Ask a Radical Atheist

[Piscivore]

Of course not. Patterns don't have mass.

Yet they exist, right? They can be mapped, as you said.

You realize that there is no evidence whatsoever that what you propose does or could exist.

Don't get ahead of yourself.

 

[Alric]

I believe that phenomena is describable in terms of sets of relational rules.

I fail to see what this truism has anything to do with god.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

I fail to see what this truism has anything to do with god.

Fair enough. Sorry, my mistake. It has nothing to do with god. My only answer to god and denial of its possible existence is the story I talked about several posts ago. BTW, worth a reading if you haven't (and not because of the thread, just because it is extremely good).

Now, the reason I posted a better explanation of my views is because articulett insisted in viewing me as a believer in souls or maybe mental superpowers, merely because (she?) didn't have a clue of where I was coming from. But no, no supernatural stuff to fight here.

 

[Alric]

Yet they exist, right? They can be mapped, as you said.


Don't get ahead of yourself.

Borges wrote extensive reviews of imaginary places, including maps. Maps of patterns do not make the patterns real. My suspicion is that patterns are not real but an animal invention that exists only in brains.

The problem is that you are taking advantage of the colloquial use of the word "exist". Things can exist and not be real. Reality is only matter.

 

[Piscivore]

Borges wrote extensive reviews of imaginary places, including maps. Maps of patterns do not make the patterns real.

Neither does some patterns being imaginary render them all so. Is conciousness real, or not?

My suspicion is that patterns are not real but an animal invention that exists only in brains.

So conciousness is real, but is just a pattern, but patterns aren't real? What in the animal brain did the inventing?

Do you want to take a moment to figure out what it is you think before continuing?

The problem is that you are taking advantage of the colloquial use of the word "exist".

The problem is English is an unplanned, ad hoc, self-contradictory and redundant languge, with many words carrying more than one explicit meaning and sometimes several dozen implied meanings. While this is wonderful for artistic expression and humour, it makes it difficult to use for ontological or scientific discussion. For example:

ex·ist (ĭg-zĭst')
intr.v., -ist·ed, -ist·ing, -ists.
1. To have actual being; be real.
2. To have life; live: one of the worst actors that ever existed.
3. To live at a minimal level; subsist: barely enough income on which to exist.
4. To continue to be; persist: old customs that still exist in rural areas.
5. To be present under certain circumstances or in a specified place; occur: “Wealth and poverty exist in every demographic category” (Thomas G. Exter).

I'm using sense 1, here, so let's check "real"...

re·al(rē'əl, rēl)
adj.
1.a. Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence
1.b. True and actual; not imaginary, alleged, or ideal: real people, not ghosts; a film based on real life.
1.c. Of or founded on practical matters and concerns: a recent graduate experiencing the real world for the first time.
2. Genuine and authentic; not artificial or spurious: real mink; real humility.
3. Being no less than what is stated; worthy of the name: a real friend.
4. Free of pretense, falsehood, or affectation: tourists hoping for a real experience on the guided tour.
5. Not to be taken lightly; serious: in real trouble.
6. Philosophy. Existing objectively in the world regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language.
7. Relating to, being, or having value reckoned by actual purchasing power: real income; real growth.
8. Physics. Of, relating to, or being an image formed by light rays that converge in space.
9. Mathematics. Of, relating to, or being a real number.
10 Law. Of or relating to stationary or fixed property, such as buildings or land.

I'm understanding "real" in terms of sense 1.a. Which are you using? Which one of these says that what is "real" is only what is physical?

Are you saying conciousness does not have a verifiable existance? Are you saying that patterns are not objective- that if one doctor examined your EEG another doctor or machine testing at the same time would get a different one?

Things can exist and not be real. Reality is only matter.

Yeah, see- I don't think it is me that is using a colloquial definition here.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Borges wrote extensive reviews of imaginary places, including maps. Maps of patterns do not make the patterns real. My suspicion is that patterns are not real but an animal invention that exists only in brains.

The problem is that you are taking advantage of the colloquial use of the word "exist". Things can exist and not be real. Reality is only matter.

