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Does theism ultimately explain anything?What explains "god"(-of-the-gaps)?
If non-evident "god" is unexplainable – (the) brute fact, why not begin with the evident existence (or universe) as unexplainable – (the) brute fact – instead? -
Kant and Work CultureI think the link (and the other handle-link on the quote) clarifies my criticisms.
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Kant and Work Culture
Oh please, man, we've done this dance before ...↪180 Proof nah just proves cabereas ideas more. — schopenhauer1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/578914 -
BrainsNo, as Daniel Dennett demonstrates, "the Cartesian Theatre" (i.e. homuncular theory) is completely incoherent. Also, contemporary neuroscience rules this out experimentally.
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The best arguments again NDEs based on testimony...Not true. Just because you do not accept my argument — you certainly haven't refuted it – doesn't indicate I haven't made an argument. Another showing that your reasoning, Sam, is quite poor.
What you fail to consider or recognize is that every life from its birth to its death is a "near-death experience" because we are mortal beings. There cannot be even a glimpse of – that there is – "life after death" by the not-yet-dead any more than "north of the North Pole" can be reached by a hiker. That people are revived to tell their "NDE stories" proves they were not ever fundamentally – metaphysically – dead to begin with. "Clinical death" only indicates the limit of medical interventions for reviving the patient; this, however, is not organic, irreversible death.
While the patient is "down" and there is a complete cessation of brain activity, this is proof that the patient's brain is not forming any new memory traces of the so-called "NDE" the patient believes she had while her brain activity was zero. So whence the "NDE"? It likely happens during the patient's revival after brain activity has resumed.
Notably, the vast majority of coma patients who revive from near or complete vegetative states do not report "NDEs"; that a very tiny fraction of "the clinically dead" have reported "NDEs" is no more statistically significant than reports of "alien abductions". -
Divine Hiddenness and Nonresistant NonbelieversNothing I can add to the post you've replied to. My position remains that the OP's demonstration is invalid. If it makes sense to you, Astro Cat, then you're welcome to it.
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BrainsEven the most veridical perceptions or experiences, I think, are virtual insofar as apprehension of the world is mediated. Illusions, biases, and other misperceptions result from the limitations of meta/cognition, the impacts of which can be reduced or offset by intellectual and experiential disciplines. :chin:
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My problem with atheism
No. I know that theism is not true (i.e. theistic deities are imaginary).↪180 Proof Do you really believe that theism is false (atheism)? — Agent Smith
I am irreligious because I think, in the wake and wreckage of millennia of servile superstitious veraphobic worship, that faith-based theistic religions are inimicable to human well-being and social justice, therefore are manifestly immoral (i.e. iatragenic) institutions because, to begin with, theistic gods are imaginary.Do you also think that having a god would be a bad thing(antitheism)?
NB: My use of antitheism is non-standard ...; thus, the only "god" which makes any shred of sense to me – consistent with all human knowledge of nature and lived experience – and does not insult my intelligence or undermine my dignity as a moral agent is the Pandeus. -
If you were (a) God for a day, what would you do?"Evil" ~ maximally bad (irreparable disvalue)? :chin:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/570228 -
The best arguments again NDEs based on testimony...Like testimonial evidence of "bleeding statues"? Gullible is as gullible does. :lol:
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My problem with atheismIn what way does the following "credo" (from an old journal of mine written in 1992) preclude "the quest to find a deeper reality"?
A freethinker's faith:
Both you and I are unbelievers, the only difference being that I'm consistent. The same reason you don't believe in all other gods (except one) is the very same reason I don't believe in your god either. The point is I do not have superstitious or religious commitments. What I trust, or believe in, is public evidence and sound reasoning. -
The best arguments again NDEs based on testimony...Come back from irreverdible brain death with corroborable memories of an "afterlife". That would be proof. Anecdotes – eyewitness testimonies – are notoriously unreliable (as inmates in asylums attest to daily). "NDE" isn't death, it's a cognitive illusion (e.g. an altered / suboptimal brain-state) like e.g. the placebo effect, false memories.
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The best arguments again NDEs based on testimony...I suspect @Sam26 denies the occurrences and efficacy of the placebo effect.
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My problem with atheism
:strong: :fire:The notion of "nature-in-itself" is not found in science, but in the babble of phenomenalist philosophers. It's not nature-in-itself, whatever that is, but just nature — Banno
:up: -
Kant and Work CultureIf anything, it's Kant's deontology that is "robotic, non-humanistic, and formal" and therefore, IME, doesn't work well (i.e. requires totalitarian/theocratic-like administrative enforcement) amid the messy vaguaries of everyday, social life.
:up:
:up: -
If you were (a) God for a day, what would you do?I don't know what "good" (value) means but minimally bad (reducing disvalue) makes pragmatic sense to me. Ambiguities, complementarities & degrees of difference grounded in human facticity (i.e. needs, defects ... of our species) seem more concrete and consistent (à la fuzzy logic) with lived experience than formalist / structuralist 'binary oppositions'.
