Subjectivity and Science

[Stout]

Hi John

A few days ago PixiMisa said, upthread that spirituality had given us nothing (to paraphrase) and I've been reflecting on that idea since that time. All I could really come up with were scenarios like the one you posted in your last post about the tribes and I'd also like to suggest, spirituality brought us culture.

So we have two equally matched tribes squaring off, each indulging in their particular rituals to bring on the blessings of the higher powers and they go at it. somebody wins.

Now if we introduce another tribe with superior firepower and not so much faith in the higher powers, who would win? My money's on the guys with the more advanced weapons. If we picture a group of dedicated trained horsemen wielding swords and shields going up against a machine gun, you'll see where I'm going with this.

It would be a prime example of materialism 1....spirituality 0

I'm also having a hard time with this whole science is a belief idea.

Several years ago, my woo positive roommate came home and announced he was doing a firewalk and would I like to join him. I was eager, but alas, broke so I forgo the opportunity. he went, did the walk and came home raving about his experiences of mind over body. Flash forward a couple of years, and I find myself sitting in a university lecture hall learning about specific heat capacity. As an aside the lecturer brought up...you guessed it...firewalking. As a result of that lecture I truly believe that I can firewalk without any special training in focusing my mind to overcome what would seem, on the surface, to be a physical impossibility.

Would that qualify as a belief based on science? After all had I not had that lecture( or watched Discovery Channel ) I wouldn't be believing that i could just go and walk on hot coals.

Now were these mind over matter guys walking on red hot gravel...then I'd be really impressed

 

[John Freestone]

Have you read how Millikin detrmined the mass of the electron?

No, I haven't. The electron? Is there just one then?

 

[Dancing David]

This seems to be conceding immediately that science is 95% certain and meditatation 0%. It is a defensible conclusion to draw, already implicit in the question. My discussion of science, however, was meant to draw attention to the fact that, where reality is concerned, actually 95%, even 99.9999% is not actually reality or truth.

Again , no duh.

Science is about models and observation.

So taking the most taxing, biggest questions human beings ask, which involve the perception of having an inner, subjective consciousness, or whether the universe can possibly have created it's own space-time and energy-matter at a particular time and position, etc., science is not necessarily a more solid source.

Some questions however have no answers and if you severe your optic nerve you won't sense your eye's sight any more.

In other words, those who report that decades of meditation develops a pure, unhampered vision of truth might just happen to be right, I might be living in an unenlightened state of consciousness, and 95% could mean little more than "somewhat deluded".

They might be right, what predictions can they make about the behavior of reality?

Maybe I asked, as some have pointed out, an intractable question, and all we're doing is elaborating it. It will always be possible to explain everything put here (or anywhere!) with scientific materialism, and always possible to explain it with mysticism.

Not really, what pedictions does mysticism make about gravity or antibiotics?

I am a practiced mystic BTW.

Scientists have an easier time pointing out how mysticism involves delusive mental trickery, that's all. The insight that science might actually also involve such delusive mental trickery is a much harder one to contemplate. That will itself give scientific minds more confidence, but that doesn't mean they're right (and arrogance won't make up for the relativity of viewpoints).

This is the mistake of looking into the flashlight of enlightenment.

There is no evidence for an internal soul, platonic idealism and other mystical notions.

Science is about modeling. Mysticism is about associative neural networks.

The mass of an object does not change relativly, unless you approach the speed of light.

Over time, I believe, we make paradigm shifts, and science itself demonstrates that the leading edge of humanity can live for centuries with no idea that their worldview is in some deep sense completely wrong. I tried to point that out in relation to the Newton-Einstein paradigm shift. A great many learned people suspect that a paradigm shift is upon us now, which involves the re-appreciation of the internal, subjective view (the reinstatement of the whole subject of metaphysics, perhaps, or the inclusion of science as a branch and method of philosophy pertaining to a certain realm, instead of the only one we trust). Thus a wider philosophy would include, transcend and re-evaluate science (not overturn it). I don't suppose I need to invite refutation of this as all 'woo' and 'baloney', or contribute other useful contemplations.

Um, pony up the evidence , then we can talk.

The perceptual nature of human experience is not a mystery.

I was trying to point to the possibility that this might be true. When some bald bloke in an orange robe says he has direct knowledge of other realms, it is easy to conclude that he's deluded.

What predictions does his personal knowledge make?

When some suited narrator announces on TV that scientists believe that there may be many more dimensions, or that there just has to be dark matter in the universe to make the sums work, we just lap it up, utterly ignoring the missing percentages-of-confidence that make all science speculative.

I think you misunderstand sampling theory.

The subjective nature of experience.

To quote the alleged historical buddha:

Does ripping out your eye make you see beter?

I have no problem with people who admit that science gives us best guess theories about a physically measurable universe. I am concerned that so many - as I said before - transmute this web of self-referential evidence into hard fact. I was advised by someone that I ought to distinguish between the two, and that the latter was more commonly called scientism.

Not really, are you saying you can repeal the force labeled gravity?

Since I have heard it used that way before, I adopted the term. This is another insight of postmodernism that scientists fail to understand - words are just labels.

Garwsh Mister, that sure is a big claim there, are you sre that is such an absolute fact?

Can you repeal the force of gravity?

