The Science of God

William Crawley | 16:02 UK time, Monday, 15 December 2008

As promised, I've attached the full text of Roddy Cowie's recent Christians in Science lecture, in which he reflected on the possible "re-intergration" of science and Christian belief.

Bryan Appleyard, writing in this weekend's Sunday Times, explores how some scientists are investigating out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. Can science provide evidence for the continuation of life beyond death?

"Should Christianity be insulated from Science or integrated with it?" A lecture by Roddy Cowie, Professor of Psychology at Queen's University, Belfast, given to the 8 December meeting of Christians in Science

The first thing I want to do in this talk is to explain the spirit of it. In one sense, I understand what I am talking about fairly well. I have a scientific career that includes some respectable achievements; I have been an active Christian all my life, and a conscientious lay reader for the last six years; and for over a decade I taught one of the biggest courses on psychology and religion in the UK. The point of saying these things is not to blow my own trumpet. It is to ask you not to write me off too quickly when you realize that I am struggling.

I think my background gives me a fairly good understanding of the pieces that I will be putting before you. But what I want to talk about is not just the pieces. It is the feeling that those pieces are crying out to be put together in a way that we have not quite grasped yet. I have tried hard and long to put them together, and I know for sure that I don't have a satisfying solution to the puzzle. But I think some of the ideas that flicker through my mind could be of some use to other people who are interested in the issues. So I want to set them out as clearly as I can, and hope that some of you can help me to get things clearer, or pick them up yourselves.

Let me start by stating the obvious. For the last couple of centuries, there has been a long drawn-out conflict between people speaking in the name of science and people speaking in the name of Christianity. Matters came to a head when science showed beyond reasonable doubt that some ideas with deep roots in Christianity were plain wrong. As a result, Christianity had no option but to adjust.

Christianity has responded in a variety of ways. Some are presented openly as adjustments, others are unspoken shifts of emphasis. But it seems to me that most of them have one thing in common. They try to carve out a territory for Christianity that science can't attack. In a word, they are about insulation. Some insulate by focusing on claims about an otherworld that is permanently beyond the reach of science; some insulate by ceding the domain of fact to science, and laying claim to the domain of morality; some insulate by presenting the church as a social organization with membership conditions that you have to buy into if you want to be a member (and science can't disprove membership rules); some insulate by brazening out their claims and defying anyone to absolutely prove anything different (that is actually a variant of scepticism); some insulate by systematic vagueness that gives nobody anything solid to attack. I won't dwell on these, but I am sure you recognize cases where those various descriptions apply.

My feeling is that none of those can work in the long term; and they can't work partly because the insulation cuts them off from things that are fundamental to Christianity. 19th century Christians were shaken by new findings in geology and biology because they thought that it mattered to Christianity how the world as they knew it had come about, and where they fitted into it. I don't think that they were wrong in that, and they were certainly in line with very deep themes in Christianity. Christianity has always invited us to understand God through his creation and through history: therefore, it ought to be affected by new discoveries about creation and its history. A movement that cuts that connection isn't Christianity as I understand it, and I don't think it has a long term future; because if it isn't grounded in the way the world is, reasonable people will eventually lose interest in it. Of course there will always be unreasonable people, but pity help a Christianity that is only for unreasonable people.

That is a very short statement of a long argument that leads me to think insulation is not what Christianity should be aiming at. I think it should be aiming towards integration with the disciplines that tell us about the creation, and its history, and - not least - about our own place in it. I keep wanting to say reintegration, because through the long central passage of Christianity's history, these things were integrated. We should not forget that Christianity is the ground that science grew from. Of course Renaissance science owed debts to scholars from pagan Greece and the Islamic world; but the insights they took from those were stems grafted onto a great trunk of thought that developed in the Christian monasteries of the Middle Ages, through men like Anselm and Abelard and Aquinas and Buridan and Occam and Bacon. Reintegration seems to me totally natural, because the branches that grew from that common trunk still have a huge amount in common. I will come back to that image at various points.

Saying that reintegration is natural does not mean it can be quick and easy. I will spend most of the talk trying to point the directions that I think we need to explore. But there are some general principles that I can set out at the start, as landmarks.

