Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[Aepervius]

Seriously?

Yes Seriously. Because from the study which were discussed in various thread, none of what you cited has solid evidence which really point to something beyond the brain. On the contrary.

 

[Dancing David]

Seriously?

Yup this is always where it ends with you, you say it exists. But then when we ask for the evidence you take a powder.

Been there , done this, you make the statement but have yet to back it up.

So point us to said research and let us have done with it.

 

[tsig]

Why do I have the feeling "an entity is a brain" will be claimed if we go down that road?

I don't know, do you feel yourself a lot?

 

[tsig]

Materialists play word games when some one asks them what their precious matter is, of what is this pantomime of life constituted?

Perhaps they can explain where this pantomime is, perhaps it is a universe in a jar. Maybe everything is in jars, jars within jars.

Or when, did it pop into existence at some point in the past or was it eternally present?

Is it a word game to observe that materialism is adrift in a void, with no rhyme or reason?

You expect the answer to pop in your head?

 

[joobz]

Malerin, would you mind answering my questions.

Malerin,
you never quite explained your position on the hypothetical you gave me.
What effect do YOU believe replacing my cells with perfect mechanical replicas Would have?

Would I be conscious still and appear to function and interact normally?
If the answer is no, why? What is different that prevents the replacement? Afterall, all other organ transplants seem to work with the person remaining. Why is the brain different?
If the answer is yes, then how is your position different from mine?

 

[tsig]

Why do I have the feeling "an entity is a brain" will be claimed if we go down that road?

Because you're just feeling yourself.

 

[tsig]

I have direct personal experience of an aspect of consciousness which is not known to science, concerning the death of a pet cat.

I was compuss-mentus, sober and in full possession of my senses. I can think of no possible scientific explanation of the event.
However if I were to describe it here, it would be dismissed out of hand as just one more ill informed anectdotal claim, not even worth questioning.

What event?

 

[tsig]

Materialists play word games when some one asks them what their precious matter is, of what is this pantomime of life constituted?

Perhaps they can explain where this pantomime is, perhaps it is a universe in a jar. Maybe everything is in jars, jars within jars.

Or when, did it pop into existence at some point in the past or was it eternally present?

Is it a word game to observe that materialism is adrift in a void, with no rhyme or reason?

So unless the origin of the universe is explained to your satisfaction you think 'god'.

 

[tsig]

Thanks Norseman for your interest, I respect your openness on such issues.

I will describe the event and lets see what weasel words folks like Akhenaten use to dismiss it.

I was returning from a four week holiday abroad with my family(except my older brother who had stayed at home).

I was last out of the car and approached the house a couple of minutes after the others had gone in. As soon as I got out of the car I experienced a powerful fealing of emotion hit me like a wave. It was rather like the emotional fealing of grief one experiences when told of the death of a loved one.
I was very puzzled, I had absolutely no idea of what could have happened.
So I went into the house, as I walked along the hallway, I noticed it was very quiet, as I would expect my parents and younger brother to be telling my older brother about the holiday.
As I approached the kitchen door where the others would be, I concluded that someone had died or there was some dreadful news, as I could think of no other explanation for the silence. I was shaking now and feeling sick. I went in and my family was there standing round and they didn't look all that upset.

Puzzled I went over to my younger brother to ask what had happened. He wispered to me that the cat had died while we were away. I breathed a deep sigh of relief as it was nothing more serious than that. I then joined the others in a reflective mournful feeling for the passing of an old ailing and loved pet cat.

Now can anyone offer a scientific explanation for my roller coaster ride of emotions during what was about 3 minutes?

cool story bro.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

"...if materialism is true, then reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can't evaluate whether or not a theory is true. Chemicals don't reason, they react.

I see the Nothing Buttery has not yet run out of patrons.

Chemicals can evaluate a theory is neither true nor false: it is gibberish.
Failure to meet a gibberish requirement is no failure at all.

 

[Malerin]

Malerin, would you mind answering my questions.

