Given that all extant cosmological evidence indicates that it had a planck radius at "the beginning", the universe is a very-far-from-equilibrium "macroscale" effect of a primordial "microscale uncaused event" (i.e. quantum fluctuation) it seems to me, and, therefore, not a(n act of) "creation".

Yes, you have an easy to understand causal chain for any normal event, all the way back to the beginning of the universe, and then at some point, the causal chain ends at some uncaused cause? That's going to be a hard sell. I don't think invoking planck raiduses is very convincing. Science has so far succeeded wildly about explaining things. We should expect that to continue in cosmology, not end with an uncaused cause.

Virtual particles render something coming from nothing a physical commonplace.

Particles pop into existence from nothing all around you, all the time.

So what happened? The ancients (the idea goes back much further than a couple of decades) saw that one thing caused another, and decided that everything must have a cause. But that conclusion was an induction from their observations, and hence strictly invalid. Indeed, it's been show to be wrong by observations of atomic decay.

But the notion that everything has a cause was used to defend religious dogma, and hence has a strong adherence amongst the faithful; and adherence that will not be shaken by mere truth.

Watch what happens here next... those who defend the notion that nothing can come from nothing will overwhelmingly do so in order to protect their religious views.

I could possibly accept there are microscale uncaused events, but uncaused macroscale events (e.g., earthquakes)? Those have causes, and the chain of causation leads all the way back to the beginning of the universe, so it would seem that the creation of a universe is probably not an uncaused cause.

I too apologize for my snarkiness.

That’s quite false, according to Tony Fauci. The system didn’t allow for mass testing, he said, that we needed to include the private sphere, which they just announced during his most recent press conference. The administration fixed the testing problem. — NOS4A2

It's quite false there was a testing problem and they fixed the testing problem.

Makes perfect sense. I can see why people get frustrated enough to swear at you.

Better late than never, but we're going to see Italy-level pain here shortly. The testing fiasco will go down in history as one of the great American blunders. So will Trump's tone-deaf promises early on:

""And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.""
Trump, Feb 26

That's the day Trump lost the election.

If people had just "taken it", carried on as usual and not bothered about shaving a few points off the demographics, things would be merrily steaming along. [/quote]

No. If you don't delay the spread of this, your healthcare system will be completely overwhelmed. This thing killed 20 residents of one nursing home. There are over 10,000 nursing homes in America. That's A LOT of really old and/or sick people on respirators. We're about two weeks behind where Italy is at and Italy is imploding.

Agreed.

Yes I agree that one, apparently, can't be mistaken that one is conscious and has a mind and that as an explanation it is generally sufficient. But this thread is about certainty.

If you can't be mistaken about something, doesn't that entail certainty?

So when it comes to certainty, one has to consider alternatives to that certainty, however irrational they may be. Merely their possibility means they negate that certainty.

Sure, but nobody's come up with anything since Descartes. I think he's right about this: we can't be wrong that we're thinking beings. I think that's an axiom we can safely hang our hats on.

In reality the human mind finds itself existing in a place surrounded and built upon impenetrable unknowns, including circumstances where logic fails us too. This being the case your assumption that consciousness and mind exist as we experience them and that this is certainly the case is vulnerable to criticism of the extent and relevance of human knowledge to reality.

It's not an assumption. How can I wrong about being conscious? Or having a mind? As Descartes points out, you need a mind in the first place to doubt you have one. And as far as consciousness goes, it seems obvious to me that that is also immune from doubt. Any philosophical argument that claims "you're not conscious" is a non-starter.

On what NON-TERRESTRIAL basis do you assume interstellar (or galaxy-wide) colonization by "advanced alien life"?

Several reasons:
1. Preservation of the species.
No species is going to keep all their eggs in one basket, if they can avoid it. The universe is full of existential threats. An obvious way to avoid extinction is to spread out.

2. Mediocrity principle.
We will eventually be colonizing (if we make it that long). There's no reason to think we're unique in that respect.

3. Traits of technologically advanced species
Technologically advanced races are going to be adventurous and curious. Disinterested species won't bother trying to discover new techs. Timid species won't take the risks necessary to discover new techs. Disinterested timid species certainly won't start a space-program.