First, I think one of the keys is reaffirming ideas that bound the ancient trunk together. Perhaps the most important is that Christianity is centrally concerned with bringing people to a right understanding of the world they live in and their place in it. Ancient Christianity and early science were inseparable because they shared that commitment: and bringing it back to centre stage is fundamental to reintegrating. Linked to that, I think Christianity needs to reaffirm that it is a peculiarly empirical religion. It actively prohibits us from trusting images of God that we conjure out of our own heads, and requires us to look out and learn from the way he has ordered the world and the way he is revealed in history. That was another idea that unified the ancient trunk, and I think it needs to be reasserted. Note that insulation often marginalizes both of those ideas.

Second, I think it is also critical that Christianity finds ways of engaging with intellectual values and norms that modern science takes for granted. That is an abstract idea, but the way I approach it is driven by a very concrete set of issues. I want to be able to talk to my colleagues about Christianity without them thinking I have temporarily taken leave of my senses. I want a way of conveying why I care about the key issues in a way that lets them say, yes, that's interesting'. I want ways of saying what I believe that let them say, 'yes, I can see why you would think that'. I want to be able to point to questions that let them say, 'yes, that is worth doing research on'.

That may sound like an indirect way of saying that I expect Christian thinking to follow textbook rules of scientific thought. That is absolutely not the case. In the first place, most standard descriptions of scientific thought are thoroughly misleading - and that is important. Equally important, I don't think Christianity should be a science, and asking it to meet the standards that are required to be a science would be quite inappropriate. My goal is a cohesive network of understanding, which includes science proper as a part, but which also deals in a well-founded way with issues that science can't resolve.

It is not only my Christian self that feels the need to construct a network of disciplined thought that is broader than science proper. My academic research deals with parts of human life that science is registering are much more complex and important than used to be assumed. The process has pushed science to re-engage with ideas that it had been content to leave in a religious strand. It is now piecing together a more complex picture of humanity, and particularly human knowledge - of which science itself is part. As a result, even if I were an atheist, I would still feel that I should look closely at Christianity as I tried to form that kind of picture, and learn from it. I also think that the better the picture, the less I would be convinced by the argument for staying atheist - but that is another matter.

So far I have talked globally about science and Christianity, but that is obviously a simplification. The medieval trunk that I have talked about gave rise to a lot of different strands, not just two. Some strands that are called science are absolutely not going to integrate with anything called Christianity, and some strands that are called Christianity are not going to integrate with anything that could sensibly be called science. One of the keys to progress is recognizing which strands have the potential to integrate, and to disentangle them from strands that won't integrate. I will try to do that without needless hacking at strands that I assume will wither anyway.

What I have said so far is more or less an introductory overview. I want to take it forward in three parts. First, I want to talk a bit more about science, and the strands that will and won't integrate. Then I want to talk about some core ideas that Christianity brings to the task - again, some that will integrate, some that won't. Finally, as I have said, I will talk about some of the developments that are waiting to be carried forward.

I will start, as I said, with science. It seems to me that the strand Christians should come close to is exactly what earns science respect in the everyday world, and what philosophers came back to emphasising in the latter 20th century. On that understanding, science is about searching out a particular and special kind of truth. The truth it searches out consists of descriptions that you can say with high confidence are almost exactly true; and that allow you to construct new descriptions that are also bound to be almost exactly true. It is unfortunate that we don't have a standard name for that kind of knowledge, but the middle ages did - they called it scientia, which of course is where the word science came from. People in the tradition I am talking about head for scientia like pandas for bamboo shoots - it is what they eat, full stop; no steaks, no hamburgers, no bananas, just bamboo shoots. And if they come to a valley where there are no bamboo shots to be seen - well, they go somewhere else.

There is a very particular reason why scientia works like that. It works by finding matches between two levels of understanding. At one level is a network of ideas about the kinds of system that we know exist and can make things happen. At the other is a network of observations documenting things that do happen. Scientia works by recognising that an orderly body of observations could be produced by a system very like one we know about; then fleshing out the details of a system that would account exactly for the observations. That is what scientific pandas lock onto - situations where a small extension of our ideas about the systems that make things happen might account very accurately for a body of observations. I will come back to that duality later.

I believe that there is a real and immediate prospect of integration with the strand of science that sets itself to searching out scientia - the epistemic pandas, so to speak. However, there are other strands that are a different matter. There are two in particular that I need to mention.

