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Atheists, quit confusing the two.

TFian said:
Atheists are right-- there is no scientific proof of God.

But they forget that Theology is outside of the realm of Science. Science doesn't tell us what is moral, or ethical, or anything else that may happen to be outside the realm of what science is capable of telling us.

Science is a philosophy of skepticism and empirical evidence, and as such has no ability to explore metaphysical questions, which have nothing to do with skepticism or empirical evidence, and everything to do with subjective experience.

They are simply two different, separate, and exclusive realms of knowledge and thought.
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If this is true - and it's not - then why do religious claims about ethics and morality always appeal to scientific claims for justification? For example, bodily resurrection, emaculate conception, the whole world being drowned in flood waters, the Earth being 5,000 years old, etc., etc.

The number of atheists who get pissed about people making ethical claims not grounded in demonstrably false claims about the physical world is, I'm guessing, pretty small.
 
RandFan said:
Not the point I was trying to make but I suppose. We could remove the brain and test the body to see how much it can respond to external stimuli. But my point was exactly about the mind. Just not the subjective part of the mind.
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Well we may have to reach some understanding of what the mind is before this can be discussed.

I regard the brain as part of the body not the mind.
 
Robin said:
Having comprehensively rebutted the claim there is little point in further rebutting.
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Once the horse is dead, has been thoroughly beaten, sold to the packing house and made into kitty food there's nothing left of the horse to talk about except whether the cat likes it.
 
punshhh said:
when it is known by the thinker it becomes subjective. I have just experienced rainwater running down my neck from a leaking gutter. Initially it wasn't subjective, it was a sensation. Followed shortly afterwards by a subjectively induced lurch to the side to stop the flow. I'm commenting on the distinction between sense experience and subjective experience
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It is all subjective. Every little part of it.

Your sensations are not what is. They are what your mind constructs for you.

That very first sensation was your mind creationg a sensation out of sense data.

There may be a very strong illusion that you are feeling what actually is the case. But you are not. You are experiencing the result of your brain processing the sense data.

The lurch to the side is a reaction to the subjective experience.
I am not commenting on metaphysics as such as I have not studied it. If you would like to provide a definition of metaphysics I will comment on it.
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Metaphysics is not a term with a specific meaning, it is descriptive of a range of subject areas. There is no simple dichotomy, as the OP suggests, between empiricism and metaphysics, there are many intermingling strands, many of which defy simple categorisation.

And theology is not the same thing as metaphysics.

And there are many important metaphysical philosophers who say that we should ignore subjective experience as much as possible.

Traditionally the main divide in philosophy has been between empiricism and what Kant calls noology (pure reason without subjective experience as an element). In Critique of Pure Reason he identified empiricism as spanning Aristotle to Hume and noology as spanning Plato to Leibniz and Hume. He sought to unify these strands but there is no evidence that he succeeded.

Today the categories of philosophy are so mixed up that you find people like Chalmers trying to prove fundamental ontological truths using semantic analysis.

Confused? You should be.
 
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Or to put it more simp[ly - if you haven't gotten the areas of philosophy confused then you haven't really been studying it.
 
punshhh said:
Well we may have to reach some understanding of what the mind is before this can be discussed.

I regard the brain as part of the body not the mind.
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The mind is what the brain does.

No evidence exists for Dualism, Cartesian Theater or Homunculus.

Furthermore, pathology leave little room if any for Dualism including patients with anterograde amnesia, capgras syndrome and personality changes like those suffered by Phineas Gage due to brain damage.
 
ynot said:
Okay, I'll bite . . . so what is the mind part of then?
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The brain is an organ of the body, the mind occurs in the brain and operates as a kind of virtual projection or transmission, through the electrochemical activity of the brain. The subject of which is the personality in real time along with its memory, subjective life and thinking capacity etc, ie a self conscious entity.

An analogy might be a TV, the box and electronics is the body and the programme aired on the screen is the personality.
 
Robin said:
It is all subjective. Every little part of it.

Your sensations are not what is. They are what your mind constructs for you.

That very first sensation was your mind creationg a sensation out of sense data.

There may be a very strong illusion that you are feeling what actually is the case. But you are not. You are experiencing the result of your brain processing the sense data.

The lurch to the side is a reaction to the subjective experience.
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Yes, I agree with your interpretation of the sensation. I see how we differ, I use a slightly different definition of subjective.

For me a subjective experience is an intellectual view or stance on an experience, or other subjective views.

The experience of the rain running down my back does not entail an intellectual analysis to be experienced. It is being interpreted by the brain(unconscious mind), but not by the personality initially.
 
Robin said:
Or to put it more simp[ly - if you haven't gotten the areas of philosophy confused then you haven't really been studying it.
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Yes, I thought this might be the case, its a bit of a mess. A furtile breeding ground for thought though I suppose.
 
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RandFan said:
The mind is what the brain does.

No evidence exists for Dualism, Cartesian Theater or Homunculus.

Furthermore, pathology leave little room if any for Dualism including patients with anterograde amnesia, capgras syndrome and personality changes like those suffered by Phineas Gage due to brain damage.
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Thanks for the links, I view the mind specifically as the intellectual self conscious entity, seated in a experiential virtual real time and space within the head. With access to its various faculties, along with a subconscious self.

I treat this as a separate process of the brain from the more physiological activity of the brain, ie its managerial role with the biological processes of the body.
 
punshhh said:
Thanks for the links, I view the mind specifically as the intellectual self conscious entity, seated in a experiential virtual real time and space within the head. With access to its various faculties, along with a subconscious self.

I treat this as a separate process of the brain from the more physiological activity of the brain, ie its managerial role with the biological processes of the body.
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The space in your head is taken up by your brain. 'Virtual real time' that's one of your best yet.:) Care to explain it? The mind is conscious of itself? Where do you get this rubbish from?
 
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