All human thoghts are equally false and true, some have greater validity than others.

Indeed this is one way of looking at the wraith of imaginary reality that science says it is measuring - it is all words, numbers, categories, which are ultimately mental constructs.

Not really, don't walk into any trees now.

The volume occupied by a sample of mecury in a glass tube does not care if we call it a thermometer or a magic heat stick.

For instance, when I was studying geology in the first year of a degree course, I was reading about two types of rock, studying their different properties, where they were found, how they were formed, etc., etc., thinking all the while that they were different things because they had different names, when I realised that they in fact formed a continuum: the two were discriminated by how much of a certain mineral they contained - a percentage measurement - meaning that a particular sample could be one side or the other of this arbitrary line, or theoretically on it.

Duh?

Does that mean it is still a rock or not.

Okay, might not be a big deal until you realise that this kind of continuum is a ubiquitous quality of reality, perhaps more inherent to reality than "rock" and "water", and that science (indeed our habitual, linguistic and cognitive capacity generally) chops our view of reality up into categories in order to measure it.

Duh?

Not really, that is self referential labeling.

It does not mean that it is healthy to jump off tall buildings without a parachute.

Hence we have disputes about whether planets are planets or not......I could give dozens of examples out of possibly unlimited ones in science.....which leads some to consider again wholistic theories, or just to question again the clarity of our vision that looks out, thinks it sees matter in particular forms, labels the forms as distinct things, and starts saying things about their relationships - perfectly useful and valid things - just possibly within a limited philosophical perspective.

Can you see the planets, do they care what we call them?

I tried to draw attention to this - what amounts to our projection of ideals onto the world (as much as or rather than the perception of real objects out there) - with the 'chair' continuum example, but I was told that there is no such continuum. It was a thought experiment. If it fails to be noted in one mind, I can only report that I note it in my own.

Well, there have been many answers, but personally I remain agnostic. Maybe next year I will say that all that mystical, meditation stuff was nonsense - it's a mechanistic universe and "I" am just a mindboggling illusory froth noticing its mechanical existence, or maybe I'll say I have reaffirmed my capacity for direct intuition and here at JREF I would sound like even more of a nutter.

Don't walk into trees!

 

[Dancing David]

No, I haven't. The electron? Is there just one then?

Some wit suggested that.

I am a pluralist.

The mass is not relative, unless it goes really really fast.

 

[John Freestone]

Hi John

A few days ago PixiMisa said, upthread that spirituality had given us nothing (to paraphrase) and I've been reflecting on that idea since that time. All I could really come up with were scenarios like the one you posted in your last post about the tribes and I'd also like to suggest, spirituality brought us culture.

I like your thinking, Stout. I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that spirituality brought us culture, but it had a profound effect on it. To me, spirituality is more like a strand of culture, which is much bigger. I'd see science and technology as part of culture, along with art and morality. Morality is closely related to spirituality in our culture, but maybe that's just the way history worked out. If your scenario of the atheist, victorious race (below) had been more common, maybe we'd have developed no religions or religious/spiritual culture.

So we have two equally matched tribes squaring off, each indulging in their particular rituals to bring on the blessings of the higher powers and they go at it. somebody wins.

Now if we introduce another tribe with superior firepower and not so much faith in the higher powers, who would win? My money's on the guys with the more advanced weapons. If we picture a group of dedicated trained horsemen wielding swords and shields going up against a machine gun, you'll see where I'm going with this.

It would be a prime example of materialism 1....spirituality 0

Yes, at least on the face of it, but I wonder if there's something about humanity that causes morality to rise naturally. So if you scenario could be set up as a perfectly controlled experiment where nothing else could change, the moral ones would be defeated by superior firepower, but in real human situations, the moral outrage would increase to the point where victory for the moral would simply be a matter of time, even if their decimated population has to retreat into the hills and wage guerrila war. I don't want to risk getting into political arguments here, but I reckon there is a lot of evidence for this in history. I'll dare to suggest that without it this would probably be in German. EDIT: Just realised I used 'morality' instead of 'higher powers' here, but maybe that's because morality is so closely related to religion rather than science, which is value neutral.

I'm also having a hard time with this whole science is a belief idea.

Yeah, but the man will do that to you. Keep trippin'.

Several years ago, my woo positive roommate came home and announced he was doing a firewalk and would I like to join him. I was eager, but alas, broke so I forgo the opportunity. he went, did the walk and came home raving about his experiences of mind over body. Flash forward a couple of years, and I find myself sitting in a university lecture hall learning about specific heat capacity. As an aside the lecturer brought up...you guessed it...firewalking. As a result of that lecture I truly believe that I can firewalk without any special training in focusing my mind to overcome what would seem, on the surface, to be a physical impossibility.

Would that qualify as a belief based on science? After all had I not had that lecture( or watched Discovery Channel ) I wouldn't be believing that i could just go and walk on hot coals.

Now were these mind over matter guys walking on red hot gravel...then I'd be really impressed

It's not what I meant. Yours is a belief based on science, as you say; I meant that the scientific viewpoint itself is based on underlying beliefs. PM clarified these as twofold, that the material world is what is real, and that it is consistent. I'm not at all convinced that there aren't more, but those are two.

