Proof of Immortality, VII

[Loss Leader]

I had been of the opinion that a stopped process is not a process. I had hoped you would enlighten me.

Enlightening you is a process.

 

[SOdhner]

No, the probability that you got the arrangement you got is 1. Ask anybody around here. People keep saying that all the time. They think it means something.

It does. It's the difference between talking about the odds of something that hasn't happened but might, and the odds of something that has already been happened. Since Jabba is talking about something that applies to any hypothetical person, we would want to know the odds of any given potential person coming to exist. Instead, he wants to pick himself after the fact, even though he already knows he exists. He then points to himself and says "Gosh! I shouldn't have existed but I do!" which is incorrect on a whole lot of levels. He would never, for example, pick a fictional person as his target and then say "Huh, they were unlikely to exist and they don't. It all checks out, nevermind."

It would be extremely surprising if a genie materialized

I mean... I guess that's true? I would be very surprised if a mythical wish-granting demon appeared. I don't really see your point.

The probability of him, a specific person, isn't relevant to you. But that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to him.

Yes, but he's trying (supposedly) to use an actual formula to prove he has a soul, and this formula should hold true for anyone - not just him. And the way the formula is set up, picking a specific real and already existing person as a "target" ruins it. It should be based on a hypothetical person that may or may not come into existence.

The probabilistic significance of an observation is dependent on both the specifics of the observation and on the specific perspective of the observer.

Not for purposes of scientific analysis and proof of objective fact. I can decide something is significant to me personally because I just kinda like the look of it, that doesn't mean it is objectively significant.

 

[Jabba]

Except whenever you try to come up with a value for P(E|H), you don't base it on the materialist model. In the materialist model, the self comes from the brain. It does not come from nowhere. It is cause and effect traceable.

- Yes, I do. The likelihood of my current existence -- given OOFLam --is virtually zero. I must be missing something, but I can't figure out what it is.

1) One of the things you're missing is that "virtually zero" doesn't mean anything mathematical. But let's ignore that for now.

In the materialist model, the one you claim to be H in for P(E|H), 2) your current existence is a result of your parents having sex, you being conceived, you being born, and you surviving through today. Their existence is a result of similar circumstances with their parents, and similarly back to the first appearance of life on earth, which was itself the result of events we don't understand, which were in turn the results of other events going back to the beginning of time and the universe.

3) So depending on when you calculate the likelihood of your eventually existence, you might get a very small number. 4) But the same would be true of absolutely everything that exists now: every snowflake, every grain of sand, every piece of rock on every planet in the universe.

5) In the materialist model, your self is entirely the result of natural processes. It did not come from nowhere. Its relative unlikelihood at various points in history is no more significant than the unlikelihood that the formation we call Mount Rainier would one day exist in the form it currently exists in.

Dave,
- Re #1. I'm happy to use 1/10¹⁰⁰.
- Re #2. We can use that model if you wish (that I am totally the result of my DNA, or ovum and sperm cell) -- though, I suspect that we should really use the model that consciousness naturally brings with it a brand new self-awareness, not out of any limited pool of potential self-awarenesseses, and is totally unlimited as to what particular self-awareness it will be.- Re #3. Whatever, my claim is that going back to the beginning of time is appropriate.
- Re #4. This refers to the Sharpshooter fallacy. My claim here is that I am, in fact, set apart from other possible targets. I think that Caveman agrees.
- Re #5. Again, my claim is that I am set apart, whereas Mt. Rainier is not.

Just a few posts ago you said you were trying to disprove the materialist model and you assured us that it was always your intention to use the materialist model as H in P(E|H). But the highlighted part is most assuredly not the materialist model. It's not a model anyone but you is familiar with. It's certainly not a model you can use the phrase "scientifically speaking" about...

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

 

[godless dave]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum

Why not?

 

[RoboTimbo]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness,

What do you understand the words "perfect copy" to mean?

neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

Just as a Volkswagen creates a brand new going 60 mph.

Do you still agree that the two equivalent phrases are idiotic?

 

[Belz...]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

And? What does that have to do with the odds of you existing or whether materialism is true?

 

[SOdhner]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness,

It's not "your" anything, because it's not an entity that can be owned.

People are self-aware if they have a properly functioning brain and aren't deeply asleep.

Self-aware is something you ARE, not something you HAVE.

If a chameleon turns green, we don't say that's "his green". We don't ask, after he turns brown and then green again, if it's "his same green". It's a property. An adjective.

If I say I have a small purple coin, you know the noun is "coin" and the others are just describing properties of that noun. Likewise, you could describe me as:

Strange fat self-aware human.

The only part of that that's being used as a noun is 'human'. You can't take my self-awareness any more than you could take my 'strange'. If I somehow stop being strange, you wouldn't ask where the strange went. If I become strange again you wouldn't ask if it's the same strange I had before.

 

[Belz...]

So many good counter-arguments... so little acknowledgment.

 

[JayUtah]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness...

There is no such thing as a "specific" self-awareness in materialism.