First, there is the strand that believes it has a method that can be applied to any problem, and can be guaranteed to solve it. It is obvious that if there were a method like that, it would supersede Christianity. Whatever the problems are that Christianity deals with, the magic method would deal with them better. 19th century philosophers were excited by the idea that Newton and his successors had found a method like that, and school textbooks still talk as if that were the case. But in reality, the idea is a modern myth.

Anyone who actually works in science knows that some problems open up nicely and others just give you a headache, however hard you try. Good scientists may say they believe in a scientific method, but they behave like pandas - they spot the problems that are ready to open up, and keep well away from problems that aren't. Bad scientists believe the myth, and get us into all sorts of difficulty - but that's another matter.

Second, there is the idea that science is a privileged culture, and the fact that someone is a scientist makes him or her a wise person; someone we should listen to on any subject whatever - including morality and religious belief. That is actually a modern variant of an ancient idea, which is that cultivating your rational powers will improve every aspect of your life. It is the idea that Dawkins and people like him trade on. There is no doubt that there is a very vocal group of scientists who are militant atheists, and they portray atheism as the scientific view. Maybe it is the view of their culture; but there is really no obligation on anyone to go along with their culture - any more than there is an obligation to go along with the culture of football stars or City high rollers or any other group that is spectacularly good at a very specific activity.

There are interesting questions to be asked about the ways people have tried to transmute the very specific things that scientific pandas do into something much more all-encompassing - but that is for another day. For today, I will limit myself to saying that I don't think Christians can or should try to work with the strands of science that claim to have an infallible method, or to be a culture everyone should defer to. However, I think there is profound common cause between Christianity and the kind of science that is about finding descriptions that you can say with high confidence are almost exactly true. That leads into the second of my central sections, which is about Christianity.

I have already picked out what I think is a fundamental bond between Christianity and science. Historically, it has been right at the core of Christianity that it wants people to have a right understanding of the Universe we live in, and ourselves, and our relationship to the Universe. Its view of the way that should be done also has profound links to the duality that I described in science - Christianity is a peculiarly empirical religion. I will expand on those connections shortly, but first I need to say where I think the differences lie.

Christianity differs from science in that it has to deal with two kinds of issue that are real, and important, but that are manifestly not bamboo shoots. First, Christianity has to offer people the best answers it can to questions that are central to the way they live, even when there is no scientia that does the job - no answer that we can say with high confidence is almost exactly true. Second, Christianity is not just concerned with factual knowledge about the Universe and our place in it. It is concerned with giving people an understanding that is felt as well as known in principle.

It is easy to think, that is a thinly veiled way of saying science deals in fact, religion deals in fudge. But actually, science has been moving into areas that help us to see why that is misreading. Scientific research on knowledge has been gathering momentum over the last half century, and it has become clearer and clearer that only a very confused panda tries to say everyone ought to eat bamboo shoots all the time.

Let me give you an illustration. It is possible that the people you think of as friends mock you behind your back. How do you address that? If you think science is the only model for knowledge, it seems as if you should settle for nothing less than certainty. You should put detectives on them. But of course, we know that's wrong. All that will do is make you miserable and guarantee that you lose any real friends you have. The right thing to do is to accept your knowledge is incomplete, and act on trust. And notice also that what matters isn't a straight factual assessment. It is a complex blend of feeling and understanding that you call trust.

The challenge Christianity takes on includes dealing with that kind of complex blend of feeling and understanding. Of course it takes account of what we do know, but it can't wait until we have cast-iron certainty on all the relevant issues; and it recognises that the end result has to be felt, and not just calculated. Right understanding of the world is a web that includes that kind of ingredient as well as the kind of sharp, factual element that scientific pandas provide. Its elements are to do with feeling as well as fact, and they have to deal somehow with issues that we no chance of resolving with near perfect confidence.

I think that any reasonable person should agree that humanity needs that kind of understanding. I also think any reasonable person would agree that the web should cohere. There should be norms and values that apply over the whole web, as much to parts that are fundamentally religious as to parts that are unmistakably science. As I said back at the start, what that means to me in practice day by day is that I should be able to talk about Christianity without embarrassment or trimming to my colleagues in their labs. They don't need to agree with me - they often don't agree with me about matters of science either - but they should be able to see why I might say what I do, and why I might think it was interesting. If I can't satisfy that test, then I should be concerned that I have allowed my religious thought to drift off into a separate bubble where normal rules of rationality and evaluation don't apply.

