godless dave
Great Dalmuti
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- 8,266
Can you just try answering the question "In what way would the two selves be different?"
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Proof of Immortality III
- Thread starter Humots
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
None of the above.
First, as I stated previously, your critics are not inferior for not accepting your lame argument. Stop insinuating that they are. I realize that your increasing desperation is probably getting the best of you here, but calling your critics "blind to ... reality" for not letting you beg the question is offensive.
Second, no one is claiming you're hallucinating. So don't try to cram that accusation into your critics' mouths and thereby shame them away from holding you accountable. You're not a victim.
Nothing about this is experiential.
On the one hand, you cannot lay claim to any experience that you can assert your critics have not had. On the other hand, you're attempting a proof. A proof is something you do to demonstrate to a skeptic that your allegation is fact. It cannot presume an uncritical reader, predisposed to your point of view.
What you're advocating now is pure woo. It's exactly the sort of argument every woo-slinger eventually has to make: that you are somehow, magically, in possession of a rare ineffable quality that allows you an insight that none of your competitors or critics could ever hope to achieve, and can only approximate by science.
No. Again, you are not somehow magically superior to your critics. You tried this same condescending line of argument in your circumstantial evidence thread. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.
You said you thought you could prove immortality mathematically. That is, you specifically said you could construct a proof that would appeal to the "analytic" frame of thinking. It's clear you cannot, and I think we should take your latest goalpost-shifting attempt as your admission that you cannot. If you insist we have to adopt a different mode of thinking in order for your proof to make sense, then you have failed.
The "who" you're trying to convey is the soul. But you have problems coming up with different names to call it in the attempt to sneak it past your critics. It's not as if you've ever fooled anyone with this approach. As soon as someone succeeds in nailing down the particulars of what claim you're making, you run off in a new direction with a whole new set of ambiguous wording to keep your claims from being effectively scrutinized. You may assiduously desire to evade accountability by making your beliefs a "forest," but that only means you'll never be able to prove them.
No, you are not the teacher here, Jabba.
You tried math, but you're no good at it. You tried philosophy, but you don't think hard enough. Now you're trying condescension. At least your true colors are finally flying proudly from the gaff halyard. You have always insinuated that, compared to you, skeptics are somehow unenlightened dullards. Finally there is some honesty in your posting.
Only in the same comical sense I employed when teaching college, when a student would "throw down" during the first week of class, so sure he already knew the material and so sure he could rival his fellow students and put me in my place. Those students always ended up dropping the class the second week.
You're obviously out of logic, and you never had any fact. So now you're doubling down on the bluffery. That's not only a sign that you've lost the debate, but a sure sign that you know you have.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
He would, but that would mean abandoning his real agenda here at ISF, which is to demonstrate how skepticism is a limited mode of thinking and results in benighted and unperceptive people.
I don't love your rudeness or your refusal to reply to people in the thread. I don't see it as audacity, just a wilful blindness to the replies.
What concept have you experienced? Have you experienced the replication thought experiment? Have you experienced the "immaterial soul"?
The "who" that you are trying to convey is not a forest, or a tree. It's just the perfectly well understood process of consciousness arising from the brain. but you are trying to call it an immaterial soul.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Again with this, Jabba? We're too stupid and staid to be able to open our minds to your amazing concepts? Perhaps you're too stupid to realize that "holistic" thinking is code for "lack of internal logic. "
Everyone understands what you're saying. However you have yet to show any evidence of what this special "you" is that's so different from your physiology.
Forget the nonsense about clones. Focus on this: Are "you" the same person you were 20 years ago? Do you have the same body shape, habits, memories, temperment. favorite foods, hobbies, relatives?
Is Mt. Raineir the same place if I go throw dirt around? What if I use a backhoe? What if a thousand people use a thousand backhoes?
Answer these questions and take the first step to understanding that the self is an ever changing process, not a thing.
jond
Illuminator
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2006
- Messages
- 3,440
The other possibility, which is think has a likelihood of 99.99999999%, is that you are willfully ignoring the very obvious fact that the "who" you are trying to convey is not a forest, nor is it any single entity, but rather is an ongoing process. When you die, that process stops. That is the model that you need to disprove. Statistics won't do it, nor will you willful ignorance, nor will your astounding arrogance in the face of your utter defeat here.
godless dave
Great Dalmuti
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I don't think it's well understood at all. That doesn't mean it's magic.
ferd burfle
Graduate Poster
Jabba, my online dictionary gives two definitions for "audacity":
1) the willingness to take bold risks
2) rude or disrespectful behavior; impudence
Well, one of these is a pretty good fit
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Oh stop it. There is not a person here who doesn't see what you're trying to pull.
What you refer to as audacity is better described as temerity.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed, what we see is someone who proposed he could prove something to a certain standard, failed miserably, tried to change the standard, failed again, and blames his critics for all those failures.
Oh sod that noise. After all this you aren't going to play the "Squeegee your third eye" routine.
Stop talking in metaphors. You're not good at it.
No you won't. You're going to be staring at blender arguing that it's a helicopter.
Mr. Savage you have done nothing to earn this level of high horse. I surely hope your plan isn't to replace your worn out befuddled grandpa routine with some form of righteous indignation.
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Nonpareil
The Terrible Trivium
Or - and try to bear with me on this one, Jabba, I know it's hard - you could simply be wrong.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Nope. We are all heartily sick and tired of your dishonest arguments. The only thing saving you from a tidal wave of vitriol is the MA.
