Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba said:
- 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.
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Here it is: OOFLAM doesn't exist. You are constructing a fiction.

Work with reality, and it'll get you places.
 
Jabba said:
- Is this "self" the same concept/experience that reincarnationists think returns?
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No.

First let's get something out of the way. You're not even trying to hide your equivocations anymore. Every time you use one of these -- "/" -- you try to sneak multiple ambiguous concepts past your critics. It's the difference between "Jabba" and "Jabba/child-molester." In other words, a big important difference. Your critics are kind enough to use single words. They're kind enough to use specific words. They're kind enough to supply you with the definitions of words they're using, where there's the possibility of misunderstanding. So kindly stop trying to back-door inappropriate concepts into the argument by slash-gregating them together as if your critics should take them as one lump sum.

Now back to no. It's no because you're trying to make one side's explanation (~H, there is an immortal soul) part of the data (E, a person has a sense of self) such that all the hypotheses would have to explain that cause, not just the effect. It's one of the fatal flaws we all know you can't answer. Fatal Flaw #3 describes how you don't know the different parts of a statistical inference and can't properly tell what role each one plays. You've just posted more evidence that you persist in flawed reasoning.

The datum E is the sense of self. The data cannot include any sort of explanation for how they came about. ~H (or more properly, perhaps some hypothesis in ~H) wants to explain E by means of a separately-existing immortal soul. That would be evaluated under P(E|~H). H, materialism, explains E as an emergent property of the process of consciousness, which proceeds in a functioning human brain. That is what you're trying to reckon as P(E|H). H is not responsible for trying (and, you hope, failing) to explain a cause that ~H proposes.

As for "reincarnationists," I have to march behind Loss Leader's flag on this one. You clearly haven't done anything to determine what, if anything, the various believers in reincarnation actually believe or what they might, if anything, have in common. So there's a separate justification for a "no" answer in the form of your not having defined the target.
 
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Jabba said:
- 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.
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However unlikely the existence of your body is, it is far more likely than the existence of your body AND another element (soul) which could continue after your brain ceases functioning AND the means by which your brain and this thing (soul) could interact. You know this but you continue to ignore it. That is what you are missing.
 
This disucssion reminds me of one of Achievement Hunter's Let's Play videos.

Gavin, Michael, Geoff, Jeremy, Ryan, and Jack are playing the new Star Wars Battlefront.

Gavin: So wait Star Wars doesn't take place in the Milky Way?
Michael: What?
Jack: No it takes place in a galaxy far, far away.
Geoff: Far, far away.
Gavin: So there's no Earth?
Michael: The first line of the movie...
Geoff: (Louder) Far, far away.
Jeremy: Gavin when that first tagline started did you just tune out, not read any of it?
Gavin: I don't know it's just one of those things you hear so much...
Ryan: You just read it, you don't hear it!
Gavin: So wait... wait... Is it also in the past as well?
Michael: Sit down Gavin it's also like thousands of years in the past.
Gavin: This has actually blown my mind that it's way in the past and way far away. They should have put that at the beginning of the movie.
Jack, Ryan, Michael, Geoff, and Jeremy (All at once): THEY DID!
 
Jabba said:
I must be missing something, but I can't figure out what it is.
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Perhaps you should finally take the time to read and try to understand the hundreds of posts which explain exactly what it is you're missing in excruciating detail?
 
Argumemnon said:
Here it is: OOFLAM doesn't exist. You are constructing a fiction.

Work with reality, and it'll get you places.
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Eternal nothingness isn't a 'place', is it?

I'm pretty sure that's the figurative place Jabba hopes to avoid, and so far he's doing very well. The all-engulfing eternal nothingness has yet to engulf him.

Or or any of us. That's why we've been able to spend all these years arguing fervently in favor of the all-engulfing inevitability of eternal nothingness.

We're just lucky enough to have all this time to spend arguing fervently in favor of the, uh...almost all-engulfing inevitability of almost eternal nothingness.
 
Toontown said:
Eternal nothingness isn't a 'place', is it?

I'm pretty sure that's the figurative place Jabba hopes to avoid, and so far he's doing very well. The all-engulfing eternal nothingness has yet to engulf him.

Or or any of us. That's why we've been able to spend all these years arguing fervently in favor of the all-engulfing inevitability of eternal nothingness.

