why a god is impossible

[chriswl]

Unless, of course, there is a causal or temporal relationship between perfect states. A state that is perfect now is not necessarily perfect later, and vice versa.

For example, for a melody to be "perfect" implies that the individual notes are themselves perfect, and that they are aranged in a perfect sequence. Rearranging a sequence of perfect notes would not necessarily result in a perfect melody.

That's a very interesting idea. One answer is that we could evaluate the individual moments in the melody for "perfection" and maximum perfection would lie in finding the most perfect moment and extending it indefinitely, in preserving that particular state of mind. Strictly speaking, the feelings at that moment are a result of the brain state at that moment, not directly a result of the sequence of events up to that time. So you just replicate that brain state.

But I'm not very happy with that answer. I think it does make sense to consider the perfection of things like melodies "as a whole". But I still agree with the OP's statement that a perfect being has no desires or wants. My state of mind when I am listening to or playing music is not one of "desire" for the next note nor of wishing to hang onto the current note. If at any point in the melody I desired it to be different, it would be imperfect.

However, the music example is causing me to doubt the point 5 "Deliberate creation entails an effort to satisfy some need or want". Perhaps it is possible to act without desire, to create without desire?

 

[drkitten]

My state of mind when I am listening to or playing music is not one of "desire" for the next note nor of wishing to hang onto the current note. If at any point in the melody I desired it to be different, it would be imperfect.

Most music theorists -- and indeed, composers and performers -- would disagree with you. The structure of music composition implies the existence of a melodic "progression" (think, for example, of a chord progression) with the eventual goal of an overall resolution. The idea, for example, of putting deliberate disharmony in order to enhance the listener's feeling of tension, in order to create a more powerful resolution when the dissonance is removed, is a cliche.

You can "see" it for yourself fairly simply. Take a simple example -- Pachelbel's Canon in D, and hum the bass part to yourself. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum............hold that last note and just listen to it. It's out of key! It doesn't "belong" in the structure of the song, and if you hold that note for long enough, you can easily pick up on the lack of "resolution." This applies to almost any genre of music -- you get the same effect in jazz, blues, R&R, classical, and so forth.

You can see the same thing in literature, if you like. Part of what makes a good book good (and by extension, what would make a perfect book perfect) is that you can't just pick it up and put it down at any point. It's got a logical progression, a flow from beginning to end, and in the next to last chapter, you want to see things resolved. That's part of the feeling and effect that the story is creating -- an interest in the rest of the story through to completion.\

I would therefore argue that your statement "My state of mind when I am listening to or playing music is not one of "desire" for the next note nor of wishing to hang onto the current note" is incorrect, that the desire for the next note is key to the unity of the entire piece. If you really didn't desire the next note.... why are you bothering to play it? Why not just stop mid-piece?

 

[Beleth]

I think a big problem is that most analogies we're using are subjective, whereas the definition of "perfect" should be objective.

There is the concept of a "perfect sphere". We can easily define it, and easily construct it (at least in theory), easily correct something that isn't one, and easily determine what is relevant to its perfection and what isn't -- a perfect sphere could be any color, for instance.

There isn't a concept of a "perfect melody". Well, there are, but they are subjective. Everyone has their own opinion of what one is.

Is the concept of a "perfect being" objective, or subjective? I think that this thread is a very good indication that it's subjective. Idunno's definition includes "not needing anything" as a necessary condition; many other people's definitions don't.

We're not going to be able to define God into, or out of, existence anyway.

 

[drkitten]

I think a big problem is that most analogies we're using are subjective, whereas the definition of "perfect" should be objective.

Easy enough dealt with. Here's an objective analogy.

I am, I claim, a "perfect" tic-tac-toe player. Depending upon where you grew up, you may know the game as noughts-and-crosses or any of several other names. Basically, we both place X's and O's in succession on a 3x3 grid, and the first one to get three in a row wins. I claim to be a perfect player because I never lose, and I can always win if you make a mistake permitting it. (We'll ignore fatigue and error here for the moment.)

That's fairly easy to confirm objectively. The game is small enough that it can be analyzed in full, and my play can be demonstrated to conform to the mathematical ideal. If I were considerably smarter than I am, I might be able to achieve perfection at go, at shogi, or at chess. But I'm not that smart.

Does that mean that every game I play is identical? Of course not. The game is multiway symmetric, so I can, for example, win by starting out in any of the four corners.