...that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

There is no "each bit" of consciousness in materialism, just as there is no each bit of "going 60 mph" in automotive engineering. You continue to misunderstand what it means to be a property.

 

[Belz...]

There is no such thing as a "specific" self-awareness in materialism.

If I'm being very generous, jabba might be refering to the equivalent of the precise, exact speed and trajectory of the Volkswagen. Sure, it's a process and not a thing, but you'll probably never be able to take that Volks and do the exact same journey at the exact same speed. In that sense they are different.

 

[JoeMorgue]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

STOP.... SAYING... "SPECIFIC."

It's a B.S. weasel word and we all know it.

At this point you are trying to define separate as unique. It's sad and transparent.

It's just another "But it wouldn't be the saaaaame" lamb bleating from you.

You're a grown man Jabba. Different, same, identical, equivalent, distinct... these are not esoteric concepts.

IF WE CREATE AN EXACT COPY... IT'S AN EXACT COPY. THAT'S WHAT EXACT COPY MEANS! THAT'S HOW WORDS WORK!

You're trying to negate the concept of exact copy by bleating over and over that they are different because one is a copy.

 

[Jabba]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .

Why not?

- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.

 

[Dave Rogers]

- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum,

Why not?

Hang on there a moment. You're falling for the "When did you stop beating your wife" gambit. Who conceded that "a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness" was a correct, relevant and meaningful statement here? Given that it is in fact meaningless to refer to a process in terms that only apply to an object, the conditional can be rejected so there's no point to address.

Dave

 

[JoeMorgue]

A PERFECT COPY WOULD BE A PERFECT COPY

How in the name of Zeus's butthole is it that you don't get this yet?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Hang on there a moment. You're falling for the "When did you stop beating your wife" gambit. Who conceded that "a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness" was a correct, relevant and meaningful statement here? Given that it is in fact meaningless to refer to a process in terms that only apply to an object, the conditional can be rejected so there's no point to address.

Dave

Seriously we've got a grown man claiming he's gonna live forever because he's pretending the "same but distinct" concept is too hard for him to figure out and we're all playing along.

 

[Belz...]

- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.

Answer my question, Jabba: what does it matter that "you" won't be "brought back to life" in a copy of your body and brain? What does that have to do with anything?

 

[RoboTimbo]

- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.

What does "particular" mean when referring to what you've called the process of self-awareness? How are processes "particular"?

Do you feel that your repeated dishonesty in continuing to refer to a process as "particular" is catching up with you?

 

[godless dave]

- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?

They would, under the right conditions, combine to form a blastocyst which would develop into an embryo which would eventually start forming a brain. This brain would not be exactly like mine because various factors in the womb influence how a fetus develops. But regardless, a copy is separate from the original. 1+1=2. What makes my self awareness my particular self awareness is that it's the one my particular brain is producing.

- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.

I don't know if you skipped a biology class or what, but a single cell is not, as far as we know, capable of being self aware. A sperm and egg might combine, and if they do, there's a chance the new cell might eventually develop into a human. Part of that human is a brain. That particular brain is self-aware. Before the brain exists and develops, the organism is not self-aware.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I think finally at long last we have reached the Planck's Hairsplit I mentioned before.

Jabba's obviously talking about a soul and he's shoving the soul into smaller and smaller distinctions without difference trying to keep that particular ball in the air.

At this point he's so trapped in his own corner it's been reduced down to "Another me wouldn't be me because only I am me." It's been distilled into pure argument via definition.

 

[JayUtah]

How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?

Yes and no. No because casting the problem in terms of embryology changes the conditions of the thought experiment. Even with identical sperm and ova, the developmental process remains variable by other factors. The thought experiment does not ask how an identical copy of an organism can be made. It just asks us to speculate what would happen if such a thing were possible. You constantly deploy these straw men to argue that materialism is limited to certain specific interactions or conditions such as genetics or "chemistry." The state of an entity is determined -- even in materialism -- as more than just some snapshot of a few of the initial conditions.

Yes because the sense of self is a property, and as such it is largely non-individualized. Others are content to let you get away with the notion of a "particular" self-awareness or a "specific" sense of self, but I am not. The sense of self and the phenomenon of consciousness exist regardless of what memories or sensory inputs we convolve with it from time to time. E in the model is that we have a sense of self, not that we have some particular, individualized experience. This conceptualization distinguishes between what I think is the essence of consciousness, and the attendant problems that Loss Leader and others have pointed out -- namely the ongoing, ever-changing nature of the state of memory and sensation and their interaction with consciousness.

And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.

No, you don't get to use a model that insists upon an arbitrary distinction between humans and everything else. Forcing the model to explicitly embrace human embryology is unparsimonious and renders it inapplicable to other material such as bread dough for which human embryology is moot. That was, in fact, the essence of the bread-loaf analogy: to try to explain to you the universal, uniform scope of materialism. You don't get to beg the question that humans are somehow different from any other matter and that the property of human consciousness is somehow different from any other property. Materialism expressly denies that.

Further, materialism has no concept of a "particular" self awareness. You're still trying to foist a way of thinking about it that requires it to be a discrete entity.