Proof of Immortality, VII

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JoeBentley said:
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.
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That's every Jabba thread, and why his threads persist for years without formally "getting started." He tries to foist personal definitions and ground rules that essentially guarantee his success before we even start. It's like a lawyer trying to win a case entirely by pretrial rulings in limine that result in only favorable evidence being presented.
 
Jabba said:
.... and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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LOL

"Science" is "stuck" with nothing. Don't be ridiculous in either attempting to speak for the scientific community, or making conclusions based on your fallacious ramblings.
 
JayUtah said:
No, you don't get to use a model that insists upon an arbitrary distinction between humans and everything else.
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This. Because, of course, materialism does not do so, therefore any model that does so is not materialism. And so we're back to the core of the argument, which rests on misrepresenting materialism in order to give it the appearance of internal inconsistency.

Dave
 
The Sparrow said:
"Science" is "stuck" with nothing.
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Science is, in fact, liberated from not having to consider all the special cases that would arise if we had to, for example, consider each car going 60 mph to be exhibiting an individualized property.

Jabba's strategy has been to load down the data, E, with assumptions from his own theories in hopes of showing that science is "stuck" trying to explain those add-ons. His argument boils down, then, to "Science can't explain my theory." And that's because science has its own theory that doesn't include his assumptions. Of course Jabba doesn't come out and say it's his theory; he insists instead that it's an inherent part of the data.
 
John Jones said:
Jabba said:
Dave,
- S0, reproducing your self would not reproduce you.- IOW, your self is determined entirely by the cells of your brain, but you must require something more. When above you say, "I come out of the cells of my brain.", by "I" you mean your self -- but, you do not also mean you.
- And, each new self would be different in that regard.
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Rule of so.
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Rule of s0, actually. Ess - Zero. Maybe that's a different thing.


Aaaaaand, I'm putting the new thread on ignore, since it doesn't bring out my best. Best of luck to all.
 
Jabba, all you have to do is come back and haunt the forum after you're dead. Should be easy for an immortal soul. I mean, jeeze, you'll have plenty of time.

Let us know when you've died and we can start watching for you.
 
abaddon said:
That is the aim. Post so much crap that people can't be bothered to reply anymore. Then declare victory.
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Yep. And in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't matter if he did. Declining to participate in the thread lets Jabba tell himself he won the debate. Participating in the thread lets him tell himself he actually has a point worth considering. I have no illusions that I'm doing anything effective by posting in this thread but I need a break from work every now and then or I'll lose my temper at how stupid my employer's clients are and how many resources we're wasting by giving in to their stupid requests.
 
Here's the thing though, and here I'll just gift wrap a serving of crow to eat later to save everyone else the trouble... I don't think anyone is that dense.

He'll never admit it, he'll never acknowledge it, it will never make a difference as to his action but there is no way the utter across the board bottom to top total destruction of his entire argument, argumentative style, conclusions, ulterior motive and literally everything both direct and meta about this discussion has got to have gotten through to Jabba.... on some level. Some level.

There has to be a sunk cost tipping point to the "I'm winning as long as the argument is still going on" technique. At certain point watching your entire argument get trounced like a Hitler pinata at a Mossad convention has got to start to outweigh the symbolic moral victory of "being still in the fight."
 
godless dave said:
Yep. And in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't matter if he did. Declining to participate in the thread lets Jabba tell himself he won the debate. Participating in the thread lets him tell himself he actually has a point worth considering. I have no illusions that I'm doing anything effective by posting in this thread but I need a break from work every now and then or I'll lose my temper at how stupid my employer's clients are and how many resources we're wasting by giving in to their stupid requests.
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Yeah, sure, it is an odd route to take because it will prove nothing, demonstrates nothing, illustrates nothing, yet for reasons inexplicable jabba has been doing that very thing for years. Why? I don't think even jabba can answer that, or at least has made no attempt to do so.

JoeBentley said:
Here's the thing though, and here I'll just gift wrap a serving of crow to eat later to save everyone else the trouble... I don't think anyone is that dense.

He'll never admit it, he'll never acknowledge it, it will never make a difference as to his action but there is no way the utter across the board bottom to top total destruction of his entire argument, argumentative style, conclusions, ulterior motive and literally everything both direct and meta about this discussion has got to have gotten through to Jabba.... on some level. Some level.