Now, let's look at any individual move in the game. I will make a "perfect" move at any given time (by definition), but that doesn't mean that the move is "perfect" at any other time. In particular, I may be forced to play to a side square at some point (and probably will be), but playing a side square at any other time may be a fatal mistake. The idea that a "perfect" move is static and unchanging is obviously wrong; "perfect" is context-dependent.

Is my game more or less perfect after I've made a move? Well, neither. it was perfect before, and perfect after. It's just achieved a different stage of perfection.

Am I still "perfect" if I play a corner sometimes and a side sometimes? Not only am I still "perfect," but in fact, I have to be able to do that to achieve "perfection." Part of what makes me "perfect" is the ability to develop and to change strategies over time during the course of a game. But I remain perfect throughout.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think you are just making up what you think the 'soul' and 'unity' ought to be, but there is no real reason to accept your idea of what it is.

Well, it's not my definition. It was originally Plato's, then the church's, then Descartes, etc. I'm not sure how to make sense of a non-unitary immaterial "substance", "thing", whatever. What would that mean?

Really? I think when one is speaking about metaphysics, pretty much anything is possible and nothing can be rules out, which makes it rather difficult to make claims that something as vague as 'unity' is completely different from something we perceive as a unity.

Well, the definition of a soul was always that it was a unity, a single immaterial substance that constituted what we are. Of course, we could always try to come up with a different definition, but I don't know how a non-unitary immaterial "thing" could make any sense.

The same is true for messing with your telly. There really is no necessarily discernable difference between the brain as a receiver of the soul and the brain as the producer of the mind. It is just what one choses to believe.

But if the brain is the receiver of the soul, it must do it somehow. One proposal has been the wacko QM solution that has the microtubules picking up the collapsing wave function of the universe serving as the soul. If that were the case, then removing large parts of the nondomiant frontal cortex should have more effect on the "soul" than pinpoint damage to the upper brainstem. The one is almost imperceptible, the other causes deep coma. If the soul is, as has been previously defined by others, a unity, then it seems as though any damage to the brain should cause perturbation of the entire soul-brain process. Having a localized tuner for the audio component of a TV signal makes sense. Having a localized tuner for audition created through an immaterial unity doesn't. There is also the issue of not only long-term memory, but also procedural memory. The brain can't simply be a tuner or receiver. It also does things. It acts. How does it do that as a tuner? And how does it remember how to brush my teeth? TVs do not act in that fashion.

You can't assign probabilities to metaphysical concepts, because they cannot be clearly defined. If you disagree, tell me which is more likely: that Golliboggelotz exists or that Golliboggelotz does not exist?

Sure we can. We do it all the time. We think it is more likely that our TVs work by high-def signals hitting a receiver and translating the images into something pleasing, at least when Tammy Fay Baker isn't on. I don't think it likely that there are pixies acting out 24 inside a box in my house. Different metaphysical possibilities have differering degrees of evidence supporting or not supporting them. I cannot prove that pixies do not act out 24 or The Daily Show inside that box, so I cannot completely rule out different metaphysical propositions, but I can surely assign probablities to them.

That does not provide us with evidence against a receiver concept. My television set also uses a whole heck of a lot of energy.

That wasn't my point. The point was that we know what happens when we turn off the ion channels -- brain activity stops and the "mind" stops. And we are able to model thinking that uses a similar paradigm in our computers -- the yes/no or 1/0 model that our brains use, although nervous tissue is much more complicted. The issue is not that you can also turn off a TV and get no signal, but that those metabolically active cells that are supposed to be just dumb receivers are modelled by other supposedly dumb silicon bits that can do some amazing things, like add and subtract. When they are not metaboliclly active, the cells are still there. They should still be able to receive a signal, but they don't.

We also know that if we stimulate certain nerve cells we can recreate activities that are supposedly the result of the "mind". We can stimulate neurons that generate memories, that produce movement, etc. We can't do that with a TV set. A TV set can receive its input and translate it. A brain can accept what would otherwise be random stimulation and produce recognizable activity. The best you could get with a TV set with random stimualtion would be a non-informative flicker. Not the same as with a brain.

Claiming that there is no need to suggest such an entity is taking a philosophical stance. It is not a philosophical justification for taking that stance. Saying that you do not see the need to suggest Golliboggelotz exists does not convince someone who does see that need.

That's not what I'm claiming. We can assign probablities to different philosophical stances based on the available evidence. That does not provide definitive proof, no argument there. We do not add unecessary baggage onto explanations but prefer to be the most parsimonious that we can be.