Your example of belief based on science is complicated by including questions about possible 'magic' effects and/or the nature of the placebo effect, and is interesting for it, but essentially you could have taken the boiling point of water as a belief based on science, which would be less complicated and controversial.

The authodox scientific view, as I understand it, is that there is a real fact - the bp of water or the safety of firewalking - which is or is not discovered. The observer is irrelevant, except in whether he or she observes the facts. It is as though the observer could stand outside reality and measure it without influence, or overcoming whatever influence may be active by some means (repetition of experiments, multiplicity of observers communicating and agreeing about it, etc.). Another belief system might say that subject and object - the observer and observed - are more intimately connected, making such 'objective' observations theoretically problematic or even impossible.

I think some confusion arises from the extent to which the relativity argument is applied. In other words, when we observe the very small, subatomic particles, etc., the observer does seem to have some influence (though I'm not an expert and I'm probably going to be corrected - in fact, I'd welcome futher explanation of this), and in observing human behaviours, beliefs, etc., it seems that placebo or mind-influencing-matter has some curious and persuasive effects.

But your point is valid anyway. If you had been pushed into firewalking as a complete unbeliever in it, you might well have experienced great pain and gone away having reaffirmed your belief that it's all dangerous nonsense (and all those other weirdos were just spaced out and pretending it didn't hurt that much and hiding the burns). Having now been converted, albeit through scientific explanation, you might firewalk and feel very little pain. Placebo and self-hypnosis are easily demonstrated, and there are theories about how and where in the body our thoughts influence the physical structure of cells and other bodily functions, so it is not quite so simple to deduce that those who expect to be burned still won't be because the physics says they can't be.

I am extremely doubtful, however, whether anyone could boil water at a different temperature by concentrating on it, psychically bend spoons or fly to the moon by mysticism. It's about how, why and under what conditions mind affects matter (particularly, is it just the body, or does physics suggest more weird interactions in quantum mechanics, etc.), and of course, none of that really affects the underlying 'metaphysical assumptions', as PM put it. The brain could be the cause of mind, and mind still affect the body...or even affect matter outside the body. So we might be scientifically convinced of the latter without it disproving the materialist view of subjectivity.

 

[Cuddles]

Another question: If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, then how did reality manage for such a long time without it?

Maybe it only thinks it did.

 

[Dancing David]

I like your thinking, Stout. I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that spirituality brought us culture, but it had a profound effect on it. To me, spirituality is more like a strand of culture, which is much bigger. I'd see science and technology as part of culture, along with art and morality.

Total agreement. Spirituality is another mdeia of culture.

Morality is closely related to spirituality in our culture, but maybe that's just the way history worked out. If your scenario of the atheist, victorious race (below) had been more common, maybe we'd have developed no religions or religious/spiritual culture.

Yes, at least on the face of it, but I wonder if there's something about humanity that causes morality to rise naturally.

Game theory?

So if you scenario could be set up as a perfectly controlled experiment where nothing else could change, the moral ones would be defeated by superior firepower, but in real human situations, the moral outrage would increase to the point where victory for the moral would simply be a matter of time, even if their decimated population has to retreat into the hills and wage guerrila war.

Morality and firepower are divorced from each other. Unfortunately.

I don't want to risk getting into political arguments here, but I reckon there is a lot of evidence for this in history. I'll dare to suggest that without it this would probably be in German. EDIT: Just realised I used 'morality' instead of 'higher powers' here, but maybe that's because morality is so closely related to religion rather than science, which is value neutral.

Yeah, but the man will do that to you. Keep trippin'.

It's not what I meant. Yours is a belief based on science, as you say; I meant that the scientific viewpoint itself is based on underlying beliefs. PM clarified these as twofold, that the material world is what is real, and that it is consistent. I'm not at all convinced that there aren't more, but those are two.

I would say that the premise id not that the material world exists. that is a mott point, there is no difference between the outcome of the idealist and the materialist. the key is that the behavior of the world can be observed.

Isotropy is an axiom. It also appears to be verified.

Your example of belief based on science is complicated by including questions about possible 'magic' effects and/or the nature of the placebo effect, and is interesting for it, but essentially you could have taken the boiling point of water as a belief based on science, which would be less complicated and controversial.

the boiling point of water is based upon observation and varies with air pressure.

The authodox scientific view, as I understand it, is that there is a real fact - the bp of water or the safety of firewalking - which is or is not discovered.

Observed maybe, theories can only make predictions, not facts.

The observer is irrelevant, except in whether he or she observes the facts. It is as though the observer could stand outside reality and measure it without influence, or overcoming whatever influence may be active by some means (repetition of experiments, multiplicity of observers communicating and agreeing about it, etc.). Another belief system might say that subject and object - the observer and observed - are more intimately connected, making such 'objective' observations theoretically problematic or even impossible.

hard to prove, no evidence as of yet.

In social communication belief is important, which is why double blinding is a good protocol.

I think some confusion arises from the extent to which the relativity argument is applied. In other words, when we observe the very small, subatomic particles, etc., the observer does seem to have some influence (though I'm not an expert and I'm probably going to be corrected - in fact, I'd welcome futher explanation of this), and in observing human behaviours, beliefs, etc., it seems that placebo or mind-influencing-matter has some curious and persuasive effects.

