My argument against materialism

[Dancing David]

A mind created Universe is certainly more parsimonious than metaphysical materialsim - but parsimony does not guarantee accuracy of a theory only elegance.

~
HypnoPsi

So the mind thinks of all the different particles and they are conscious and that is more parsimonius than the stuff just existing. You have stuff+*mind*, so stuff-*mind* is a smaller set, parsimony of zero sets is silly.

 

[HypnoPsi]

Are you claiming that the world is somehow different than what we perceive in the brain?

Absolutely - in several easily demonstrated ways that are fully accepted by science!

For example, the visible part of the light spectrum we see lies firmly between very real phenomena such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared on one side and ultraviolet rays, X-Rays and Gamma Rays on the other side.

And, what's more, everything we see as solid objects can be reduced to massless thermal radiation with the addition of temperature and, particularly, gravity.

(That's what happens in a Black Hole and the thermal radiation that the Black Hole emits, unit it completely evaporates, is called Hawking Radiation.)

We exist in a wonderous, exciting and magnificent Universe of information. But we're just bald apes and our senses don't capture everything.

The marvellous 3D phenomenal perceptual world that our mind-brains create is truly incredible, but it's just a cognitive map. It's not reality itself. Reality is nothing like what we see.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

You have stuff+*mind*, so stuff-*mind* is a smaller set, parsimony of zero sets is silly.

Nope. And I find it highly amusing how parsimony has suddenly become of interest to you now that you mistakenly think you've arrived at some kind of solution.

We have reality existing as either:

1) God's thought/s

or

2) Some non-conscious "stuff"

Now, consciousness and thoughts we all know about since we have them and, obviously (in theory at least), a mind that was powerful and creative enough could "think" about a universe as vast as ours.

(I can just about hold together a constant image of, say a house, with a few people walking about in it so God's definitely more powerful and creative than me! )

Either way, there are no unknown entities being multiplied here. Minds are known to us.

Now, speculation about non-conscious "stuff"....

As well as being something to which we have absolutely nothing at all to compare, this "stuff" has to have the ability to be very many things like spacetime, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong forces, both a particle and a wave and it has to have the ability to become self-aware when it's organised in a certain way that we would define as information processing.

Except, there's a big problem here. Information processing is a value statement made by conscious minds. Information processing is a label that conscious minds apply to closed physical reactions when said closed physical reactions provide us with data that we collect and consciously interpret or find useful somehow.

So, even if we ignore the problem of how an information processing system consciously values it's information processing as conscious processiong before it's even conscious in the first place, I think we can safely see how the endless list of exotic properties this non-conscious "stuff" requires to account for the Universe and the existence of consciousness within the Universe is a rather considerable multiplication of unknowns to the nth degree!

The idea this is somehow more parsimonious than God (a conscious mind) clearly has a few problems.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Robin]

A mind created Universe is certainly more parsimonious than metaphysical materialsim - but parsimony does not guarantee accuracy of a theory only elegance.

However, since the theistic model also has better explanatory and predictive power than than the alternative atheistic model (which has no explanatory or predictive power at all with regards to consciousness) we can certainly be very confident in it's veracity.

I wish we could be certain, but we can't. There is still a chance - though it is fleetingly slim - that the less well reasoned atheistic model is the correct one.

Well why don't you present your reasoning if you have such confidence in it?

I haven't seen any reasoning from you so far, just a disorganised jumble of ideas.

Why don't you take some time to sort this out in your head and present the whole thing as a cohesive and coherent argument.

Remember that if a "mind" created the Universe it could not be conscious - at least not in the way we use the term - since we use it to describe a process apparently happening in time.

A "mind" that created the Universe would also have created the illusion of time and thus would not be conscious in this sense.

So would it be conscious in any sense? You would have to provide the reasoning to show that this was the case.

And if you cannot do that you have to provide some sort of warrant for labelling this speculative entity as "mind".

And if you cannot do that then you cannot claim parsimony on the basis that you have labelled the speculative entity the same as an existing phenomena.

Remember, your speculative entity would have to be non-temporal - no kind of succession and hence no volition. So it would have no features at all in common with that which we associate with the word "mind" or "consciousness".