If they do have those traits, they're probably not going to stop expanding when they've filled up their planet. Even if the race as a whole doesn't want to colonize, for whatever reason, there will likely be adventurous members of their species who do want to explore and colonize.

4. Population pressures
When the planet fills up, there's only one place for new members to go: space.

Now, which of those assumptions is unreasonable? Why?

On what TECHNOLOGICAL basis do you assume "we" - in less than a century of predominantly ground-based optical & radio telescopy / physical cosmology - ever have had, or currently have, the computational resources, etc to detect EM signatures of "advanced alien life" (re: megaengineered structures e.g. 'dyson spheres', 'dyson swarms' etc) as distinct signals differentiated from cosmic background noise ... from "a nearby galaxy"?

An alien race that's colonizing would be visible with the equipment we have now. You would see colonization waves radiating out from the homeworld as they fill up system after system with artificial habitats and energy collectors. Stars would dim and their energy spectrums would shift to the IR. Sections of galaxies would look like they're missing.

Btw, 'the earth is flat' is a "reasonable" supposition during, say, the Bronze Age ... :roll: And you've not addressed the assumptions I'd objected to which you've quoted.

Can you put your objections in numbered form? It's not exactly clear what you're objecting to.

We can't claim to know what it is that exists. Our experience and knowledge of conscious minds may be naive, mistaken, or a fabrication.

You can't be mistaken that you're conscious and have a mind. You could be wrong about the properties of your own mind, or about what, exactly, consciousness is, but you can't be wrong about the salient points: you have a conscious mind. Unless you want to torture the definitions of "consciousness" and "mind" into something that doesn't even resemble what anyone thinks of when they think of their conscious mind.

Philosophy often goes in that direction. You couldn't find one person in a thousand who cares about Goodman's new riddle of induction. It's mental masturbation. Much of philosophy is.

This 'expansionist-territorial, terrestrial' assumption (re: interstellar to galaxy-wide "colonization") is as completely unwarranted as the assumption that terrestrial astronometric technologies have ever been - or currently are - developed enough to detect (i.e. differentiate from background cosmological noise) non-natural signals which are signatures of spacefaring-capable civilizations. So explain why this objection is wrong.

OK, any species that has evolved in this universe will prioritize self-preservation and the survival of the species above practically all else, and will seek to minimize existential threats and maximize defenses. If a species didn't think this way, they would never have made it to the top of the evolutionary heap.

Protecting yourself/family/friends/members of the species requires energy. The more, the better. You can never have too much energy on hand (or computing power, for that matter). Therefore, alien races will collect and store energy, if they can feasibly do so. And they can feasibly do so. Putting swarms of energy collectors around stars doesn't seem like it would require anything tremendously complicated. We're already covering the Earth with them. In a hundred years, there will be a ton of collectors in space, if we make it that long. In a thousand years, the space in this system will be full of artificial habitats and energy collectors. You won't even be able to see the sun.

I don't see any assumption in anything I said that is unreasonable.

The only thing we know for certain is there is at least one conscious mind. Everything else is speculation with no justifiable foundation. The reality we experience is equally compatible with theism/atheism/materialism/dualism/idealism.

I think we've seen enough now to conclude it's probably just us. If advanced alien life existed even in tiny numbers, the universe is old enough for them to have colonized galaxies over and over again. And we would have seen this, at least in nearby galaxies in our supercluster.

The galaxies we see should look like a bulldozer went through them: no advanced race is going to let all that energy go to waste if there's a feasible way to capture it, and there is: swarms of solar panels. We should be seeing galaxies going dark (and glowing in the IR) as waves of colonization ripple through them and swarms of energy collectors blanket stars.

Instead, this looks like a virgin universe, untouched by anything. And that just shouldn't be, not 14 billion years after the Big Bang.

Zombies can have minds and they can have cognition. What zombies are missing is phenomenal states. I don't see any reason at all why having phenomenal states should be a precondition for having knowledge.

You think a mind that can't be conscious can exist? That would be far different from what we commonly think of when we refer to minds. What would the content of this mind be? I think there's a contradiction here. I'm just going to go with the first thing that popped up on Google:

"Mind

the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought."

That maps on pretty well to what I think of when I think mind. I don't think you can have a mind that can't be aware of things and can't have experiences.