Malerin,
you never quite explained your position on the hypothetical you gave me.
What effect do YOU believe replacing my cells with perfect mechanical replicas Would have?

Would I be conscious still and appear to function and interact normally?
If the answer is no, why? What is different that prevents the replacement? Afterall, all other organ transplants seem to work with the person remaining. Why is the brain different?
If the answer is yes, then how is your position different from mine?

Sure.

One of the problems of materialism is that you're locked into a response where one of the duplicates must be you (either the original or a copy). There's no mechanism to account for "you" to refer to more than one brain/body because, as you put it: you are your brain (and body). So if you step into a transporter and a dozen identical copies step out the other end, you're stuck with trying to figure out which one is/was you. If you think you're your brain, and your brain is slowly replaced with something functionally equivalent, you're also stuck with trying to figure out when you stop being you.

One of the advantages of invoking a soul is that it lets "you" refer to the original and all the duplicates, because "you" isn't equivalent to a single brain&body, as you define it to be. "You" refers to a soul, and there's no a priori reason why a soul should be limited to one brain and body.

So to answer the first question, replacing the neurons in my brain wouldn't confer any change in identity because my identity isn't bound up with my brain and physical body in the first place. If the transporter spits out a bunch of copies of me, they're all me, original and duplicates because there's an overarching soul that we all share. All of the instantiations of my soul would simply go their seperate ways and have different experiences. It's like the concept of reincarnation: you live multiple life-times, each one different, but all of them you. In the cases above, the differnent lives that you're living just happen to be occuring at the same time.

 

[Malerin]

I see the Nothing Buttery has not yet run out of patrons.

Chemicals can evaluate a theory is neither true nor false: it is gibberish.
Failure to meet a gibberish requirement is no failure at all.

How is it gibberish? You honestly can't parse "a vat of hydrochloric acid can evaluate the pythagorean theorem"? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

 

[Malerin]

Yes Seriously. Because from the study which were discussed in various thread, none of what you cited has solid evidence which really point to something beyond the brain. On the contrary.

I said "seriously" because about five posts after the one Craig quoted (asking for a study), I linked the Lancet study, where the authors do, in fact, make very unmaterialistic conclusions:

With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed...

Another theory holds that NDE might be a changing state of consciousness (transcendence), in which identity, cognition, and emotion function independently from the unconscious body, but retain the possibility of non-sensory perception...

Finally, the theory and background of transcendence should be included as a part of an explanatory framework for these experiences.

 

[Ignosticist]

How is it gibberish? You honestly can't parse "a vat of hydrochloric acid can evaluate the pythagorean theorem"? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

hydrochloric acid may be unable to evaluate the pythagorean theorem, but there are automated theorem proving machines (computers) made of "chemicals" than can evaluate theorems. Read about them here.

 

[marplots]

...

One of the advantages of invoking a soul is that it lets "you" refer to the original and all the duplicates, because "you" isn't equivalent to a single brain&body, as you define it to be. "You" refers to a soul, and there's no a priori reason why a soul should be limited to one brain and body.

If you are going down this road, I'm wondering how it might be if I had two souls instead of just the one? Two souls, one body. Is there anything in your calculus that prevents this?

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

How is it gibberish? You honestly can't parse "a vat of hydrochloric acid can evaluate the pythagorean theorem"? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

I can parse it all right, since I was taught parsing when I was little.
What I can't do is understand it. And neither, of course, can anyone else. What would it be for a vat of hydrochloric acid to misevaluate a theorem?

I like a joke, but I've no head for nonsense.

 

[Malerin]

I can parse it all right, since I was taught parsing when I was little.
What I can't do is understand it. And neither, of course, can anyone else. What would it be for a vat of hydrochloric acid to misevaluate a theorem?

I like a joke, but I've no head for nonsense.

"misevaluate" assumes an evaluation, (a wrong one). What you should have said was

What would it be for a vat of hydrochloric acid to misevaluate not evaluate a theorem?