Problems that only arise when you take a pragmatic deductive-nomological stance on philosophy, which is of course a very useful stance to take if you don't wish to worry too much about the hard problems philosophers have created for themselves. But it is a belief nonetheless.

Since your stance seems to be that you just can't tell the difference anyway (everything is possible in metaphysics), I'm not sure what the point of this last bit is.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Prior to creating humans were all of god's purposes fullfiled?

That is a question that has no answer by those temporally bound. It's an interesting point of departure for speculation, surely, but it requires, among other things, being able to ascertain all purposes, of God.

I don't see that as an available body of knowledge, as of now. Those who profess to know all of God's purposes have a slight credibility problem. Maybe more than slight.

DR

 

[Darth Rotor]

A desire implies the lack of satisfaction. A lack of something is an imperfection.

Sure, I lack cancer, therefore I am imperfect. I suspect we have a non sequitur here. What do you think?

DR

 

[Beerina]

How about the Islamic God, Allah?

Maybe you refer to the "Abrahamic God" to be a bit more inclusive, and more precise?

I presume this is the same Yahweh who used to have a girlfriend named Ishtar before the rest of His pantheon was carved away by humans?

 

[idunno]

... so get some. If you're omnipotent, nothing is stopping you from fulfilling that particular want.

Why are you less perfect because you recognize that ice cream is a pleasure on a nice day?



Because perfect beings can have volition, too.

Why woudn't they?

Why is a desire a flaw?

because desire brings sorrow.
You may argue that perfect beings can have sorrow as well...

 

[drkitten]

Well, it's not my definition. It was originally Plato's, then the church's, then Descartes, etc. I'm not sure how to make sense of a non-unitary immaterial "substance", "thing", whatever. What would that mean?

Really? I don't have any problem with it at all. I suggest, for example, that the EM spectrum is a good analogy.

EM radiation is, in the strict sense, an "immaterial substance." Certainly many of the 19th century scientists and philosophers of science found it to be so, although they spent more of their time talking about "light" than about "EM radiation." The idea that there were lots of different kinds of EM radiation -- radio waves, X-rays, and so forth -- was novel and interesting, but hardly world-shattering.

And, in fact, the idea of the "soul" being somehow tied to the EM spectrum has quite a long history in the literature.

So is the EM spectrum "unitary"? Of course not. X-rays don't behave like light, which doesn't behave like radio. If it were, then X-ray photographs woudn't exist.

 

[drkitten]

because desire brings sorrow.

Unfulfilled desire, perhaps. I see no reason why fulfilled desires should bring sorrow. If I want ice cream, and I go get some ice cream, am I thereby saddened?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Really? I don't have any problem with it at all. I suggest, for example, that the EM spectrum is a good analogy.

EM radiation is, in the strict sense, an "immaterial substance." Certainly many of the 19th century scientists and philosophers of science found it to be so, although they spent more of their time talking about "light" than about "EM radiation." The idea that there were lots of different kinds of EM radiation -- radio waves, X-rays, and so forth -- was novel and interesting, but hardly world-shattering.

And, in fact, the idea of the "soul" being somehow tied to the EM spectrum has quite a long history in the literature.

So is the EM spectrum "unitary"? Of course not. X-rays don't behave like light, which doesn't behave like radio. If it were, then X-ray photographs woudn't exist.

But it isn't an immaterial substance. EM radiation consists of photons, which have the same material reality that those other things we call particles have, only in different forms. That people once thought EM radiation was immaterial is part of the problem discussing subjects like this -- because everyone has in their heads the image of "energy". A true, dualist, immaterial soul is something completely different.

We can interfere with the transmission of photons -- block them before they get to the receiver because they are not immaterial. How do we interfere with the soul before it gets to the brain?

 

[idunno]

Unfulfilled desire, perhaps. I see no reason why fulfilled desires should bring sorrow. If I want ice cream, and I go get some ice cream, am I thereby saddened?

only an omnipotent being can have all desires fullfilled,

 

[drkitten]

only an omnipotent being can have all desires fullfilled,

... and, since God is omnipotent (says so right on the label), He can have all his desires fulfilled. Which means that His desires do not bring sadness, and therefore could not be regarded as imperfections.

 

[drkitten]

But it isn't an immaterial substance.

Really? Pour me a quart of photons, then, and we'll talk.

EM radiation consists of photons, which have the same material reality that those other things we call particles have, only in different forms. That people once thought EM radiation was immaterial is part of the problem discussing subjects like this -- because everyone has in their heads the image of "energy". A true, dualist, immaterial soul is something completely different.