ETA: Can you think without ideas? Are mental objects a necessary condition for thinking? If no, then if you're thinking without mental objects, what are you thinking of?

Yes, I am claiming a zombie can know things.

Before we get any further, we have a fundamental disagreement here. You think mental state(s) aren't a necessary condition for knowledge? How would that work? How could a mindless thing have knowledge? How are you defining knowledge?

Mary's Room (or as it is more commonly called, "The Knowledge Argument") was actually by Frank Jackson, not Chalmers. Though I'm sure Chalmers must have talked about it in his book.

The Knowlege Argument certainly did provoke a lot of debate, and physicalists at the time presented mostly bad arguments against it. But there is still a huge challenge to it for dualists. The Knowledge Argument is not as strong against physicalism as it might appear at first: Imagine that we put a zombie version of Mary in the same circumstance. Zombie Mary would have the exact same reaction when she is let out of her black & white room as Mary would.

Yes, I know it wasn't Chalmers.

Zombie Mary might have the same reaction, but I don't see how that affects the anti-physicalist conclusions people often draw from Mary's room. The point of Mary's Room is a point about internal mental states, knowledge, and experience:

IF materialism is correct, AND brain states are the same as mental states THEN knowledge of brain states should entail knowledge of mental states. Knowledge of brain states does not entail knowledge of mental states (i.e., Mary needs to experience seeing red mentally, in order to know what "seeing red" is). Therefore, mental states are not the same as brain states.

That's how I read it. How does Zombie Mary fit in to that? Are you claiming a p-zombie can know things???

I like Chalmers. I think Mary's Room is an excellent thought experiment. It seems so obvious to me that Mary learns something new through the experience of seeing red, and that this new knowledge she has could ONLY have come from that experience. I can't even get into the mindset of people who think she doesn't learn anything new when sees red for the first time. Or that she could "figure out" what seeing read is if she just had complete knowledge of all the brain states involved.

But in your previous post, you wrote "I don't believe there are physical devices", so you have been expressing strong opinions about the capabilities of something that apparently does not exist in your universe. It is like having opinions about what republicans believe, without actually believing that there are republicans.

Except that I believe you exist. I just don't think you're made of matter. That doesn't make you immune from being wrong, or stop from me having an opinion about your belief system: I think it's logically inconsistent.

This kind of pedantry isn't really interesting. Do you have some good links supporting your position?

According to what you wrote in reply to me an hour ago, you apparently think that your conscious mind is the only thing in this universe...

It's impossible to know if other minds exist, of course. But I assume they do, because solipsism would be depressing. I certainly have no evidence against solipsism. No one does. It remains (and will always remain) a completely plausible theory.

Why, then, would you have any opinion at all about what rocks can and cannot do?

I don't need to be a materialist to have an opinion about an absurdity contained within it. I have opinions on lots of irrational things contained within belief systems I don't support, as I'm sure you do too. I'm not a Republican, and I certainly have opinions about what they believe.

I think the writing's on the wall for materialism. I think it's headed toward pan-psychism, with people like Koch and Tegmark leading the way. The universe is made of math? Really? That's awfully close to idealism. And Tegmark isn't some wacko.

The existence of conscious minds is the most surprising thing about this universe, I think. It needs an explanation and science is failing spectacularly at providing one.

What did you study?

OK, I think we all get the point that your mind is set. Providing yet more examples of what you are sure are absurd is not going to make that point any more strongly -- or make it any more true.

It's more like: how can you not see the absurdity. But I guess you can't.

On the other hand, you seem very determined not to answer my question, which I will repeat: do you consider it to be absurd that a rock-shuffling Turing-equivalent device (or any other device in your 'absurd' category) could win the game show Jeopardy?

I'm sorry, I don't remember this question. I bailed on this thread awhile back, and then remembered it recently.

do you consider it to be absurd that a rock-shuffling Turing-equivalent device (or any other device in your 'absurd' category) could win the game show Jeopardy?

No. I don't think a rock-shuffling device that can pass a Turing test is absurd. I don't think a rock-shuffling device that, if you somehow made it look human (a p-zombie), is absurd.