I have said that the issue is a challenge, and that is putting it mildly. Talking to colleagues is hard going because some styles of thought that are deeply ingrained in Christianity are never going to integrate, just as some of the things called science are never going to integrate. I think that if Christians want to reach a new integration, they need the courage to stand back and ask whether they really need to defend intellectual habits that are fundamentally disconnected from the way people think in labs and seminars.

There is a range of difficulties in this area, but I will focus on a format that a very large number of people use without thinking when they present Christianity. In a nutshell, it consists of a list of claims that they assume a Christian absolutely must accept. Various different kinds of claim are involved - A is right, B is wrong; event C sounds impossible, but it happened; event D is completely unprecedented, but it will happen; the significance of event E is F ... and so on. To an outsider, the list looks fairly arbitrary - it is not obvious why people should accept that particular list rather than another. That is underlined by the fact that different Christians have different lists, as this summer at Lambeth showed vividly. Almost none of the claims have anything we would ordinarily recognise as supporting evidence; and for a lot of them it is hard to see how there could be evidence.

It seems to me that if Christians insist on that kind of format, there is no real prospect of integration. It is a format that is quite alien to most serious scientists that I know. So long as Christianity is represented as a list like that, there is no chance of them engaging with it. Understanding exactly why is far from trivial, but I will pick out three kinds of problem. One is lack of structure. In science, you expect to separate a few key ideas from others that support them or depend on them or flesh out the details. Christianity presented in the way I have described just doesn't have that kind of structure. There is a long list of things that people regard as equally and absolutely indispensable. Linked to that, many of the items leave most outsiders mystified; they can't see any reason why anyone should believe that; or if they did believe it, why they should care.

Even worse, the lists tend to be presented in ways that are very hard to square with the claim I regard as central, that Christianity is fundamentally concerned with learning the truth and making it known. If you are interested in learning the truth, do you come in with a list of statements, and say, these are the truth, and it is not up for discussion? Your commitment to truth has to go deeper; it has to be clear that if you find something you believed wasn't true, you rethink. For all those reasons, it is very hard to see how the kind of system I have sketched can integrate in any interesting way with science. The intellectual standards are just too disparate.

If I thought Christianity had to be understood in the way that I've outlined - unstructured, unconnected and non-negotiable - I wouldn't be here. So obviously, I think there is an alternative. I think we can identify key issues in a way that lets a reasonable person say, yes, that's interesting. I think there are ways of saying what we believe that let any reasonable person say, yes, I can see why you would think that. And I think they point to questions that a reasonable person ought to agree are worth doing research on.

I am fairly sure that there are different possible starting points, but the starting point I want to work with picks up a concept that I have already introduced, which is trust. I am using trust pretty much in an ordinary sense, meaning something like accepting that what seems to be good or benign is actually good or benign, and that you are not at the mercy of threats you have no way of knowing about. It seems to me that Christianity sees trust as the key to right understanding of the reality we live in, and ourselves, and our relationship to reality. Being Christian means making trust the guiding principle in our relationship with our world - trust in the fundamental goodness of the world; and in the significance of our own place in it.

What I said earlier about trusting friends shows something very interesting about that kind of stance. When you think about the way your friends behave behind your back, most people agree that the right choice is to trust them unless you have reason not to. We need trust to live well, and that applies not just to friends, but also to the fundamental character of our world, and to our own nature. Believing that we can't trust undermines and corrodes. Christianity characteristically invites us to put profound trust at the centre of our understanding of reality in general, and assures us that it is well founded. It tells us not to torture ourselves with the nightmare that the Universe is evil or morally empty; not to torture ourselves with the fear that we are an insignificant accident; not to sink into dismissing the experiences that make us think otherwise as a delusion. In all these, Christianity assures us that the right choice is to trust our world and ourselves, just as it is right to trust our friends. The claim that we should apply that principle on a Universal scale is philosophically both interesting and believable, provided that it is suitably qualified - and I will come to that shortly.
Looking at Christianity from that angle gives a way of answering the charge that it is an arbitrary collection of disconnected claims. On the contrary: it is a sophisticated development of one of the main ways that you might logically deal with a world where your information will always be incomplete. That makes it a starting point that scientists have very good reason to engage with, whatever they think about specific points of doctrine.