JimOfAllTrades
Master Poster
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2011
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- 2,145
Not only would they both be convinced they were the original, both would be convinced that they had your "soul". Both would be just as convinced as you are right now that they were the one and only Jabba, and that they had Jabba's one and only soul.
So just as others have said, we can predict "who" the clone would be. It would just as legitimately "you" as "you" are.
Again as fate would have it I'm listening to Welcome to Night Vale while perusing this thread and I'm reminded of the time Dana, the Night Vale Radio Intern, killed her double (long story, just roll with it....) and the show for a moment seemed like it was gonna set up the cliché "Who was the real so and so" trope but then immediately dropped it and the fact that no one, even Dana herself, knows if she is the double or the Dana that was killed was the double nor really seems to care has become a running joke.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
...or you're employing another false dilemma.
Yup, it's a false dilemma.
"Holistic" is a term that is widely abused by charlatans, for example purveyors of and apologists for quackery. They seem to think that it excuses them from the requirement to provide actual evidence to support their position.
The "who" you're trying to convey is an immortal soul. You cannot prove immortality using an argument that starts by assuming the existence of immortal souls.
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BTW, Jabba, nobody here is anybody else's "associate." All you see here is a chance accumulation of people of all sorts and sizes and backgrounds, with nothing much in common, except this: They've never been convinced by any smallest part of your arguments.
That's rather remarkable, when you think about it. Not that you will.
That's rather remarkable, when you think about it. Not that you will.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
If we assume that immortal souls are possible, then science is wrong. If science is wrong, then immortal souls are real.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed, there is such a thing as holistic thinking, but it isn't what woo-peddlers say it is, and Jabba isn't exhibiting good skills there either. The distinction Jabba means to draw is similar to that between what we colloquially call left-brain and right-brain thinking.
Jabba means to contend that we are mired in left-brained analytical thought, so much so that we cannot see the holistic "big picture" that he wants to contend his argument appeals to. What's so laughable is that up until very recently, Jabba's argument was as analytical as one can get. Wrong, but clearly intended in the analytical vein. The invocation of statistical probability, the reductionist estimate of priors -- these are all hallmarks of analytical thinking. Obviously if one says he plans to prove immortality "mathematically," it can't possibly get any more analytical than that. So it's not really the case that Jabba has decided we're too "analytical" to appreciate his argument. It's that he realized his all-too-analytical argument has failed, and now he needs to find a way for that not to be his fault.
So now he's saying we have to look at the big picture. As you note, in woo-speak that just means encouraging the reader to accept a nebulous, handwaving argument instead of evidence and sound reasoning. Faced with his inability to define an immortal soul in way that evidence or logic or both doesn't immediately refute, he's doubling down on the insistence that the soul is ineffable. He already told us a few times it's something can never know, and now he's just flat-out telling us we have to abandon evidence and logical analysis if we ever want to get in touch with our inner immortality. That's his new proof.
Real holistic thinking is, instead, akin to what we call right-brain thinking: creative, spiritual, and artistic. Those are important and valuable modes of thought, but they don't generally have the capacity to prove things. Conclusions may be drawn, but they have only weak and narrowly-scoped predictive strength. Jabba's version of "holistic thinking" is instead just the classic gulf between skeptics and woo-peddlers: that certain people are just intrinsically, naturally able to discern things that others cannot. This is the basis of holistic medicine, whose practitioners convince their
Indeed, one doesn't have to search too far outside this forum to discover Jabba's real reason for being here. He's usually pretty good about keeping that motive in the background and arguing on point, but occasionally it slips through. Or, as it has recently, gushes through unabated. He's here to show us godless atheists how wrong we are.
Jabba presumptively thinks that just because we operate here in a skeptical mode of thinking, we are inherently that way and cannot understand or entertain right-brained thought. Well, gee, I'm also an actor, musician, and fine-art photographer. As an actor I've performed on every stage in my city, including in sold-out three-month runs at well-funded regional theaters, and in Los Angeles and New York. As a musician I've performed on five commercially released albums, four overseas concert tours, and in Carnegie Hall. I just don't talk about those things here because, well, they don't really apply to most of what I find interesting at ISF. So from the point of view of someone who is both adept and successful at what real "holistic thinking" is, I can say Jabba doesn't know what he's talking about. Nothing about non-analytical thinking gives life to his claims, nor can he lay claim to being an expert in other modes of thought.
One of the hallmarks of true holistic thinking is good "people" skills. It's difficult to nail down, in analytical terms, the determinants of human behavior. People who are skilled at dealing with other people, however, employ holistic thinking to arrive at accurate perceptions of how others think and feel, and how to appeal to them, resolve conflict, assuage doubts, etc. Jabba doesn't strike me as someone who can do that. Witness the ham-fisted attempts at manipulation, the incomparable rudeness, the abject avoidance of certain people he can't prevail against in debate. These are hallmarks of people who are bad holistic thinkers. Not that it matters much to his claims here, but insofar as he has tried to shift the goalposts to invoke what he insinuates are his personal reasoning strengths, we have the obligation to investigate whether he really has the purported strength.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Indeed, I have never met nor spoken to any single person on this board. I have rarely corresponded by PM and far more rarely spoken about this topic. The inclination to think of critics as a hive mind, all living in one big house, seems common. It's just not true.
As for the term "holistic," the only time I've heard it used properly is in describing a practice of medicine in which many specialists in different areas consult each other on a patient's care. "Though the Cardiologist pushed for diuretics, the holistic team determined that further testing of the kidneys was required."
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