Not really, QM involves the interaction of wave/particles. they are what they are.
Placebo effect may or may not be such.

But your point is valid anyway. If you had been pushed into firewalking as a complete unbeliever in it, you might well have experienced great pain and gone away having reaffirmed your belief that it's all dangerous nonsense (and all those other weirdos were just spaced out and pretending it didn't hurt that much and hiding the burns). Having now been converted, albeit through scientific explanation, you might firewalk and feel very little pain. Placebo and self-hypnosis are easily demonstrated, and there are theories about how and where in the body our thoughts influence the physical structure of cells and other bodily functions, so it is not quite so simple to deduce that those who expect to be burned still won't be because the physics says they can't be.

I am extremely doubtful, however, whether anyone could boil water at a different temperature by concentrating on it, psychically bend spoons or fly to the moon by mysticism. It's about how, why and under what conditions mind affects matter (particularly, is it just the body, or does physics suggest more weird interactions in quantum mechanics, etc.), and of course, none of that really affects the underlying 'metaphysical assumptions', as PM put it. The brain could be the cause of mind, and mind still affect the body...or even affect matter outside the body. So we might be scientifically convinced of the latter without it disproving the materialist view of subjectivity.

The ontology if reality is immaterial to the point!

 

[John Freestone]

Dancing David, I'm afraid I don't follow some of the things you've said, maybe because you were rather brief and I'm lacking the background info, but anyway, "Game theory?" got my attention.

I've been holding back from saying "But isn't all this materialism desperately depressing? How do people live with a view that virtually makes human beings zombies?"...that kind of thing. I didn't want to, partly because it invites the response that it's tough being realistic, but retreating into comfortable illusions isn't very mature.

What is interesting, though, is the resilience of a deep moral sense and a deep desire to see things clearly too, and Game Theory reminded me of it. Why do people balk at these sorts of suggestions? Is it merely because they're genetically programmed to? If we learn that by being self-centred, for instance, our society can reach a kind of economic harmony, I believe that many are quite happy to be affirmed in their self-interested behaviour, but our current global crisis has blown the comfortable lies of capitalism out of the water, and more and more people are developing a world-centric view.

Some of these moral feelings suggest a desire for goodness and fairness beyond what evolutionary pressures would be expected to give us. Of course, that world-centric perspective can be seen as the best bet for an individual's genes getting passed on, and we're just realising that if the mother ship goes down our genes will go too. But somehow I don't think that's the full picture. We balk at that suggestion too, and I think that human beings would sacrifice themselves for morality if they were convinced of the rightness of doing that.

It is maybe more of the intractable question. Deists could see the phenomena of 'goodness' or 'altruism' as evidence of a God; atheists say that this arises naturally from the self-propagation of systems (e.g. genes), which kind of takes the goodness out of goodness. Hope, however, springs eternal in the human heart, since the very revulsion one feels at being considered so mechanical and selfish reminds one that one is a human being with a desire to transcend whatever bestial instincts might have given rise to us. I think it is this desire-for-salvation being evidence for the reality of salvation that gives me faith in a Meaningful universe (which is just a half-hearted way of saying a God-given one). This is another feature of meditation, that it uncovers such realities behind the social injunctions. The immediate experience of compassion, a wish to transcend, gratitude for the gift of life, etc. come into view as more than mere biochemical products (even if they are also biochemical products - there is no need to lose the old paradigm to transcend it). Furthermore, the value-neutrality of science and its mathematical reduction of humanity into machines is increasingly of deep concern. Science may not always dehumanise us, or intend to, but it often does. The depth of moral outrage at being portrayed as so much complex biological mathematics reaffirms my belief that we are more than that...at least that we can choose to be more than that even if blind chance caused us.

 

[PixyMisa]

PM clarified these as twofold, that the material world is what is real, and that it is consistent. I'm not at all convinced that there aren't more, but those are two.

Yep. As far as I can see, everything else, including concepts like induction and falsifiability, stems from those two assumptions. I have a couple of books on the philosophy of science here on my desk, and if I ever get a chance to finish reading them I might be able to clarify that one way or the other.

The authodox scientific view, as I understand it, is that there is a real fact - the bp of water or the safety of firewalking - which is or is not discovered. The observer is irrelevant, except in whether he or she observes the facts. It is as though the observer could stand outside reality and measure it without influence, or overcoming whatever influence may be active by some means (repetition of experiments, multiplicity of observers communicating and agreeing about it, etc.).

Well, not the current orthodox view, but the 19th century view, yes. Independent replication of experiments is intended to remove as many variables as possible, but there are some variables that you can't remove.

Another belief system might say that subject and object - the observer and observed - are more intimately connected, making such 'objective' observations theoretically problematic or even impossible.

Yes, that is indeed another belief system.

I think some confusion arises from the extent to which the relativity argument is applied.

Careful there. Relativity has a specific scientific meaning, involving motion and acceleration in space-time.

In other words, when we observe the very small, subatomic particles, etc., the observer does seem to have some influence (though I'm not an expert and I'm probably going to be corrected - in fact, I'd welcome futher explanation of this)

Okay.

First up, the observer is irrelevant. Really.