Putting trust at the centre of Christianity is not playing fast and loose with Christian tradition. The Greek word for trust is pistis, and that word is right at the centre of the New Testament. Probably everyone here knows that, but people outside usually don't, because most English versions of the Bible use a different word to translate pistis. The word they use is 'faith'. 'Faith' suggests something specifically religious, and almost by definition without any kind of rational justification. But pistis in the Greek does not imply something that is either specifically religious, or without rational justification. That is why the standard translation in most contexts is 'trust'. So I see no problem presenting Christianity as a sophisticated development of the position that we should accept trust as the guiding principle in our relationship with our world.

At least equally important, other key Christian ideas cluster round the idea that this is a Universe where trust is appropriate. Christianity picks out the issues that matter most deeply to the way we feel about the Universe, and tells us over and over that our response to them should be to trust that things are as they need to be for us to live well. It is deeply important to the quality of our lives whether we should trust the intuition that the world is guided by good and wonderful purposes, and neither empty of purpose and value, nor simply an illusion. Christianity invites us to trust that the world is guided by good and wonderful purposes. It is deeply important to the quality of our lives whether we should trust experiences that seem to be a kind of contact with the purpose that shapes the Universe, or dismiss them as a delusion. Christianity invites us to trust that they are valid. It is deeply important to the quality of our lives whether there is an unbridgeable distance between God high and lifted up and humanity below. Christianity invites us to trust that the relationship between us and God is so intimate that it is possible for a single individual to be both God and human; as witness the fact that in one extraordinary life, the barrier between God and humanity was reduced to nothing.

That leads back to another core theme in the New Testament. What do you call the message that we can and should trust our most fundamental intuitions and hopes about our world and ourselves? 'Good news' seems like a thoroughly appropriate phrase - which is, of course exactly what the Christian message was called.

Bringing out that kind of structure lets us respond to the test of coherence that I have talked about - that a reasonable person in the lab next door should be able to see why Christian ideas are interesting, and why you might accept them. I think core ideas in Christianity home in on issues that are basic to the way we feel about our world and our place in it. On any reasonable count, that qualifies as interesting. Similarly, what Christianity says about these issues is that the right choice is to trust things are as we deeply hope they are. A fair-minded person in the lab should be able to see why you might think that. Look at the other side of the coin. Accepting that we should not trust deep-rooted intuitions is a bleak conclusion indeed. It means that human beings are victims of a built-in mismatch between what they are set up to need and the way things actually are. I do not believe that scientia compels us to accept that conclusion - that is an argument I have made elsewhere, and I won't repeat it here. It is a strange mindset that thinks we should believe the worst - believe that humanity has been made fatally out of tune with reality - when the facts do not compel us to believe any such thing. As I say, a reasonable person should be able to see why Christianity might make the choice it does.

That is one level of the argument, but I said earlier that Christianity is a sophisticated development of a position grounded in trust. It is not credible to trust that every garden will always come up roses, and that is not what Christianity advocates. Christianity asks us to trust that God's purpose is still working out when the most admirable human ever born is tortured to death. What it presents is a sophisticated, complex appraisal of the world that sees the thorns clearly, and still ends in trust.
That leads into an area that particularly fascinates me. Christianity offers a rich, subtle view of the trust we should put in our own senses and intuitions. It tells us we should trust the feeling that there is a strange kind of contact between us and a much greater power; but it warns us to be very wary of naïve intuitions about the way a greater power might manage things. It tells us that we should trust our intuition that the same power can be seen acting in history, but it warns us that we can easily draw the wrong conclusions from history. It tells us that we should trust the feeling that some things are right and some are wrong, but we should be very wary of our intuitions about what to do about it. And so on. I personally think that results in an extraordinarily well-balanced view of the way we can expect things to be - but that is for later.