I think a conscious rock-shuffling device is absurd, but then I think the claim that non-conscious physical matter (e.g., organic brains) can somehow interact and form conscious minds is also an absurdity, and should never have been entertained in the first place (well, maybe entertained, but then discarded when the problems started to show up). The reasons for this belief are:

1. Materialism's absolute lack of progress coming up with a causal explanation for how moving electrons across synapses (along with other physical processes) produces the sensation of stubbing my big toe. There's no agreed upon theory of why we're conscious and how such consciousness arises. It's been recognized as a "hard problem" for decades. It will remain an insolvable problem because materialism is a dead end. There are materialists who deny consciousness exists, who say it's an illusion, who say we don't know what we're referring to with the word...And they're taken seriously by other materialists. That shows the fundamental weakness of materialism. It reminds me of the tortured explanations fundamentalists give, when they're backed into a corner by the incoherency of their belief system.

2. The obvious difference between mental states and brain states. Materialists tie themselves in knots on this. Property dualists have to explain, if the mind isn't the brain, in what sense does the mind exist (and where) in a purely physical universe. While reductive physicalists assert that brains and minds are the same thing. A blind person really could understand what "seeing" is if they just knew enough about the brain states involved. Absurd. The whole problem is solved if you stop assuming brains are made of matter.

3. There's no evidence mind-independent matter exists. The sense-data I'm receiving and processing right now is equally compatible with a dualistic model of reality or an idealistic one. Why should I posit the unprovable: that physical stuff exists? I already know consciousness and at least one mind exists. Why shouldn't I assume minds and consciousness are the foundation of reality? At least I can't be wrong about consciousness existing.

4. The absurd functionally-equivalent-to-organic-brain contraptions materialists are forced to assume would be conscious. And also the idea that this could all be a simulation from moving rocks around. I seriously doubt materialists would entertain such notions unless they were absolutely wedded to the theory. It smacks of desperation.

I am sure you are aware of where this is going: if the answer is "no", then it would seem that your issue is not actually with the medium in which the computation is performed, but if it is "yes", then there is the problem that a digital computer has actually achieved this task, and, according to some completely straightforward and non-controversial theorems of finite mathematics, any other Turing-equivalent device with sufficient memory could perform the same task, so long as we are not concerned with how fast it does it.

I don't believe there are physical devices. I'm an idealist, for the reasons given.

If I am not mistaken, here Randall Munroe is accepting the premise! He is not making an argument against anything.

A theory that allows for the possibility that a universe of conscious beings could be simulated by moving physical rocks around is a theory that is ludicrous. I just don't know how you could even entertain that as a possibility. I think it's so obvious you can't simulate a universe of conscious beings by moving rocks around, any theory that says you can has catastrophically failed.

I think we're going to disagree at the axiomatic level. I had a materialist claim once you could make a "brain" out of flushing toilets* that's functionally equivalent to a human brain. Assume you can. Would it be conscious? Why not? Materialism says it must be. But a bunch of flushing toilets is NEVER going to become conscious, no matter how many different ways you flush them. You're just not going to get a mind out of it. So if materialism entails that, materialism is wrong.

I hear stuff like the "flushing toilet conscious brain" and I think "who could possibly believe in this stuff?" It's like a religion.

*other materialists have suggested ropes and pulleys, the note passing we talked about, locks and dams, etc.

Well for one, the "explanation" isn't really one. It's just a convenient way to bypass the question. It's like a god of the gaps.

No, it's an explanation:
Why do we see no aliens or evidence of them?
There aren't any. We're in a simulation. It would take too much computing power.

You might not agree with it, but that IS an explanation to the Fermi Paradox. It begs other questions, but so does any explanation.

For another, a hypothesis involving a simulation is not simpler, because we have to add a complexity penalty for assuming multiple levels of "reality".

Except we're already doing simulations, and it seems likely they're only going to get better and better. I don't think there's a violation of multiplying entities (simulated worlds/layers of reality) because those simulated realities/worlds already exist, albeit in a crude form. Simulation theory is plausible. It's even likely, if you buy Nick Bostrom's argument.

The idea that Earth is a very special place (so special life like us only comes along once in a galaxy or so) doesn't seem plausible. Those are really long odds. There aren't similar long odds in the simulation theory.

Lastly, it doesn't solve the mediocrity issue since we'd still have to ask why this specific simulation is being run. For example, the designers could just as easily simulate evidence of aliens as they simulate the absence of it.

