believed I had free will, it came as a shock to me. It is a deeply help belief.

But I can not prove that I have free will either.

It is simple, we can only label and describe behaviors, some we can ascribe as nouns. However, we can only use them as approximate models.

If I state that i have the behaviors of consciousness therefore I am conscious, then i have to concede that anything that exhibits those behaviors is conscious. it is all a matter of degree.

Cats, dogs and birds are conscious. As are insect, but of different orders of magnitude compared to humans who are fully functional. A toaster seems like a silly example to me but if we create a spectrum with humans/dolphins/chimps at one end...cats dogs, horses, cows...insects, arachnids... we can see that there are levels to which we ascribe the descriptor consciousness.

Now we can agree on the 'high' end rather readily but it gets really vague down at the other, I am not sure we would say that plants are conscious, nor bacteria and viruses. certainly not prions. But again it is a matter of definition.

So the idea that you have 'consciousness' while convenient, does not prove that consciousness exists.

A self sustaining god and a self sustaining set of energy is pretty equal in terms of parsimony.

You are just assuming that you are conscious, just as a materialist assumes that they are material.

Neither position can prove an ontology. Both are equal in terms of truth.
matter appears to exist. matter appears to exist.

Both are labels, both are true and both are false.

 

[Dancing David]

You know, Pixy. I honestly wonder about you... First there is your claim that toaster ovens are aware - and modern ones are self-aware - then there is response to AkuManiMan in this thread (post #600) and now there's this response to Malerin.

How can you not see that the very notion of an "I" that is aware of it's own existence as a conscious being removes any notion of the observer in question being a p-zombie?

~
HypnoPsi

No, not really
'"I" that is aware of it's own existence as a conscious being ' is a behavior, whatever you choose to define that 'I' as. It is a set of behaviors in phenomena, matter or godthink.

So if the p-zombie is defined as exhibiting 'all behaviors of consciousness' this includes the 'private' behaviors as well.

So nope, i am still a p-zombie who can not prove that I am conscious.

Really, just stop and think about it. How can a p-zombie prove that it is a p-zombie? Or not?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I disagree that human consciousness is transitory and temporary, remember?

Good, so you're the sort of person who is never unconscious and you're absolutely sure that you're going to last forever, in spite of no evidence for arbitrarily-old disembodied minds floating about. Your consciousness is still not all-pervasive, so it is still insufficient for maintaining the universe.

Because it's not predicated on anything known. A conscious thinker of the Universe is predicated on the human conscious thinker.

You just said the following:

P1. There is no evidence for any self-sustaining entities.

P2. There is evidence for human consciousness.

C1. Therefore there is evidence for self-sustaining universal consciousness.

It don't follow. I think you need to replace P1.

I theorise nothing beyond conscious thinker of the Universe. For all I know God might have thought up laws and not ever consider anything beyond that.

You theorize that he has memory, that he can sustain the universe, that the universal consciousness can be individuated. And you just theorized that god can think, which emphasizes that he has memory. Furthermore, if god never considered anything after thinking up the laws, then he is not the sustainer of the universe, only the creator.

A conscious thinker is more parsimonious than self-sustaining being based on consciousness while self-sustaining information/matter is based on nothing known.

You have to explain precisely the same observations that any other model has to explain. The only thing you have as a starting point is that you believe that the processes required to maintain the universe are similar to human consciousness. All you get from that assumption is a vague sort of imagination that might hold a picture of the universe. You get nothing else from that analogy. You cannot claim that your model has more parsimony, which means economy of explanation.

~~ Paul

 

[HypnoPsi]

And again, just because you can use the same language to describe two very different things does not make them equivalent.

But... you agreed that a good definition of "behavior" is that it refers to "actions of an organism." Which means "things an organism can do." Which means anything that a verb refers to.

See above. Even if we use the word "behaviour" to define both subjective experiences as well as objective physiological processes we are still using the word in a qualitatively very different way.

Again, using the same word to describe two different things/activities does not make them equivalent.

Why don't you provide a definition of "behavior" that suits you, and we can go from there.

This has nothing even remotely to do with how you define "behaviour". It is only about how you apply the term - particularly if you are blinkering yourself to the fact that the subjective and objective realms are qualitatively different.

Look, there are only two choices. Either subjective experience is the result of some unknowable -- yes, unknowable -- magic or it is simply identity. I think identity is much more "parsimonious," to use a term you seem to be interested in.

To be quite frank I'm not sure where you're even going with this identity thing or why, but I'm guessing it's another play on words.

The action of your mind relies completely on electrochemical reactions.

I disagree entirely. Psi is extra sensory and I see no reason it's down to EM fields.

What proves consciousness is computational is the fact that there is no aspect of consciousness, under any common definition, that cannot be reduced to a type of computation.

And by the exact same logic, Dennett's thermostat "behaviour" can be reduced to "thoughts" about 'too hot', 'too cold' and 'just right'. The problem is that description is not the same thing as reality.

If you're creative enough, phenomenal objects can be described in terms of earth, air, fire and water. Still doesn't make it true. The computational theory of consciousness is a similar type of creative fiction.

Or, if you feel like there is some aspect of consciousness that can't be reduced to computation, please share.

All of it.

Either look up the evidence or don't. Just don't expect me to spoon feed it to you or hand-hold you through the process of interpreting it correctly.