Yes, that's why it's an analogy. To the people, going back to Plato, who were trying to get a handle on what the concept "soul" meant, light was an excellent metaphor, precisely because it's so different from what is generally considered "material."

To put it another way, you claim that we no longer consider light to be non-material because we have a better understanding of light. I would argue exactly the reverse; we have a substantialy worse understanding of "material" or of "substance" than we did three hundred years ago, because the words don't seem to fit some of the phenomena at the edge of physics.

We can interfere with the transmission of photons -- block them before they get to the receiver because they are not immaterial. How do we interfere with the soul before it gets to the brain?

So, since we can't interfere with gravity, gravity is therefore "immaterial"? Fair enough. But in that case, let's look at the hypothesized properties of gravitons. I don't think any theory of physics suggests that all gravitons are identical -- which suggest that "gravitons" are non-unitary non-material "things."

 

[idunno]

... and, since God is omnipotent (says so right on the label), He can have all his desires fulfilled. Which means that His desires do not bring sadness, and therefore could not be regarded as imperfections.

you project your human desireson god. i simply cant imagine god being a being let alone one similar to us

 

[drkitten]

i simply cant imagine god

I know. I've remarked on that before. That's called "argument from incredulity" and it's a fallacy. It says more about your inability to imagine than it does about the thing you can't imagine.

 

[HypnoPsi]

That's a not a very convincing argument. I see no reason to accept premise 3 , 4,or 5, and every reason to reject them.

I see no reason to accept any of these premises. This seems to be an argument agains the Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian God.

Does a tree choose to grow and to look 'pretty' when it's in flower? For all we know "God" may very well be entirely ego-less and just a pure creative force as some Buddhists might suggest.

_
HypnoPsi

 

[Earthborn]

Well, it's not my definition. It was originally Plato's,

That is not true. Plato's concept of the soul was not unitary but ternary.

I don't know how a non-unitary immaterial "thing" could make any sense.

Your problem obviously is that you assume metaphysical concepts need to 'make sense'.

But if the brain is the receiver of the soul, it must do it somehow.

As soon as you start discussing 'mechanisms' for how it does what it does, you stop discussing metaphysics and you start considering physics.

The brain can't simply be a tuner or receiver. It also does things. It acts. How does it do that as a tuner? And how does it remember how to brush my teeth? TVs do not act in that fashion.

(snip)

We can stimulate neurons that generate memories, that produce movement, etc. We can't do that with a TV set.

You are taking the analogy too far. Obviously there are differences between brains and televisions, just like there are differences between brains and computers or whatever you like to compare them to. But none of those differences can prove that there isn't some mysterious outside force acting on them, as a differently constructed receiver may also "do things" and "remember things".

Different metaphysical possibilities have differering degrees of evidence supporting or not supporting them.

I don't think that is true. If there were pixies acting out television shows, they would not be metaphysical but rather physical beings inside your television and we estimate how probable it is that they exist.

That wasn't my point. The point was that we know what happens when we turn off the ion channels -- brain activity stops and the "mind" stops.

We know that the mind stops having a method of communicating to the physical world that it exists. If it has a metaphysical component that does not necessarily mean it stops completely.

And we are able to model thinking that uses a similar paradigm in our computers -- the yes/no or 1/0 model that our brains use, although nervous tissue is much more complicted.

That is not at all how the brain works.

When they are not metaboliclly active, the cells are still there. They should still be able to receive a signal, but they don't.

Or maybe they do, and just can't communicate outward that they do. Taking the batteries out of a radio does not mean the radio signal disappears, it just means it cannot sound it out.

We can assign probablities to different philosophical stances based on the available evidence.

Only if those philosophical stances have different empirical consequences. If two philosophical positions make the same predictions about what sort of evidence can be found, you cannot assign different probabilities to them.

We do not add unecessary baggage onto explanations but prefer to be the most parsimonious that we can be.

Exactly my point. It is a preference.

I'm not sure what the point of this last bit is.

My point is that the only difference between a materialist and a dualist view of the workings of the brain is your personal beliefs and philosophical preferences. If you see problems with one view, it is only because you can't make that view fit into your own.

 

[idunno]

I see no reason to accept any of these premises. This seems to be an argument agains the Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian God.

Does a tree choose to grow and to look 'pretty' when it's in flower? For all we know "God" may very well be entirely ego-less and just a pure creative force as some Buddhists might suggest.

_
HypnoPsi

gimme the Buddhists. But i dont ~buy the Karma theory.Looks too human. How much good Bill Gates must have done in previous lives to be so rich in this one...