What Piscivore says is that once something like "god" gets out from one individual and permeate others it has an existence beyond the individuals. What's the big deal? why running like if you have read about telekinesis?

On the other hand, what do you mean by "exists only in brains"? What does that mean, that the pattern "god" is inside the head? How come patterns could exist but not be real? And what is that about "reality is only matter", what is matter?

 

[articulett]

Music is real... it's measurable... we can detect it... it reacts with the environment... consciousness is like that... but "god" isn't. God is undetectable except as a notion in the brain of the assorted people who have been indoctrinated to believe in such things. I'd say god is as "real" as demons in that way. People really fear demons and devils and such--but that doesn't mean that such things exist. Is god more than that? With music and other "real" phenomena-- it can be perceived by others... or by machines that detect sound or color etc. You can confirm it's existence as something outside of the human mind even though the human mind interprets the pattern as music. But the physical aspects of sounds and colors etc. exist whether anyone is there to see them or perceive them or interpret them or not. It doesn't seem that consciousness or god has that quality.

 

[Robin]

Put in those terms, the god I'm talking about is a functional composite of mental entities (human conciousnesses) that are themselves functional composites of non-mental entities (nurons).

Another great science fiction writer, alas unpublished (my Dad) wrote a story about a man who invents a machine for experiencing the consciousness of other humans and animals.

When he tries it out at home he is horrified to find himself inside the consciousness of an animal with long probing tentacles throughout his house, finding and gathering food from every corner.

He eventually realises he is in the consciousness of an ants nest.

Later he tries the machine out at a football stadium and gets inside the consciousness of a football crowd. But the football crowd turns out to be less intelligent than the ants nest.

 

[Robin]

Too soon to tell, as I have repeatedly say to those who simply equate "consciousness = brain, nothing that we don't understand".

Certainly, but consciousness requires the brain machinery, of that we can be almost certain. Therefore if there is some other thing other than brain concerned with consciousness, we know that it could not be termed 'mental' or 'consciousness'.

I'm not sure I follow. For instance, those results in which the brain "chooses" before the individual is actually aware of that decision would indicate (IMO) that most reactions are, somehow, hardwired. But it is an hypercomplex topic, so I don't know.

These cases would demonstrate that, at least in some cases, intention is an effect of behaviour rather than a cause. I am still not convinced that muscle readiness events are not triggered by the mind testing the possibility of a certain course of action. But who am I to say?

In any case it would not show that qualia were not part of the hardwiring. I just wonder why we would have evolved qualia if they were of no survival advantage.

Agreed. Furthermore, it is an oversimplification that ignores that there are no mental events located "inside the brain". The mind needs the brain as much as it needs an environment, for a start.

I don't see that you can assume that. I would say that the mind is probably indeed inside the brain.

But you talk here about professionals. The average "hard core materialists" in our daily life (for example, some members of this forum) consistently demonstrate that they believe in "solid" matter, to have a clear opposite to "immaterial stuff" like souls and such kind of things.

Not just the materialists. People reject specific definitions and so tend to argue on the vague feelings that these words invoke. People think of 'matter' or 'material' as hard, chunky intractable. They think of mental things as soft, wispy, tractable. And so they think these things cannot be the same. It is like Thomas Nagle said, in Descartes time people felt they could not get a handle on mental stuff the way they thought they could get a handle on non-mental stuff, using pre-scientific notions of physical.

But of course science has shown that handle people thought they could get on the physical to be illusory. We get a different sort of handle on things now - mathematics.

This is why I'm so insistent about this "materialism" stuff. It is an old word that encompasses many more meanings that what it actually has. Lately matter means more like "some fussy state that we can predict" than that "solid, touchable, concrete stuff" that our ancestors believed in. But this is not evident for everybody.

Well the term was initially wished on those who did not go for Theistic or Dualistic or Idealistic interpretations of reality. I think d'Holbach was the first to take it as an identity. As I say it means pretty much the same now as it did 200 years ago. The fact that some people misunderstand it is a case for educating people, not abandoning the term.

What do you mean by that?

I mean that it is simply an assumption that we cannot go further.

Im not aware of such debate. "libertarian free will" is what exactly?