Your "mind" will have to be something that beams information between minds which is also not a property we associate with the words "mind" or "consciousness"

But I am happy to have a look at your reasoning if you are willing to present it.

Nope - for the blindingly obvious reason that the Universe is populated by distinct self-aware entities....

Well, just this little corner of it in any case.

But you are right about the distinct part.

And with information flowing each to each.

And we know that this information flow can be described by certain mathematical models.

And we don't know any more than that.

 

[nescafe]

A mind created Universe is certainly more parsimonious than metaphysical materialsim - but parsimony does not guarantee accuracy of a theory only elegance.

Not really -- you take a strictly local phenomenon (us being able to imagine things), inflate that to the Basic Substance of The Universe (it is being imagined by a superbeing). How is that parsimonious or elegant? We see matter and energy everywhere, in every direction we look, and we have rather rigorous and well tested models that describe how it should behave at multiple different levels of complexity.

However, since the theistic model also has better explanatory and predictive power than than the alternative atheistic model (which has no explanatory or predictive power at all with regards to consciousness) we can certainly be very confident in it's veracity.

Explanatory and predictive power are related to falsifiability -- how is your theistic model falsifiable? What could disprove it?

Nope - for the blindingly obvious reason that the Universe is populated by distinct self-aware entities....

No, as far as we know only a single insignificant speck of dust has been populated with self-aware entities for a single fleeting instant. Thinking otherwise is deluding yourself.

 

[HypnoPsi]

You say "Metaphysical materialism can't explain consciousness at all" to which I say "Why is that a problem?" Why does the lack of an explanation of consciousness invalidate materialism?

To which I reply maybe there is actually some non-conscious stuff that eventually becomes conscious. I make absolutely no claim to know the "right" answer.

My point, is only that metaphysical materialism is not as parsimonious as a theistic explanation.

What I am saying is because we can create things "in our head" with our conscious minds, it is more likely that existence itself is the product of a conscious mind rather than the product of some purely speculative non-conscious substrate as in metaphysical materialism.

Once again, non-sequitur, you conclusion does not follow your premise.

If you think that some non-conscious stuff is a better explanation for reality or even an equal explanation for reality let's hear your argument?

You do realize what site this is, right? One that advertises a prize of one million dollars for proof of psychic phenomenon?

What? Do you really expect me to get all excited over the million dollar prize? When it comes to psi experiements the JREF needs a high signal to noise ratio in a low number of trials for both practical purposes and risk managment.

Experiments in to psi, like the ganzfeld, generally take a very long time to run and gather all the data points needed and might only end up giving results that are 50:1 against chance.

Would you risk $1 million against a result you know could occur by pure chance alone 1 time in every 50 experiments? I wouldn't - and I wouldn't blame the JREF for not doing so either. But that doesn't mean we should ignore those 50:1 experiments.

Dean Radin explained all this on his blog. The cost of winning the JREF prize would go over-buget against the prize itself.

"Look it up" is not a source. No such evidence exists. Please feel free to prove me wrong and provide some links.

Plenty of evidence exists if you bother to look. And I see no reason to play the role of researcher for you.

Now, if you're willing to be more reasonable and will do some work yourself in presenting me with whatever experimental data you might think exists that demonstrates computers (or any information processing system) actually developing consciousness then, okay, I'll also look out a few papers (and provide you with the links) so that we can compare, contrast and criticially evaluate the merits and demerits of both sets of experiments.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[tsig]

A mind created Universe is certainly more parsimonious than metaphysical materialsim - but parsimony does not guarantee accuracy of a theory only elegance.

However, since the theistic model also has better explanatory and predictive power than than the alternative atheistic model (which has no explanatory or predictive power at all with regards to consciousness) we can certainly be very confident in it's veracity.

I wish we could be certain, but we can't. There is still a chance - though it is fleetingly slim - that the less well reasoned atheistic model is the correct one.




Nope - for the blindingly obvious reason that the Universe is populated by distinct self-aware entities....

~
HypnoPsi

Good thing I'm not one of those metaphysical materialisits lest I be considered stupid.