There's a couple of aspects to this. This most straightforward is that you can't step outside the universe and examine it. To observe something, to measure it, you have to interact with it in some way. To study an atom, for example, we have to hit it with a particle such as a photon or an electron, and that interaction is going to change the atom in some way.

It's like you were studying the properties of billiard balls, but blindfolded and deaf, and the only tool you had to hand was more billiard balls.

and in observing human behaviours, beliefs, etc., it seems that placebo or mind-influencing-matter has some curious and persuasive effects.

No, not really. The placebo effect is interesting and somewhat complicated in its details, but it's well understood, purely physical, and not at all magical.

Placebo and self-hypnosis are easily demonstrated, and there are theories about how and where in the body our thoughts influence the physical structure of cells and other bodily functions, so it is not quite so simple to deduce that those who expect to be burned still won't be because the physics says they can't be.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Try walking across a bed of red-hot steel. It doesn't matter what you believe, your feet will be burned off.

I am extremely doubtful, however, whether anyone could boil water at a different temperature by concentrating on it, psychically bend spoons or fly to the moon by mysticism.

Those are good things to be doubtful of.

It's about how, why and under what conditions mind affects matter (particularly, is it just the body, or does physics suggest more weird interactions in quantum mechanics, etc.), and of course, none of that really affects the underlying 'metaphysical assumptions', as PM put it. The brain could be the cause of mind, and mind still affect the body...

Eh. You might be interested in experiments that show that conscious awareness of supposedly conscious decisions lags measurably behind activity that follows those decisions. I'll have to dig up some links for you, or maybe someone here has them handy. In short, what we think of as our minds is in at least some respects just an instant replay of what our mechanistic brains have already done.

The point of this is that mind does not effect matter. The brain controls most bodily functions, to a greater or lesser degree. The brain also generates the mind. The brain processes that generate the mind also have feedback to the brain processes that control the body.

or even affect matter outside the body.

Nope. Not one example of that has ever been demonstrated, so we're pretty safe in dismissing it.

So we might be scientifically convinced of the latter without it disproving the materialist view of subjectivity.

Eh?

 

[fls]

Eh. You might be interested in experiments that show that conscious awareness of supposedly conscious decisions lags measurably behind activity that follows those decisions. I'll have to dig up some links for you, or maybe someone here has them handy. In short, what we think of as our minds is in at least some respects just an instant replay of what our mechanistic brains have already done.

Benjamin Libet

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/106/3/623

Linda

 

[PixyMisa]

Thanks Linda!

 

[Stout]

Hi John...I can't think of any examples of atheist forces with superior firepower engaging a lesser armed spiritual force, but I can think of lots of examples of better armed forces + spirituality engaging weaker forces. Most notably, when the old world invaded the new world.

The natives may of appealed to their god's but clearly the gods weren't with them when the ships came. Maybe the Europeans just brought "better" gods

I agree on the connection between spirituality/religion and morality. I can't say that science, in general, is without morality but I'll admit it hasn't been made a priority. I don't see a problem with this, as science was never intended to explore moral/ethical ideas in the first place.

And then I get confused by the rest of your post ( #125 )

The boiling point of water is a function of pressure, really, we take the bp to be 100C, but vary the pressure over the water, and the boiling point changes. It's just cause and effect. I could cause the pressure to be so low as to cause water to boil at room temperature.

I just don't see where belief comes into it.

 

[PixyMisa]

I've been holding back from saying "But isn't all this materialism desperately depressing? How do people live with a view that virtually makes human beings zombies?"...that kind of thing. I didn't want to, partly because it invites the response that it's tough being realistic, but retreating into comfortable illusions isn't very mature.

No, that's not the answer.

The answer is that materialism doesn't change what people are. Materialism is a metaphysical position. People are people.

What is interesting, though, is the resilience of a deep moral sense and a deep desire to see things clearly too, and Game Theory reminded me of it. Why do people balk at these sorts of suggestions?

Sorry, that's not clear. Why do people balk at what?

Is it merely because they're genetically programmed to?

Not merely that; it's also partly learned.

If we learn that by being self-centred, for instance, our society can reach a kind of economic harmony, I believe that many are quite happy to be affirmed in their self-interested behaviour, but our current global crisis has blown the comfortable lies of capitalism out of the water, and more and more people are developing a world-centric view.

"Comfortable lies of capitalism"? That sounds like you don't understand capitalism any more than you understand science.

Some of these moral feelings suggest a desire for goodness and fairness beyond what evolutionary pressures would be expected to give us.

Really? What, specifically?

Of course, that world-centric perspective can be seen as the best bet for an individual's genes getting passed on, and we're just realising that if the mother ship goes down our genes will go too. But somehow I don't think that's the full picture. We balk at that suggestion too

Balk at what suggestion? That morality is partly due to calculated self-interest? Why would I balk at that? It's not only reasonable, but obvious that this is the case.

and I think that human beings would sacrifice themselves for morality if they were convinced of the rightness of doing that.

Yes. This does happen. Whether it's a reasonable thing to do is another question.

It is maybe more of the intractable question. Deists could see the phenomena of 'goodness' or 'altruism' as evidence of a God; atheists say that this arises naturally from the self-propagation of systems (e.g. genes), which kind of takes the goodness out of goodness.

For one, we see altruism in insects, which makes us wonder which species is really made in God's image.