I hope you will notice that what I have said here in bound up with a point I made earlier about the empirical nature of Christianity. Christianity invites us to look at the evidence in the light of a fundamental trust in the goodness of the Universe and the place of humanity. Trust, and use the evidence to clarify the kind of trust that you ought to place in your own nature, and in the Universe, and in its maker. That is very like what I described earlier as the dual structure of science. You start with powerful ideas, but they have to be matched, constantly and ruthlessly, against observed fact. And of course, that interplay gave the medieval trunk it characteristic shape; and that is where science acquired its dual structure. If you think I am exaggerating, read Aquinas.

That ends the second of my three main sections. It is probably wise to sum up before moving on.

I have sketched the kind of picture that I think we might offer reasonable scientists who are not Christian already. I want to tell them that what guides people's lives is a network of ideas and feelings, interconnected and interdependent. Parts of the network are inevitably cloudy and imprecise, parts are quite possibly completely wrong. We may wish it was otherwise, but because we are what we are, that is just the way it is.

I want to tell them that Christianity invites people to ground that network of understanding in trust - trust in the goodness of the Universe, and the significance of humanity, and the validity of experiences that are a widespread feature of human life. It also points us to evidence that we should use to clarify the kind of trust that we should have - evidence from the nature of the creation, and within that from the history of an extraordinary culture, and within that from the life of an absolutely extraordinary man. It seems to me that anyone who stops and thinks ought to acknowledge that that is an eminently reasonable kind of position - and it is extremely hard to think of a better one.

In that picture scientia - the special, sharp knowledge that defines what most people understand as science - corresponds to a few distinctively solid fragments of the network. The further we can extend those fragments, the better. I don't think for a moment that the whole network we need to live will ever be solid scientia, but I welcome any extension of the network that is on offer. And the kind of Christianity that I have sketched points to some very definite areas where humanity would benefit if we could extend scientia. That leads me to the last part of the talk. I want to point to some of the areas where it seems to me that scientia could work together with the kind of Christianity that I have sketched.

The natural starting point is one I have talked about a lot, and it has a huge influence on my personal stance, because it is where I work. It is the science of knowledge. The public knows very little about it, but there have been huge developments in our understanding of knowledge over the past fifty years. The driving force has been trying to build machines - computers and robots - that match some of the abilities that humans take for granted. It has become painfully clear that traditional thinking about knowledge illustrates the old saying that 'fish will be the last to discover water'. Everyday human understanding deals with deep problems so effortlessly that we never notice they are there, and traditional discussions of knowledge skate over them - often because they are preoccupied with scientia. But if you try to build a machine that deals with the same problems, you realize in short order that the problems of getting much less elevated knowledge are really difficult, and we barely know where to start.

Christianity has a deep interest in encouraging science to pursue questions about what is involved in understanding your world so that you can operate in it practically, day to day. It also has a lot to offer, because it has several millennia of sophisticated ideas on the subject behind it. I have talked a lot about the idea of a broad network of understanding, which includes scientia as a part, and trying to articulate the standards that should govern that kind of network. Understanding that kind of network is something I think matters deeply to humanity. One of the key points is one that I have argued in another talk. Both scientific and religious experts do great damage by pretending to know more than we do, instead of being open that we all see through a glass darkly. The general public is grievously misled by the simplistic accounts of knowledge that reinforce that confusion - such as the images of science that I described and rejected earlier. Both as a scientist and as a Christian, I think we have a deep moral duty to develop better accounts and to make them widely known.

Within that broad area, one of the key issues is one I have also referred to, and that is feeling. Of course human understanding of the world depends partly on explicit rational processes. But those processes are built on top of, and supported by, systems that seem to be very different. The simplest way to describe them is that their work is felt, not articulated. The importance of these feeling-related systems has become clearer and clearer. We know that if the systems are impaired, it is a serious handicap. There are lots of examples - psychopaths; people with autism; some kinds of brain damage. That is because the feeling systems serve functions that pure reason doesn't. They deal with value, and other people's feelings; and they connect knowledge and action. As we have started to understand what they do, research in computing has tried to model them so that machines have at least some of the abilities that they give us - which is a field I have been closely involved in.