Are you sure you want to take that position? We are all wrong, but you can't be bothered to explain why?

The original authors explain things much better than I do. Now, can you name a single researcher who has experimental evidence as opposed to theoretical beliefs that consciousness is nothing more than the result of cellular computation?

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

You could easily replace his version of "god-mind" as sustainer of reality with Natural Laws of the Cosmos and it would be as "parsimonious" but that would just take all the woo out of it.

Agnosticism: The view that even though the Universe and Natural Laws clearly exist one does not know how they exist.

Theism: The view that the Universe and Natural Laws are best explained by a supreme conscious thinker and that some property or substance that inherently supplies itself with the necessities of maintaining it's own existence is superfluous.

Atheism The view that the Universe and Natural Laws are best explained as self-sustaining and that a supreme conscious thinker is superfluous.

Theism is predicated on a known thing: Consciousness. Atheism is predicated on nothing known.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The original authors explain things much better than I do. Now, can you name a single researcher who has experimental evidence as opposed to theoretical beliefs that consciousness is nothing more than the result of cellular computation?

You're asking us to prove that there is not something involved in consciousness over and above brain function? Are you also asking us to prove that there is not something involved in evolution over and above biology, or that there is not something involved in the weather over and above meteorological events?

Not possible. But why would you assume there is, when there is no evidence in favor of the idea?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Theism: The view that the Universe and Natural Laws are best explained by a supreme conscious thinker and that some property or substance that inherently supplies itself with the necessities of maintaining it's own existence is superfluous.

Uh, you better think this out a little more. Clearly the SCT supplies itself with the necessities of maintaining its own existence.

~~ Paul

 

[HypnoPsi]

Because your arguments for why a God-mind is more parsimonious than alternatives are biased by the fact that you want to know more about NDE's and mediums, which will only happen if everyone agrees that God-mind is a more pasimonious view.

Utterly wrong. Even the Buddhist ideas of a totally "self-less" Nirvana are absolutely fine with me - in fact, I think several aspects of that view have much more going for them than certain traditionally western views of God.

Your motive for generating the arguments you present on this thread is not, as you claim, to come up with a better explanation for existence. It is to reconcile the objective world with your desire for NDEs, mediums, psi, and any other supernatural stuff to be real.

Now you claim to be reading my mind... I see "God" and psi, etc., as entirely different things.

Again, I would not be troubled in the slightest if "God" turned out to be a non-entity in terms of the single conscious being of western thought.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[paximperium]

Thanks for showing off how blantantly moronic and dishonest your arguments are. Must be nice making up your little straw figurines and attacking those while ignoring reality itself.

Agnosticism: The view that even though the Universe and Natural Laws clearly exist one does not know how they exist.

Agreed

Theism: The view that the Universe and Natural Laws are best explained by a supreme conscious thinker and that some property or substance that inherently supplies itself with the necessities of maintaining it's own existence is superfluous.

Really? Your Special Pleading is weak young grasshopper.
So how does your imaginary SCT maintains itself?
Let me replace your little semantic garbage SCT with Natural Laws. Yup, fits just as well. I must be a theist then

Atheism The view that the Universe and Natural Laws are best explained as self-sustaining and that a supreme conscious thinker is superfluous.

I call you a liar. Atheism is predicated on intellectual honesty in stating to oneself that there are question that is still unknown and that we don't make up bullcrap answers based on lies. We reject a supreme conciousness due to lack of evidence while keeping an open mind and keep looking for an answer.

Theism is predicated on a known thing: Consciousness.

Nope. Theism is predicated on making an unevidenced vague claim that seems logical and then secretly dumping a whole lot of useless magical mythic crap into the original claim and pretending no one notices the dishonesty.
Keep making this claim. Maybe it'll magically come true if you keep repeating that lie. Maybe if you keep pretending that your semantic "conciousness" is accepted that you can secretly sneak int Jesus and YHWH into the equation.

Atheism is predicated on nothing known.

Nope. Atheism is predicated on rejecting unevidence garbage claims from woo-mongerers so that we can keep looking for answers.

Here is the proper definitions:
Agnosticism: View that the ultimate truth can never be known.
Theist: God is the ultimately truth.
Atheist: Rejection of the theist claim.

Agnostic Atheist/Materialist: Ultimate truth can never be known and we reject the theistic claim.

Thanks for playing

 

[HypnoPsi]

Only because you make the same mistake a materialist makes, you assume that you know what 'consciousness' is, just as a materialist assumes they know what 'matter' is.

I do not presume to have even the slightest idea what consciousness is.

I state in all serious, i can not prove that i am not a p-zombie. I exhibit all the behaviors of consciousness, but i can not prove that I am conscious.

So? I can't prove I'm conscious to anyone else either. All I know is that for me as a conscious being with no knowledge of any self-sustaining information or substance that another consciousness is the most parsimonious solution to existence.

A self sustaining god and a self sustaining set of energy is pretty equal in terms of parsimony.

I have no idea if the God-thinker is self-sustaining or everlasting. All I know is that the God-thinker is predicated on the personal thinker and the self-sustaining energy is based on nothing.

You are just assuming that you are conscious, just as a materialist assumes that they are material.

This has to be one of the silliest things I've ever read.

~
HypnoPsi