For another, without going into the whole free will thing, people make choices. The fact that we understand at least part of the reason people tend to make the specific choices they do doesn't change the fact that they make those choices.

Hope, however, springs eternal in the human heart, since the very revulsion one feels at being considered so mechanical and selfish reminds one that one is a human being with a desire to transcend whatever bestial instincts might have given rise to us.

Um, no.

I think it is this desire-for-salvation being evidence for the reality of salvation that gives me faith in a Meaningful universe (which is just a half-hearted way of saying a God-given one).

Argh.

That is so incredibly wrong-headed that it hurts even to think about it.

I think it is this desire-for-a-strawberry-cheesecake-the-size-of-the-Moon being evidence for the reality of lunar-scale cheesecakes that gives me faith in a cheese-cakey universe.

This is another feature of meditation, that it uncovers such realities behind the social injunctions.

And your evidence of this is? Please list the realities behind the social injunctions that have been uncovered by meditation as opposed to rational thought.

The immediate experience of compassion, a wish to transcend, gratitude for the gift of life, etc. come into view as more than mere biochemical products (even if they are also biochemical products - there is no need to lose the old paradigm to transcend it).

Nope. Pure wishful thinking. As I noted earlier, your supposed transcendent paradigm is materialism. Nothing has changed.

Furthermore, the value-neutrality of science and its mathematical reduction of humanity into machines is increasingly of deep concern.

People may be machines, but they are wonderful machines.

Science may not always dehumanise us, or intend to, but it often does.

Only if you have very little imagination and no sense of wonder.

The depth of moral outrage at being portrayed as so much complex biological mathematics reaffirms my belief that we are more than that...at least that we can choose to be more than that even if blind chance caused us.

Again, pure wishful thinking. Just because you don't like something doesn't make the converse any more true. You might as well clap if you believe in fairies.

 

[John Freestone]

Yep. As far as I can see, everything else, including concepts like induction and falsifiability, stems from those two assumptions. I have a couple of books on the philosophy of science here on my desk, and if I ever get a chance to finish reading them I might be able to clarify that one way or the other.

Ok, but don't count them on my account. The counting of things was never quite what I was talking about in any of this. In fact, you might say it was half the problem.

Well, not the current orthodox view, but the 19th century view, yes. Independent replication of experiments is intended to remove as many variables as possible, but there are some variables that you can't remove.

You don't offer to enlighten me concering the difference betwen the 19th-C and the 21st-C orthodox views, but no matter. I'm pleased you acknowledge that replication of experiments does not remove all variables.

Yes, that is indeed another belief system.

Does your use of the word 'another' here indicate that the scientific paradigm (choose your own century, please) is a belief system. What I was criticising was the common view that science isn't one, it is just the view of reality. I'm sorry to press you on this, but some of what you say seems to contradict other things. One minute you're saying that my alternative viewpoint is just plain wrong, which suggests that you, presumably via science, have a pure vision of reality, the next you say that science is nothing to do with reality, the next that it is 'another' belief system based on 'metaphysical assumptions' and acknowledge that there are other belief systems, the next that it is just a mathematical model for making certain predictions in the 'real world'. I begin to wonder if I have imagined these inconsistencies in your philosophy of a consistent material universe, or if you don't notice them, or are avoiding noticing them. I am also made suspicious by your habit of chopping my explanation of complicated ideas into byte-size chunks and giving minimal refutations, considering which it is also psychologically rather interesting that you make such a big fuss about my use of 'wholism' rather than 'holism', actually to the point of saying that all the dictionaries in which the first form is found are simply wrong, as are any viewpoints at odds with your own generally.

Careful there. Relativity has a specific scientific meaning, involving motion and acceleration in space-time.

Yes, I know. I didn't just fall off the last UFO to pass by. People often imagine what another person is trying to express through this imperfect medium called language. Or, to put it another way, your spellings and definitions are not always the correct ones. Postmodern understanding of language has been around for I don't care how long now it's a long time and if you're going to see things only from your limited viewpoint you will always remain

First up, the observer is irrelevant. Really.

There's a couple of aspects to this. This most straightforward is that you can't step outside the universe and examine it. To observe something, to measure it, you have to interact with it in some way. To study an atom, for example, we have to hit it with a particle such as a photon or an electron, and that interaction is going to change the atom in some way.

It's like you were studying the properties of billiard balls, but blindfolded and deaf, and the only tool you had to hand was more billiard balls.

I am trying to understand why that last bit doesn't (in your view, apparently) support the intractable connection of subject and object, since it is the kind of argument I would use for this. I guess the difference must be that when you say "you can't step outside the universe and examine it", the "you" you're referring to is a bundle of particles, which are involved with the particles of the universe generally. That would fit with what you seem to be expressing, a non-dual view of pure matter. Yes? Because, of course, I was using the "you" of the subjective, mental, internal experience, which you probably consider illusory or something - I don't know. Anyway, it's interesting. Which ever 'you' you use, the subject or bundle of particle-waves, the problem of its intrinsic envelopment in the universe for any purely objective science is what I was pointing out. In simple terms, the 'objectivity' that science strives for, it must concede, is ultimately impossible, that's all, either because you-soul-psyches can't stand outside the universe or, if we are just matter, you-emergent-system-information-biocybernetic-thing can't.