What does the theistic model predict?

 

[tsig]

Ah... nope. At least, I've certainly not became a god or created any little gods in my mind that have a distinct existence.

Have you?

Seems to me - so far - that it's just God and we conscious beings that inhabit his creation.

(Let me know if you actually do find more.)

~
HypnoPsi

In your mind is the only place god has existence.

 

[dlorde]

HypnoPsi, I'm trying to figure out what your thesis is.

He's a spoof, he's having a laugh. It's an absurd caricature of intellectual theist philosophy. Not as funny as Al Murray, The Pub Landlord, but that kind of thing...

Have another: God Is British.

 

[tsig]

Absolutely - in several easily demonstrated ways that are fully accepted by science!

For example, the visible part of the light spectrum we see lies firmly between very real phenomena such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared on one side and ultraviolet rays, X-Rays and Gamma Rays on the other side.

And, what's more, everything we see as solid objects can be reduced to massless thermal radiation with the addition of temperature and, particularly, gravity.

(That's what happens in a Black Hole and the thermal radiation that the Black Hole emits, unit it completely evaporates, is called Hawking Radiation.)

We exist in a wonderous, exciting and magnificent Universe of information. But we're just bald apes and our senses don't capture everything.

The marvellous 3D phenomenal perceptual world that our mind-brains create is truly incredible, but it's just a cognitive map. It's not reality itself. Reality is nothing like what we see. ~
HypnoPsi

How do you know that? If our senses can't capture reality and you have the same senses as the rest of us then how can you know reality beyond the senses?

 

[Dancing David]

And, what's more, everything we see as solid objects can be reduced to massless thermal radiation with the addition of temperature and, particularly, gravity.

(That's what happens in a Black Hole and the thermal radiation that the Black Hole emits, unit it completely evaporates, is called Hawking Radiation.)

~
HypnoPsi

Um EM photons are not massless unless they are stationary, what the Fred are you talking about? If they were massless there would be NO balckholes.

 

[Dancing David]

Nope. And I find it highly amusing how parsimony has suddenly become of interest to you now that you mistakenly think you've arrived at some kind of solution.

We have reality existing as either:

1) God's thought/s

or

2) Some non-conscious "stuff"

Or both or neither, it is pointless. What kind of shoes do angels wear?

Now, consciousness and thoughts we all know about since we have them and, obviously (in theory at least), a mind that was powerful and creative enough could "think" about a universe as vast as ours.

(I can just about hold together a constant image of, say a house, with a few people walking about in it so God's definitely more powerful and creative than me! )

Either way, there are no unknown entities being multiplied here. Minds are known to us.

Now, speculation about non-conscious "stuff"....

As well as being something to which we have absolutely nothing at all to compare, this "stuff" has to have the ability to be very many things like spacetime, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong forces, both a particle and a wave and it has to have the ability to become self-aware when it's organised in a certain way that we would define as information processing.

Except, there's a big problem here. Information processing is a value statement made by conscious minds. Information processing is a label that conscious minds apply to closed physical reactions when said closed physical reactions provide us with data that we collect and consciously interpret or find useful somehow.

So, even if we ignore the problem of how an information processing system consciously values it's information processing as conscious processiong before it's even conscious in the first place, I think we can safely see how the endless list of exotic properties this non-conscious "stuff" requires to account for the Universe and the existence of consciousness within the Universe is a rather considerable multiplication of unknowns to the nth degree!

The idea this is somehow more parsimonious than God (a conscious mind) clearly has a few problems.

~
HypnoPsi

More words mean less.

You are even sillier, I stated at the end, parsimony of zero sets is silly. It still is. Imagination is not parsimony.

 

[gentlehorse]

If you - or anyone - believe that "the fundamental nature of the universe is most likely to be non-conscious", then you believe something for which there is no evidence.

I assign no attributes to the fundamental nature of the universe. A positive claim along the lines of "it is consciousness" was made. I pointed out that there is no evidence of this. Otherwise, all I have said is that we don't know anything about the fundamental nature of the universe. It is a mystery.