Btw, I didn't say anything like that. -
My problem with atheism
Most atheists and theists are not metaphysicians. Besides, what difference can "finding a deeper reality" make to one's everyday existence or ethical agency? Btw, I'm (usually) a philosophical naturalist and antitheist – whatever divinity there might be, I'm convinced it is not "supernatural" (à la Epicurus/Spinoza).I feel much the same about the atheist, that they’ve given up the quest to find a deeper reality. — Art48
:100: :up:Being an atheist does not make you a specific thing. — Tom Storm
Yeah, and chemistry is "a remnant of" alchemy, astronomy "a remnant of" astrology, philosophy "a remnant of" mythology – big whup. I don't see the point of this old canard (i.e. genetic fallacy). Anyway. Care to cite an instance of "religious metaphysics" (1) that quantifies the error of predictions, (2) that experimentally tests its explanations, (3) that is institutionally error-correcting – fallibilistic – by a peer-review community, (4) that is free of "revealed" "X-of-the-gaps" dogmas, etc etc? :chin:Science’s epistemological method is itself a remnant of religious metaphysics. — Joshs -
Universal Mind/Consciousness?Yes, I read it as I always do for a laugh. My reply to you also indirectly comments on Gnomon's quantum-woo. The video I've linked briefly discusses these issues in an accessible manner for a layman. I've posted it before but s/he seems to have ignored it; I hope you consider what's said there.
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Universal Mind/Consciousness?For what it's worth, Smith, my layman's story:
First, it's not offered as a testable model but an interpretation that simplifies the model. Second, David Deutsch, a founder of quantum computing, et al argue that the interference patterns of a single photon in the double slit experiment exhibits the wavefunction of that photon (i.e. that it follows many paths (worlds / histories / worldlines) simultanously and that a measurenent 'selects' one of those paths without "collapsing" them all into one). Lastly, he speculates how the MWI might be falsifiable eventually using human-level AGI instantiated on a quantum computer (i.e. the AGI would either (A) collapse the wavefunction of a photon or (B) observe (experience) its many histories in superposition). Check out this short video featuring David Deutsch:The MWI is unfalsifiable ... — Agent Smith
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kNAR74SWOho
NB: Consider what is said about the relationship of information to physics – @Gnomon et al get this backwards like typical (transcendental) idealists who conceive of "disembodied mind" as prior to embodiment (as a phenomenal illusion / construct of "mind" (or in Gnomon's terms "teleological generic information" :sweat:)).
More than that, the Copenhagen interpretation (of the 1920s-30s) isn't needed because it doesn't explain quantum phenomena so much as it attempts, in effect (not necessarily by design) to reify the Neo-Kantian 'epistemology-determines-ontology' paradigm that dominated much of philosophical, scientific and cultural life in Mitteleuropa from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries.That an observer allegedly causes the collapse of a wave function is too unfalsifiable? — Agent Smith -
Universal Mind/Consciousness?That's only an interpretation (i.e. speculation) about QM and not a feature or prediction of QM. The latter would be scientific and the former not. An alternative like the MWI takes Occam's Razor to "observer consciousness collapses the wave function". Interpretations of a scientific theory are decidable as scientific only to the degree they imply new conjectures or predictions which are experimentally testable; otherwise, they are mostly idle speculations – puzzle-piece thought-experiments for assembling a (hopefully coherent) 'metaphysical framework' – that, while it may be interesting, says something about one's ideas but, in effect, demonstrates nothing about nature, or the phenomena at issue.
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Universal Mind/Consciousness?:smirk:
Janus, of course, will answer for himself; as far as I'm concerned, to the degree an expression of 'idealism' is the result of conflating epistemology (maps) & ontology (territory) I think it is incoherent. -
Universal Mind/Consciousness?
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Universal Mind/Consciousness?Bernado Kastrup's panpsychist-fantasy more resembles to me Berkeley's metaphysics than Schopenhauer's but I agree with the gist of your summary. I'm probably mistaken but it seems Kastrup has derived, at least in part, his analytic idealism from Max Tegmark's 'pancomputationalist' mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH) ...
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A Physical Explanation for Consciousness, the Reality Possibly:groan:
edit after sleeping:
The point is (if, like me, functionalism-enactivism is your jam) psychological self-continuity, which is encoded in the physical (neurological) substrate, or the brain, is not systemically interrupted as even the most accurately scanned copy of "mind" (or connectome) would be and therefore not the same self (just like a "cloned person" would not be the same psychological self/subject as the original person). Only one functioning hemisphere of the human brain suffices for (regaining via neuroplasticity) complete brain functioning. A speculative, and I think plausible, extrapolation from the current state of cognitive neuroscience. IMO, "mind uploading/scanning" is old-fashioned 'spiritualist' science fantasy.left organic hemisphere (LOH)
right organic hemisphere (ROH)
left synthetic hemiphere (LSH)
remove (LOH) and replace with (LSH)
when (ROH) dies or is euthanized, functioning (LSH) remains ...
intact brain - (LOH)¹ + corpus callosum
connected (LSH)² - (ROH)³ = fully functioning (LSH) -
US MidtermsAddendum to
2022 midterm election results (Federal)
U.S. House (D) – Dems -10 seats
U.S. Senate (D) – Dems +1 seat
NB: Since 1934, the average midterm results by first term President's party is -25 House seats and -1 Senate seat.
:clap: Thanks, Georgia!The People have spoken. — US Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga), re-elected 12.06.22 -
A Physical Explanation for Consciousness, the Reality PossiblyRead what I wrote, Smith. Slowly. Carefuully. And the other links in that post too. Consider the contexts of those thread discussions. I'll answer any questions of my positions which are clearly informed by what I've actually written. Just do me that courtesy, amigo.
180 Proof
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