Wow, you have been at JREF - how long? - and you have avoided the 'libertarian free will' debate? What are the odds of that?

Libertarian free will is simply the position that free will is incompatible with determinism. Since clearly randomness is incompatible with any kind of will, free or otherwise then libertarian free will must depend on something that is neither deterministic nor random. What that means is anybody's guess.

The best paper I know of on the subject is C.D. Broad's Indeterminism, Determinism and Libertarianism

Which is a VERY good question BTW. As I said, I believe most "everyday people" take for granted that it is something solid (to put it in a word).

It is a very good question, but most people overlook the option that very good questions can be dealt with by very good answers.

Indeed. Now, the question is if it, even in principle, we can reach such mathematical model. I believe we can't as our descriptions are deeply tied to what we are. In other words, we can only think about certain things, and these are still limited by our biology.

One of my maths lecturers once mentioned that it may be that eventually we will have to build machines to do our thinking, since we will have to deal with topics that the human mind is biologically incapable of dealing with. Interesting idea.

But even then we may be unable to get a theory of everything since we do not know what everything may be. We may be in a universe contained in a multiverse contained in a megaverse contained in a ... Or maybe we are a dream in the sleep of Brahman.

 

[Piscivore]

Another great science fiction writer, alas unpublished (my Dad) wrote a story about a man who invents a machine for experiencing the consciousness of other humans and animals.

When he tries it out at home he is horrified to find himself inside the consciousness of an animal with long probing tentacles throughout his house, finding and gathering food from every corner.

He eventually realises he is in the consciousness of an ants nest.

Later he tries the machine out at a football stadium and gets inside the consciousness of a football crowd. But the football crowd turns out to be less intelligent than the ants nest.

That sounds great! Has he ever tried to publish it?

Can I read it?

 

[articulett]

It does sound great...
If I was a talented fiction writer, I'd plagiarize it.

 

[CFLarsen]

Music is real... it's measurable... we can detect it... it reacts with the environment... consciousness is like that... but "god" isn't. God is undetectable except as a notion in the brain of the assorted people who have been indoctrinated to believe in such things. I'd say god is as "real" as demons in that way. People really fear demons and devils and such--but that doesn't mean that such things exist. Is god more than that? With music and other "real" phenomena-- it can be perceived by others... or by machines that detect sound or color etc. You can confirm it's existence as something outside of the human mind even though the human mind interprets the pattern as music. But the physical aspects of sounds and colors etc. exist whether anyone is there to see them or perceive them or interpret them or not. It doesn't seem that consciousness or god has that quality.

You miss the point: The emotions/experiences that music can give. Sometimes, people see their god in music.

 

[Piscivore]

You miss the point: The emotions/experiences that music can give. Sometimes, people see their god in music.

Great, now he's invoking plumjam as evidence of god.

 

[CFLarsen]

Great, now he's invoking plumjam as evidence of god.

I didn't say it was evidence of god. I said that people could experience their god through music.

You want to dispute that? Go right ahead.

 

[Piscivore]

I didn't say it was evidence of god. I said that people could experience their god through music.

You want to dispute that? Go right ahead.

I forgot, Claus, you cannot recognise or understand humour. My apologies.

 

[CFLarsen]

I forgot, Claus, you cannot recognise or understand humour. My apologies.

That is your problem, yes.

You reserve the right to come back, at any given moment, and say that you were only kidding.

That makes it impossible to take you seriously, at any given moment.

 

[Piscivore]

That is your problem, yes.

You reserve the right to come back, at any given moment, and say that you were only kidding.

That makes it impossible to take you seriously, at any given moment.

So don't. We've had this discussion already.

 

[dglas]

I didn't say it was evidence of god. I said that people could experience their god through music.

You want to dispute that? Go right ahead.

I'll see your experience of God and raise you a picture of a unicorn.

Hmmm. That was a quip, but I wasn't kidding...

 

[Alric]

From this point on I would like all references to god to equally apply to the flying spaghetti monster.

Why not?

 

[Piscivore]

From this point on I would like all references to god to equally apply to the flying spaghetti monster.

Why not?

Why indeed not?

Have you decided yet whether conciousness is "real" or not, and which sense of the word "real" you'd like to use?