I believe (and put my faith in the belief) that there is something conscious that gives the Universe and my own consciousness to existence and that in some way death will not be the ultimate end of me - but I will readily and happily admit I don't know that to be true..

Dandy! You have faith. You believe in something for which there is no evidence. Then what are we arguing about?

As above, It is merely the case that this is what is "most likely to be" true.

Oh yeah. This... You say that you know nothing about the fundamental nature of the universe and then go on to say that it is likely to be consciousness. If you know nothing about X, then you can make no meaningful statements regarding the properties of X.

And this:

Second, there is indirect evidence for consciousness as the true noumenal nature of things.

Earlier you said that "the neumenal essence of things is unknowable." Now you claim that there is indirect evidence for consciousness as the true noumenal nature of things. Your statements are inconsistent.

Not only is consciousness more parsimonious because we each know it exists, we also know we can create things in our minds with it. Consequently, the theory that there is a conscious mind giving existence to the Universe is obviously a better thoery than an entirely speculative theory that it's a non-conscious substrate.

Neither position has merit. The unkown is the unknown.

A powerful and creative enough mind could easily create within itself a universe like ours provided it was creative enough and had a mind vast enough to do so.

Good lord... I don't suppose it would do me any good to ask... Ah, never mind.

Peace.

 

[Belz...]

So thoughts and dreams aren't data?

Of course they are. Read what I said again.

 

[Belz...]

Oh... but atheists do believe in a magic powder and/or power stuff.

No, they don't. No one here has made this claim, either. In fact, quite the opposite has been said, explicitly.

Metaphysical materialism simply can't account for why any information processing system requires any type of conscious awareness that it is processing information in the first place! And, if conscousness didn't already exist it wouldn't be able to predict it!

You're confusing a philosophy with the current body of knowledge we have, scientifically speaking.

Metaphysical materialism can neither explain nor predict consciousness.

Idealism can't predict reality.

 

[Belz...]

You see the world you're looking at around you? Well, there is definitely a real world out there but what you're actually seeing is being produced by your brainy-waney.

That's nice in a conversation, but it's false. When you touch a brick wall, your perception of the wall isn't just your brain, it's your entire biological system reacting to it. Although your brain is the center of your consciousness, it isn't the whole of it. That's one of the reasons why we don't just read a report saying "your pinky hurts, man." Instead we feel pain in the actual spot. Imagine that !

If you think your experience is a perception of something else, then it opens the whole question of the other turtles.

You see, light from the objects around you is entering into your eyes but the objects around you themselves aren't enterning into your eyes, are they? No. That would be silly. They're too big!

 

[Belz...]

So, no, the noumena thingy is quite unimportant - it is just a confused mode of thinking.

This is one of the reasons why I hate it when people summon up solipsism or, in this case, noumena. It's usually apparent that they have stopped their philosophical studies at a few hundred years in the past. Just like armchair shrinks who stop at Freud.

 

[Belz...]

A mind created Universe is certainly more parsimonious than metaphysical materialsim

No it doesn't, and your say-so doesn't make it true. The problem here is that you are assigning a special value to "consciousness" that the rest of us don't care much for. That's why you're confused: we don't care about the "stuff" of the mind or the universe. To science, only behaviour matters.

However, since the theistic model also has better explanatory and predictive power than than the alternative atheistic model (which has no explanatory or predictive power at all with regards to consciousness) we can certainly be very confident in it's veracity.

Again, no. The theistic model has NO predictive power because it makes no predictions whatsoever. It cannot predict consciousness, either, I'd remind you.

 

[Belz...]

Ah... nope. At least, I've certainly not became a god or created any little gods in my mind that have a distinct existence.

No, silly! The theistic god, probably created by some other turtle.

You probably don't know as much philosophy as you think you do.

Which gives him the advantage. He's not so bothered by trivial useless stuff as you are.

 

[PixyMisa]

Nope. Psychic phenomena definitely exist. Loads of experiments show positive results.

Evidence? Source? Anything to support this assertion?

Wow, thanks, I missed that specific piece of nonsense in all the general nonsense flying about.

Soooo, HypnoPsi, would you care to name one of these "loads" of experiments that show positive results? Give us your best case.