There has to be a sunk cost tipping point to the "I'm winning as long as the argument is still going on" technique. At certain point watching your entire argument get trounced like a Hitler pinata at a Mossad convention has got to start to outweigh the symbolic moral victory of "being still in the fight."
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Beats me. The whole concept of the "Least Critical Poster" would not exist were it not for the bovine proposals propounded in these various threads. Perhaps one should ask Jabba. No answer will be forthcoming so try not to get excited.
 
Jabba said:
- 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 .
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This seems to be two conjoined sentence fragments or just an absurd conclusion.

Are you saying the 'sperm and ovum' should produce 'specific self-awareness', which is totally bizarre.

Brains produce specific self-awareness
 
Jabba said:
- 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.
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This is the dumbest straw man in a long series of dumb strawman
 
Dancing David said:
This seems to be two conjoined sentence fragments or just an absurd conclusion.

Are you saying the 'sperm and ovum' should produce 'specific self-awareness', which is totally bizarre.

Brains produce specific self-awareness
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Jabba seems to think the "self" is a separate thing that gets attached to a body at some point, and that the characteristics of the body - the genome or the shape of the brain or something - determine which self gets attached.

Like if you have two radios, both tuned to 89.3 FM, they'll both pick up the same transmission. They won't pick up two separate transmissions.

That's what he seems to be getting at but who knows.
 
godless dave said:
Jabba seems to think the "self" is a separate thing that gets attached to a body at some point, and that the characteristics of the body - the genome or the shape of the brain or something - determine which self gets attached.
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This is exactly what he thinks is happening, as exhibited by his phrase "each brain brings with it a self". And he refuses to consider why that phrase is incorrect, and despite all the times he's been called on it, refuses to acknowledge the problem.

When pressed on it, he pretends he's talking about the materialistic model. But then he ignores all the people who explain why if the self is a process, it will stop when the brain stops functioning.

Like if you have two radios, both tuned to 89.3 FM, they'll both pick up the same transmission. They won't pick up two separate transmissions.
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Don't go there!!! We don't need another 20 pages of why the radio analogy doesn't work.
 
Ok, fed up with being ignored here so I'll just get to my point with asking about Star Trek.

See Jabba, I'm a bit of a fan of the show in most of it's guises but my particular favorite was The Next Generation. This thread got me thinking about a specific episode in fact, which revolves around something that happened to the character William T Riker in his past.

As the episode goes the ship visits a planet Riker had been to previously while a Lieutenant, that had these powerful electrical storms sweep across it regularly. What happened on his previous visit was that a storm hit while he was about to beam up with the transporter (which locks onto your molecules, stores your DNA, breaks you down then reassembles you on the pad/destination, teleporting you almost instantly between places) meaning that for a moment his pattern was disrupted and he was nearly lost.

So anyway, the ship arrives on the planet and an away team (including Riker) beams down, only to find...another Will Riker! It transpires that when the storm hit, he was transported up to the ship, but was ALSO left behind. Two literally identical versions of himself, one on the planet, left alone because no one knew he was there, and one on his ship. This other Riker has all the memories, experiences and thoughts of the Riker who made it off planet up to the moment of the transporter malfunction, but their lives diverged from that point. Left behind Riker was still deeply in love with his girlfriend of the time, while show Riker had left her and moved on for instance.

Ok, so why am I discussing the plot to a sci-fi TV show? Because it follows the materialist model of the universe perfectly. Two copies of the same person, absolutely identical in every way, not just physically but mentally and emotionally at the point of duplication. Not one Riker looking out of two sets of eyes, in fact neither one knew the other even existed until the Enterprise went back to the planet, but two copies BOTH of whom were William T Riker, to the point where they have a row about which one is the real Riker until someone else points out they both are.

It's a great piece of TV, but more than that it shows how hollow your attempt to foist a soul onto materialism really is. Two identical copies of a person, both of them independent from the moment of duplication, but both absolutely and completely William Thomas Riker.

ETA: The episode was called Second Chances
 
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MarkCorrigan said:
It's a great piece of TV, but more than that it shows how hollow your attempt to foist a soul onto materialism really is. Two identical copies of a person, both of them independent from the moment of duplication, but both absolutely and completely William Thomas Riker.
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I'd be afraid that any attempt to reproduce me exactly would result in a JayUtah with a ghoatee.
 
JayUtah said:
I'd be afraid that any attempt to reproduce me exactly would result in a JayUtah with a ghoatee.
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But at least then Jabba would have some support, plus you could use your agoniser on the rest of us to drive us away.
 
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