RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
No. A process is not mortal. Stop referring to it as a 'thing'.
That's because your ~H is a thing, a soul. Just say so.
Proof of Immortality, VI
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RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
Then how is it that you are defining a process (H) to be mortal or immortal?
Is going 60 mph mortal or immortal?
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Jabba, how is your definition of a "sense of self" different from a soul?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Jabba doesn't have a definition, remember? He has to appeal to your understanding of what reincarnationists believe, in the hope that you will supply the definition for him.
And the answer to that question is, in its most reasonable form, "it isn't".
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Well, yeah. I was just hoping he had put some thought into it, since he appears to be hanging his entire argument on that distinction, at the moment.
Oh well, one can dream...
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
You are therefore making a clam that cannot be proven. Are you disagreeing with that?
This retarded thread has gone-on long enough.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
^^Another big fat Richard Savage lie.^^
Richard Savage, stop wasting everyone's' time FFS. You have no demonstrable expertise in any topic you have raised.
Better luck next time, Jabba.
You've missed the main point of my post, which is that regardless of how you want to define it you HAVE TO use our definition in your premise. If you can eventually get to your definition by proving your case that's great, but that comes much later. We have shown you what the materialistic definition is. That's the only one you need to concern yourself with for now.
Jabba
Philosopher
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SOdhner,
- I gotta say, in its frustration, this is really interesting -- we just keep passing in the night...
- I can't seem to communicate what I'm trying to communicate...
- I keep thinking that somewhere out there are better words that would actually communicate...
- But so far, no luck.
- The basic question right now is whether or not H and ~H are referring to the same experience of "self." My claim is that they are, and what you guys are siting as different definitions, are not "definitions" at all -- but rather, claims about the nature of self.
- And, a specific aspect of that nature is what our debate is all about and is spelled out in OOFLam and ~OOFLam. H is OOFLam -- and, OOFLam claims that the self is mortal...
- I'm crossing my fingers...
godless dave
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That is not the question. We already know the answer to the question. The answer is "yes". We are talking about the same experience.
When you start talking about a self looking out of two sets of eyes, you are talking about the nature of the self, not the experience of it.
When you say duplicating a person exactly would not create an identical, duplicate self, you are talking about the nature of it, not the experience.
In H, the self has one nature. In ~H, it has a different nature.
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We understand you. It's not that you're not communicating it to us, it's that (depending on the specific part of what you're saying) we disagree, or we think it's irrelevant to your claim.
They aren't. As I explained in a previous post, even though the definitions overlap (in that we both agree this is a sense of self/consciousness) your definition includes all sorts of things that would only be the case IF you're right and are not part of the materialistic explanation.
And you need to start with the materialistic explanation. You cannot start off by claiming these two things are the same before you prove you're right. That's like saying, "Assuming I'm right, then..." which you should see isn't the way to prove anything.
Honestly though, I don't really see why we need to be having this discussion at all. Your argument is based on the probability of you existing, which doesn't rely on any specific definition of the self.
Is it because you know that without it the same argument could apply to rocks? That's a flaw in your argument, not something that can be resolved with defining these terms.
Jabba
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I really think that you should explain why having a sense of self is relevant to your argument at all. Your argument is based on probability of you existing. Since we have to evaluate that based on a materialistic model, the definition under your proposed alternative isn't immediately relevant.
I still say that your argument applies equally to rocks. There's nothing about having a sense of self that changes the claims in your argument - it's based on how unlikely you think a specific thing is to exist in the universe under the materialistic model.
The materialistic model doesn't count the sense of self as anything special, so when calculating your probability you also cannot count it as anything special.
Therefore the sense of self is irrelevant, and your argument applies to rocks.
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jond
Illuminator
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Come one, Jabba, this really is simple, and you've been told it an infinite number of times:
- Under the materialistic model, H indicates that the self is an emergent property of a functioning brain, not a separate entity.
- Jabba keeps insisting that H includes the self as a separate entity.
- Remember just last week when you agreed that your model is not the materialistic model? We all do.
- Remember when you agreed that the existence of your functioning brain alone is more likely than the existence of your functioning brain AND the existence of your separate "self" AND the means by which the two are connected?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No one is buying this, Jabba. We keep using precise language and you keep jerking it back to all the vague or invented terms that fuel your equivocations. The words we're using are fine, but they're too precise and too well defined to let you do your classic tap dance. We know very well what you're trying to communicate: you're trying to cram the notion of a soul where it doesn't belong, and can't go, in your argument. You keep looking for "better" words, but the words you come up with aren't "better." They're just initially undefined in terms of this argument, so that you can once again try to define them such that materialism has to explain a soul.
What's really silly is that after playing this same game for nearly five years, you seem to think it works.
Your claim is that the "experience" is the same, but you define "experience" to include stuff that isn't strictly data, but rather your guesses about what's happening to produce that data and therefore how that data would manifest under hypothetically different circumstances such as duplicating the organism. We use those thought experiments to ferret out your wrong-headed interpolation of hypothesis into data, and they're working very well.
When you stop defining your data in terms of the desired hypothesis, then the argument can proceed. But you don't want to admit the variance among definitions because you don't want everyone to see that you're using an equivocation to sneak your desired conclusion in the back door. You desperately need people to agree that there's no controversy over defining our terms, so that you can later snap the trap closed and claim we've agreed to such nonsense as "looking out through two sets of eyes" as conditions that materialism would have to explain in order to be viable.
Jabba, your critics are simply not that stupid. Don't continue to insult them by using the same ineffective rhetorical tricks over and over.
godless dave
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I don't see how. SOdhner was talking about the nature of the self, not the experience.
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RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
Try saying, "I'm going to insert a soul into the materialist explanation for sense of self." Does that help?
No, you keep thinking there are more equivocal words out there that will obfuscate better. Just say "soul".
The materialist explanation for "sense of self" is that it is a process.
Your explanation for "sense of self" is that it comes from a separate soul.
You're comparing apples and going 60 mph.
No, the sense of self is a process. It isn't a "thing" that is mortal nor immortal.
You're deliberately and dishonestly conflating it with a "thing" to keep the conversation going because once you admit to understanding, you know you've lost.
godless dave
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Even if we view the sense of self as a thing:
1. A thing can be duplicated exactly.
2. A thing cannot be in two places at once.
So it wouldn't help Jabba's formula.
1. A thing can be duplicated exactly.
2. A thing cannot be in two places at once.
So it wouldn't help Jabba's formula.
jond
Illuminator
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Correct. But since it is viewed as a process in the brain, it completely invalidates his entire premise.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
And one version of Jabba's argument allows that the number of souls is not fixed. We have some number of little Napoleon subdivisions running around, apparently. However, another version of his argument defines the soul as whatever wouldn't be reproduced by reproducing the organism. So what we're really stuck with is Jabba's penchant for "winning" an argument by merely trying to define victory as whatever he's already holding.
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