No, not really. The placebo effect is interesting and somewhat complicated in its details, but it's well understood, purely physical, and not at all magical.

Yes, the placebo effect is interesting and somewhat complicated in its details, but it's partially understood, crucially NOT NECESSARILY purely physical (though I understand that it will be once you define the universe as purely physical, which you have), and whether it is magical at all will depend on our definition. My worldview includes the self-evident reality of my personal subjective consciousness, which in one sense seems pretty magical to start with.

Try walking across a bed of red-hot steel. It doesn't matter what you believe, your feet will be burned off.

Again I can't help but wonder if this involves some inconsistency in your view. You seem to acknowledge placebo one moment, yet this statement seems to imply that the physical reality is not going to be changed by what we think (given that you have taken an extreme case).

Have to nip out. I'll respond to the rest of your posts later.

 

[JoeEllison]

You seem to acknowledge placebo one moment, yet this statement seems to imply that the physical reality is not going to be changed by what we think (given that you have taken an extreme case).

Obviously, you misunderstand placebo, the way you (intentionally?) misunderstand pretty much everything you comment on. Your religious anti-science bias has clouded your ability to be rational. You should really consider learning a couple of things, and trying again when you're a little more informed.
I mean, you aren't actually claiming that science is a "belief system", are you?

 

[Stout]

I mean, you aren't actually claiming that science is a "belief system", are you?

That's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. It's not an idea that's new to me, I've seen it used in threads on Intelligent Design before and I'm curious how that type of thinking can arise.

My first example got shot down ( I think ) , the one about understand in the mechanics of firewalking leading to my "belief" that I could do it without any special training.

Now I'm wondering whether speculating on future scientific successes might qualify as "belief"

As an example....A hundred years ago had someone proposed that man will build a spaceship and walk on the moon, he would have been laughed at. Now had that same man who made the proposal simply given up in the face of ridicule and abandoned his belief, he may never have tried to influence his son to study science in the hopes that son might devote his career to designing rockets.

 

[Nick227]

Objective science is entirely conceptual. This is because the subject-object divide is entirely conceptual. It cannot be demonstrated to be true. It's an assumption. Personal identity is conceptual. One might consider the experience of having a personal identity valid, but it cannot be substantiated through observing any actual phenomena. It is entirely conceptual.

Because it is wholy conceptual, science cannot investigate the nature of reality. It can only investigate relationships between apparent phenomena. As a tool for making life easier for people, science is bloody great. As an means to investigate reality, it is utterly useless, and it is entirely delusional to believe otherwise.

If anyone feels they can empirically demonstrate personal identity - and ergo the subject-object divide, objectivity, and science - please do so.

Nick

 

[John Freestone]

Whew! Thanks Nick. The way we construct the argument is different, but it amounts to the same conclusion, that science does not investigate the real world 'objectively'. I would probably prefer to offer this as a possibility, or a possibility that I strongly suspect is true, rather than an absolute statement of fact, but even the possibility is refuted by the physicalists, they are so under the spell of their 'rigorous' definitions, scrupulous measurement and experimental repetition. Actually, you don't exactly put it as fact, but challenge anyone who feels able to prove otherwise. Interestingly, one of the earlier stages of insight in meditation is often reported as seeing through the habitual separation of observer and observed, and I can attest to it myself.

Stout, I hope I didn't shoot you down in flames. I don't remember doing so, and found your post a good contribution to the discussion. I think that to give up on the valuable information and technological improvements science can undoubtedly provide would be silly, and that this is not a necessary result of understanding that science is a belief system. As PM has clarified, science is based on certain 'metaphysical assumptions'. It seems reasonable to me to consider this a belief system, and that such axioms are arbitrary (decided, rather than discovered or given in nature itself) and that there are other belief systems based on other axiomatic assumptions.

The problem is that SOME scientists are so sure that having defined the world as matter, investigating it as though it were matter, and coming up with material results, this means that they have established the axioms as true, or, as PM suggested, that they would change them if they proved untrue, which is like a man walking round a large box saying there's only an inside, but if he ever found an outside he'd change his mind, but still being so sold on the idea that he's inside an infinite box that he never notices the walls or tries to see over them. Funny thing is that if you define the world as utterly spiritual, all the matter being explained as maya (illusion), it all makes about as much sense in its own internal logic too...which observation adds weight to the idea that we project our concepts outwards.

PM, I said I'd reply to the rest of your post:

Eh. You might be interested in experiments that show that conscious awareness of supposedly conscious decisions lags measurably behind activity that follows those decisions. I'll have to dig up some links for you, or maybe someone here has them handy. In short, what we think of as our minds is in at least some respects just an instant replay of what our mechanistic brains have already done.

The point of this is that mind does not effect matter. The brain controls most bodily functions, to a greater or lesser degree. The brain also generates the mind. The brain processes that generate the mind also have feedback to the brain processes that control the body.

I'm aware of the research, and here is one example of the way we keep reinterpreting data in terms of our current worldview: if one is a scientific materialist one sees this as indicating that the machinery is grinding away mindlessly taking action in our bodies, and popping the illusion of prior intention into our consciousness (that place where the biocybernetics do the reflecting...?...); if, on the other hand you happened to believe in an ever-present, all-powerful Being, you could conclude just as easily that His/Her intention acted prior to our humble conscious knowledge as mere mortals ("Thy Will not mine, O Lord"). The experiments could suggest something about our free will, but not necessarily the dead quantum cogs you seem to infer.