It would be like a vat of liquid not doing an evaluation.

Your claim is equivalent to claiming what's it like for a rock to misquote Shakespeare?. That doesn't entail that the proposition "rocks can quote Shakespeare" is gibberish. It's obviously false. Just like "a vat of hydrocloric acid can evaluate" is also false.

 

[Paulhoff]

One of the problems of materialism is that you're locked into a response where one of the duplicates must be you (either the original or a copy). There's no mechanism to account for "you" to refer to more than one brain/body because, as you put it: you are your brain (and body). So if you step into a transporter and a dozen identical copies step out the other end, you're stuck with trying to figure out which one is/was you.

Can we talk real world and not Star Trek.

Paul

 

[Lowpro]

"misevaluate" assumes an evaluation, (a wrong one). What you should have said was

It would be like a vat of liquid not doing an evaluation.

Your claim is equivalent to claiming what's it like for a rock to misquote Shakespeare?. That doesn't entail that the proposition "rocks can quote Shakespeare" is gibberish. It's obviously false. Just like "a vat of hydrocloric acid can evaluate" is also false.

The vat of HCl is a false comparison. HCl doesn't utilize action potentials and send them down to a terminal button like a neuron. An action potential can be thought of as a 0,1 true/false code similar to computers. HCl isn't capable of doing that. It's not an evaluation that neurons perform, it's a simple yes/no effectively but it's how these get summated that lead to the many functions of the brain.

And you've still not tried to explain what a soul is, why you think it works as it does (I assume because of the anecdotes you linked, and yes they are anecdotes ) and why you are so credulous to believe that a soul exists, but it also can see, hear, and most of all think. If you're capable of interacting in the reality you consider NDE's to take place in (ie seeing what we ourselves see with our eyes) then that means souls are able to react to light somehow and that's actually an observable phenomena so the fact that such a phenomena never makes itself apparent in this reality then it's highly probably souls don't see.

And yet you credulously believe they do because that's what you've been told...

way to go mr. thinker.

 

[joobz]

Sure.

One of the problems of materialism is that you're locked into a response where one of the duplicates must be you (either the original or a copy). There's no mechanism to account for "you" to refer to more than one brain/body because, as you put it: you are your brain (and body). So if you step into a transporter and a dozen identical copies step out the other end, you're stuck with trying to figure out which one is/was you. If you think you're your brain, and your brain is slowly replaced with something functionally equivalent, you're also stuck with trying to figure out when you stop being you.

But, you see, those aren't problems. There is NO "YOU" outside of the brain you. IF you duplicate that, you've got two "You"s. If you replace with an exact replicate, you are still "you". If you replace your brain with an imperfect replica, there will be a point where others will think of you as "no longer you" , but you will still be you to yourself.

One of the advantages of invoking a soul is that it lets "you" refer to the original and all the duplicates, because "you" isn't equivalent to a single brain&body, as you define it to be. "You" refers to a soul, and there's no a priori reason why a soul should be limited to one brain and body.

This is a boot strap argument. You've created the need for a separate special "you" and then claim that the soul solves this problem. If you don't have a special, separate "you", you don't have a problem.

So to answer the first question, replacing the neurons in my brain wouldn't confer any change in identity because my identity isn't bound up with my brain and physical body in the first place. If the transporter spits out a bunch of copies of me, they're all me, original and duplicates because there's an overarching soul that we all share.

Yikes, this is a lot of assertion.

All of the instantiations of my soul would simply go their seperate ways and have different experiences. It's like the concept of reincarnation: you live multiple life-times, each one different, but all of them you. In the cases above, the differnent lives that you're living just happen to be occuring at the same time.

more assertions.

1.) No evidence for a soul
2.) no evidence for reincarnation
3.) no evidence for a sharing of soul
4.) No evidence for identity needing a soul.


You've created a house of cards to support a supposition, that there is a separate you that isn't part of your brain. This is simply unevidenced belief and requires you to invent complicated stories to support this supposition.