We're just lucky enough to have all this time to spend arguing fervently in favor of the, uh...almost all-engulfing inevitability of almost eternal nothingness.
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Okay what is it exactly with this "Be glad you're not dead yet" moralizing that people keep popping into this thread to dole out? What's the point and purpose? What exactly are you telling us that we don't know or aren't aware of?

Again everyone here has to deal with their own morality, but the difference is we're managing to do it absent some obsessive anti-intellectual passion play.
 
Toontown said:
We're just lucky enough to have all this time to spend arguing fervently in favor of the, uh...almost all-engulfing inevitability of almost eternal nothingness.
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I've often entertained that thought: that the only data I have regarding my own mortality points to the fact that, so far, I haven't died. It would be a huge break from tradition if I did.

But then I catch myself because that thought is extraordinarily stupid.
 
JoeBentley said:
Okay what is it exactly with this "Be glad you're not dead yet" moralizing that people keep popping into this thread to dole out? What's the point and purpose?
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I don't know. I didn't tell you to be glad you're not dead yet.

JoeBentley said:
Again everyone here has to deal with their own morality, but the difference is we're managing to do it absent some obsessive anti-intellectual passion play.
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This multi-year browbeating is not an obsessive passion play?
 
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Loss Leader said:
I've often entertained that thought: that the only data I have regarding my own mortality points to the fact that, so far, I haven't died. It would be a huge break from tradition if I did.

But then I catch myself because that thought is extraordinarily stupid.
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That way of looking at it is indeed extraordinarily stupid. It will not be a break from tradition when you die. Dying is quite the tradition.
 
Toontown said:
Loss Leader said:
I've often entertained that thought: that the only data I have regarding my own mortality points to the fact that, so far, I haven't died. It would be a huge break from tradition if I did.

But then I catch myself because that thought is extraordinarily stupid.
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That way of looking at it is indeed extraordinarily stupid.
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From the post Loss Leader was replying to:
Toontown said:
Eternal nothingness isn't a 'place', is it?

I'm pretty sure that's the figurative place Jabba hopes to avoid, and so far he's doing very well. The all-engulfing eternal nothingness has yet to engulf him.
Click to expand...
 
Toontown said:
Eternal nothingness isn't a 'place', is it?

I'm pretty sure that's the figurative place Jabba hopes to avoid, and so far he's doing very well. The all-engulfing eternal nothingness has yet to engulf him.
[...].
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And he would do exactly as well if he had laid down and died 5 years ago.
 
Jabba said:
- 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.
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Would you like someone to take yet another attempt at telling you?

Go and get yourself a deck of cards, and shuffle it thoroughly. You will now have some specific arrangement of cards. What is the likelihood that the arrangement you have actually exists? It would have to be, a priori, one divided by the number of possible combinations. How many possible combinations of cards are there? The answer is a little over 8x1067; so the probability that you got the arrangement you actually ended up with, is a number so small it has 67 zeroes after the decimal point before its first non-zero digit. By any everyday measure, that's virtually zero. So you've just carried out an operation, the probability of a specific result of which is virtually zero.

But the point is, there has to be some final arrangement of the cards. All of the different arrangements have exactly the same probability, so there's nothing particularly surprising about the fact that one of them exists in that particular pack at that particular time, even though the probability is so low.

So that's all there is to it. The probability of the existence of you, a specific person, isn't relevant, because the probability of all the other possible people existing isn't significantly different, and people exist. To think otherwise would be to think that some outside agency is also intervening when you shuffle a deck of cards.

Dave
 
godless dave said:
So, like I've been saying, if you made an exact copy of my body, my self would be reproduced.
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Jabba said:
- Is this "self" the same concept/experience that reincarnationists think returns?
Click to expand...

godless dave said:
It's the same experience but not the same concept. All the reincarnation beliefs I'm familiar with posit some kind of soul that exists independently of the physical body.
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- Yeah -- "concept" was the wrong word.
- What can I call this particular kind of experience so that we'll know that we're talking about the same kind of experience?
 
Jabba said:
- Yeah -- "concept" was the wrong word.
- What can I call this particular kind of experience so that we'll know that we're talking about the same kind of experience?
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We already know we're talking about the same kind of experience so I don't know why you keep asking this. We could call it self-awareness, the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Under the materialist model, it's produced by a living, working brain.
 
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Nothing. No. Thing.


Look jabba, can you please be polite enough to respond to me? I asked you a fairly simple question a while back in good faith and you haven't answered.

Have you ever watched Star Trek?
 
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