Finally, you say that no thoughts have ever been seen to affect physical reality. I remind you of what I said about working out the extent of various relationships like placebo and mind-affecting-matter. Consider then where almost anything in the cultural environment originated, from your house to those little reflectors left on the moon so we could fire lasers at it, the internet we're using to discuss this...it all came into being from people's ideas, their thoughts. Ok, we are probably in agreement that I can't move my mug by psychokinesis, but the possibility that we project our beliefs onto reality to some extent suggests that powers that science would consider 'supernatural' might exist for those who are not so bound by the same mental constructs as you and I are, which is basically what much of the mystical literature describes: the development of unusual psychic powers. I am developing more trust of the Eastern mystical tradition as I prove the lower (still bordering on supernatural) contentions in it for myself in my own subjective experience. I have to admit that this, though, for me, is one of the very weakest parts of such an alternative view, and I am very well acquainted with all the cold-reading, skewed perception, etc. that can leave vulnerable people believing they can jump off buildings and fly, or that they're psychic because someone 'always' phones when they've 'just' thought of them...

Weird that, though, isn't it, how those people shape their internal, subjective reality according to their belief systems. (Go on, say "No").

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing David, I'm afraid I don't follow some of the things you've said, maybe because you were rather brief and I'm lacking the background info, but anyway, "Game theory?" got my attention.

In most of human existance there was a greater benefit to altruism than not. Life is not a zero sum game, the creation of wealth for others is the creation of wealth for the self. Until agriculture and storage technologies this would be the case. Even in a modern society, the benefit of the greater population benefits the self, one may always loose ones benefits and have to depend upon the public weal.

I've been holding back from saying "But isn't all this materialism desperately depressing?

No life is a wonder and a marvel, that is all I need to know. It sure beats the alternatives.

How do people live with a view that virtually makes human beings zombies?"...that kind of thing. I didn't want to, partly because it invites the response that it's tough being realistic, but retreating into comfortable illusions isn't very mature.

I see it as a moot point, life is what it is a wonderful thing , most of the time.

What is interesting, though, is the resilience of a deep moral sense and a deep desire to see things clearly too, and Game Theory reminded me of it.

There is also strong social modeling in humans, and the history of humans has been to revove the criminals from the breeding pool.

Why do people balk at these sorts of suggestions? Is it merely because they're genetically programmed to?

Cultural, social and personal bias?

If we learn that by being self-centred, for instance, our society can reach a kind of economic harmony, I believe that many are quite happy to be affirmed in their self-interested behaviour, but our current global crisis has blown the comfortable lies of capitalism out of the water, and more and more people are developing a world-centric view.

I hope so, but then I am a reformed socialist.

Some of these moral feelings suggest a desire for goodness and fairness beyond what evolutionary pressures would be expected to give us.

I don't know social modeling and associative learning are powerful things.

Of course, that world-centric perspective can be seen as the best bet for an individual's genes getting passed on, and we're just realising that if the mother ship goes down our genes will go too. But somehow I don't think that's the full picture. We balk at that suggestion too, and I think that human beings would sacrifice themselves for morality if they were convinced of the rightness of doing that.

Well sometimes personal self intrest will win out, especialy if one is trained to think that one is superior do to social status.

It is maybe more of the intractable question. Deists could see the phenomena of 'goodness' or 'altruism' as evidence of a God; atheists say that this arises naturally from the self-propagation of systems (e.g. genes), which kind of takes the goodness out of goodness.

Words are words,.

What is a bad man?
The good man's charge
Lao Tzu

Hope, however, springs eternal in the human heart, since the very revulsion one feels at being considered so mechanical and selfish reminds one that one is a human being with a desire to transcend whatever bestial instincts might have given rise to us.

It does not bother me, as a trauma survivor is resolves a lot of issues.

I think it is this desire-for-salvation being evidence for the reality of salvation that gives me faith in a Meaningful universe (which is just a half-hearted way of saying a God-given one). This is another feature of meditation, that it uncovers such realities behind the social injunctions. The immediate experience of compassion, a wish to transcend, gratitude for the gift of life, etc. come into view as more than mere biochemical products (even if they are also biochemical products - there is no need to lose the old paradigm to transcend it). Furthermore, the value-neutrality of science and its mathematical reduction of humanity into machines is increasingly of deep concern. Science may not always dehumanise us, or intend to, but it often does. The depth of moral outrage at being portrayed as so much complex biological mathematics reaffirms my belief that we are more than that...at least that we can choose to be more than that even if blind chance caused us.

More later.

 

[JoeEllison]

Now I'm wondering whether speculating on future scientific successes might qualify as "belief"

As an example....A hundred years ago had someone proposed that man will build a spaceship and walk on the moon, he would have been laughed at. Now had that same man who made the proposal simply given up in the face of ridicule and abandoned his belief, he may never have tried to influence his son to study science in the hopes that son might devote his career to designing rockets.

Speculation based on extending current trends and/or technologies into future isn't "belief", it is extrapolation. There were already rockets back then.