It doesn't violate the mediocrity issue, that's the point. Simulation theory doesn't assume any specialness. Quite the opposite: we're one of countless simulations being run. There are plausible reasons why simulation designers would want to save on computing power.

You seem to agree that we must of necessity occupy some very special place in the universe (a habitable place in a universe that is nearly everywhere uninhabitable), but then plow on with your pet theory anyway. But if we were living in a simulation, what would that have changed? In the simulated universe (even if it is only a small, generic chunk of it that is being simulated) we would be just as lonely. And the Rare Earth hypothesis would have the exact same status in a simulated universe as in a real one, because of course what is true of an actual thing must also be true of its simulation.

The debate around Rare Earth hypothesis has nothing to do with us being "special" (whatever that means) - it is simply about how common inhabitable planets are in the universe, which is an empirical, scientific question (even if we are not in a good position to answer it now or possibly ever).

The Rare Earth hypothesis doesn't have to do with US being special, it has to do with the conditions and/or planet that made us possible being special. We're just intelligent ape-like creatures. But Rare Earth asserts the conditions that made us possible are VERY special. So special, it only happens maybe once in a galaxy of 100 billion stars.

So the question is: why should we believe we're the product of a fantastic lottery when there's a much more pedestrian explanation of things?

Declaring that "X cannot give rise to Y" (or asking, rhetorically, "how can X give rise to Y") does not answer anything, or advance our understanding. It is like asserting that an iron boat could not float. Often, this rhetorical style is used as a way to avoid considering the issue.

Reductio ad absurdum is a valid move in philosophy. If materialism entails that consciousness can arise from people passing notes around with 1's and 0's written on them, I think we're very close to an "absurdity". I guess I can argue why it's absurd, if you like, but it seems prima facie very unlikely consciousness would arise that way. It's a short hop from consciousness arising from people passing notes with number on them to consciousness arising from shifting sand dunes, falling abacuses, and meteor swarms. Is panpsychism compatible with materialism? It's pretty popular these days. I don't think the two can co-exist, though.

The premise that consciousness can be simulated rests on a number of lesser premises, none of which are obviously false (at least if you put aside 'arguments' of the above form):

Consciousness appears to arise in physical brains doing physical things.
Physical systems can be simulated by a digital computer.
Something processing information in a functionally-identical manner to a conscious brain would have a conscious mind.

That's the appeal. None of them are obviously false. You have to tease out the absurdity that follows from such a set of premises. This is a great cartoon which does just that: https://xkcd.com/505/

I've had raging arguments with materialists who believe it's possible we're all being simulated by someone endlessly moving rocks around on an endless plain (see cartoon). To me, there's no difference between that and transubstantiation: in both cases, a miracle is assumed to happen- crackers become the flesh of Jesus; consciousness arises about from someone moving rocks around.

I like the way Scott Aaronson puts it: if you replaced each of my neurons, one at a time, with a functionally-identical silicon device, would there come a point where I stopped being conscious?

Yes, the transporter scares the hell out of me. Slowly replacing my neurons with functional equivalents while I'm awake wouldn't bother me much at all. The end result is the same. Perhaps our intuitions can't be trusted.

These are all premises, but not unreasonable ones. You might disagree with the conclusion, but that alone would not be an argument against it.

They're not unreasonable. What they entail, if you follow the chain of logic far enough, is an absurdity within the materialist framework of reality.

The justification is in multiplying the probabilities which lead to a technological civilization. You start off with some percentage for habitable planets, factor in some probability of life emerging, then the likelihood of that world being stable enough for life to stick around, then the advent of multicellular life, and finally some form of life that can create sophisticated tech.

On Earth, there's only been one species in 3.5 billion years which matches that. We also have a rather large moon that keeps the Earth from wobbling too much and generates larger tides, which may have played a role. And we have a Jupiter size planet farther out in the solar system which attracts or deflects a lot of large comets and meteors. Also, we don't live too close to the galactic core or a star about to go supernova.

There's a lot of factors that go into us or any complex, idiosyncratic species evolving. And consider one other thing. The principle of mediocrity doesn't change the fact that your birth was a very low probability event. If any one of a trillion things went differently, you probably wouldn't be here. But here you are instead of the countless other humans who could have existed.

Yes, the odds of this particular me existing are very remote. Everything had to work out right. But this particular me is pretty "average" and "mediocre", so there's a false equivalence there.

Like I said before, Rare Earth Hypothesis is fine, except for the fact it has to compete with other plausible hypotheses. If Rare Earth hypothesis stipulates that advanced intelligence is the product of countless events that have to go just right, the "specialness" problem still remains: why should we believe the conditions that made us possible are so atypical? This is a problem because there's a competing theory that doesn't violate the mediocrity principle and still answers the Fermi Paradox: this is all a simulation. Why shouldn't that be the preferred solution to the Fermi Paradox? It makes far less assumptions.

Can you quote what I'm saying, so I can properly respond to this?

Our habitable conditions may be "average" in some sense, but certainly not with respect to their habitability! Your framing of the problem is absurd: we are not dropped into a random spot in the universe, or else we would have found ourselves floating in empty space.

The habitable conditions here aren't "average" in any sense. If they were, the universe would be teeming with advanced intelligent life. Either the conditions here are/were extremely fantastically rare for intelligent, or there's some other explanation.

You're right when you point out we weren't dropped into some random spots. With all these planets around, we shouldn't be too surprised if it turns out advanced life is really rare and we happened to find ourselves in one of the few spots (anthropic principle).

The problem with the rare-earth hypothesis is that it has to compete with other hypotheses, and it seems more likely to me that instead of assuming we inhabit some very special place, we should assume there's nothing special about us at all. We're one of countless simulations, and the designers just didn't want to bother with anyone except us in this universe.

How can you NOT have a science of the mind? Minds exist, yes? Then there should be theories about how they work. We call that "psychology".

The apparent absence of aliens is pretty good justification.

There are other explanations for that. For the rare earth hypothesis to work, life like us would have to be vanishingly rare. That requires an extreme violation of the mediocrity principle.

I think there's a better explanation: we're in a simulation, and they're saving computing power. It's just us. There's no other plausible explanation for why every galaxy, including our own, looks absolutely pristine and totally untouched.

Government and authority has utterly failed so far to deal with any of the things you mention.

One of the reasons our rivers don't catch on fire anymore is because of government environmental regulations. Also, look up the Montreal Protocol. And also the Paris Climate Agreement, which was ineffective and non-binding, but was still better than nothing at all.

An end to government seems likely too.

No, the need for government, particularly a centralized world government with actual authority, is stronger than ever. There are existential global threats that have to be dealt with:
Climate change, A.I., nanotechnology, nuclear weapon proliferation, gene editing, etc.

I don't have much hope for us. We'll have to walk between raindrops to navigate the minefield. Without a centralized authority, it's totally hopeless.

Absolute truth: there is at least one mind that is conscious.

That's one of the reasons I'm an idealist. We know absolutely mind(s) and ideas exist. We don't have the same surety regarding physical matter.

Scientists should be aware that certain kinds of data will be weaponized by hate groups.

You said

No I'm not, you were talking about things for which we have zero evidence...so was I.

That sure sounds like you're lumping orbiting tea pots and alien life together, since both have zero evidence.

Anyway, it sounds like you admit the possibility of aliens and orbiting tea pots belong in different categories.

No I'm not, you were talking about things for which we have zero evidence...so was I. [/quote]

Yes, you are. There are things we have zero evidence for that are possible, even plausible (alien life), and there are things we have zero evidence for which are not remotely possible (the flying spaghetti monster, orbiting tea pots, etc.).

In other words, you're equating the possibility of alien life existing with the possibility of a tea cup orbiting Jupiter. That's a ludicrous comparison. I certainly expect us to eventually find alien life. Don't you? I certainly don't expect us to find any orbiting tea cups. I assume you agree with this?

Well "as far as we can possibly tell" there are giant silver teapots orbiting all planets beyond our own solar system and entirely invisible moncupators in the back right hand corners of all our fridges. Just because we can't rule something out doesn't mean we have to rule them in.

You're making a category error. The possibility of teapots orbiting planets isn't in the same category as the possibility of advanced alien life or simulation theory. Oribiting teapots aren't taken seriously by anyone. Simulation theory and advanced alien life are certainly taken seriously by many experts.