Christianity should be very interested indeed in understanding these feeling-related systems. It has insights to offer, and it has motives to encourage the work. I have already mentioned one of the key connections. Christianity is deeply concerned with trust, which involves a blend of feeling and explicit knowledge. It should welcome and encourage research that recognises the central place trust deserves in our thinking about human life. Linked to that, Christianity has a rich store of ideas about the difference that trust can make to life, and it should be eager to draw them to the attention of scientists working in the area. I think, as a Christian, that science will confirm that a wide range of benefits flows from living in informed trust. I will come back to that shortly.

In case you thought I had forgotten, another concept involving feeling is even more central to Christianity. It is love. In our society, the word 'love' tends to conjure up images of fluttering eyes and pink mist. Modern research gives Christians a far better way to express what they mean by love. Love is a prime example of the powerful feeling-related systems that I have been describing. It shapes key judgments about value, and the way we deal with other people's feelings; and it ensures that thought flows into action. In the context of modern theory, the idea that our lives should be controlled by love is anything but sentimental waffle. It is a powerful idea that love is the right orientation towards the agency that gave the world its shape and direction. Incidentally, Paul sounds astonishingly like a modern psychologist when he contrasts love with law, which is purely rational, and therefore doesn't have the same power to energise and integrate. Christianity should be eager to help develop the science that clarifies what it means to let an emotion like love orchestrate the way you perceive and evaluate and decide and act, and what its consequences are. It should also be eager to carry the ideas out into the street, and blow away the misrepresentations that prevent people from understanding what a powerful principle it is that you should base your life on loving God.

The second big area that I want to highlight is very closely linked, though you might not think it. It is the analysis of complex systems that change over time. Systems like that are the basis of technologies that are becoming quite standard - for instance, the systems that can recognise handwriting in smart phones, or that recognise speech in dictation programs and some automatic answering services.
Systems for recognizing speech or handwriting illustrate something very characteristic about complex systems. The way they start out means that they gravitate towards particular kinds of end point, as if they were drawn towards goals that are implicit in their makeup. For instance, to produce a system for recognizing handwriting, you start with a system that is relatively unstructured and has simple rules for adjusting itself. Then you expose it to lots of examples of handwritten letters, and rely on the adjustment rules to nudge it bit by bit until reaches a stable state. If the initial system has been set up in the right way, the end state will be one where you can input a pattern, and it will usually output the right name. A lot of interesting technology and mathematics goes into choosing an initial configuration that will settle into the kind of system you want.

The principles underlying that kind of settling are very widespread. They are linked to the way crystals form and metals cool and pebbles roll down hills and soap forms elegant films - and, of course, to evolution. The way our Universe is set up means that not all states are equal - some are comparatively likely to arise, and persist; while others only happen in transitions between these privileged states.

Science is slowly - very slowly - coming to terms with the way complex systems structure themselves and gravitate towards privileged states. I think developing that kind of analysis is crucial to understanding the kind of trust that we ought to place in the Universe. For instance, it looks as if there are social structures that the Universe will not tolerate in the long term. It does not matter what we think - they will break down, as the Universe makes the transition to something more capable of persisting. The same is true of ecologies, and relationships between humans and ecologies. It is also the same of individual humans. Like it or not, some ways of living can be sustained; others lead to disintegration.

People with backgrounds in philosophy may think that this all sounds suspiciously Aristotelian. Indeed it is. Aristotle thought that natural things had goals. We know that on a small scale, that principle is wrong. Molecules move because they are pulled or pushed, nor because they want to. But things are different on a larger scale. It is not just individual animals and plants that behave as if they knew where they were going. Directedness is a very regular outcome of combining the particular small things that you get in our Universe. Understanding that is crucial to breaking the death-grip that some bleak pictures of the Universe have on contemporary thinking. The Universe is not emptiness laced with bouncing billiard balls. Fundamental particles are made so that they come together to make purposeful structures - up to and including billiard players.

I wish that science would move faster in these areas. People in the street have dreadfully misleading ideas about the way the world works. At one end is the bleak picture of a Universe devoid of meaning and purpose that I have just mentioned. At the other, people think they can dictate a pattern and make the world conform. Not so. The world is full of systems that have their own deep-rooted directions, and human beings have no option but to work with them. And, as I have said, that is also one of the key grounds for trust. It does not take personal intervention by God to make a great range of things work out better than we imagine possible. The Universe itself is constantly drawing things in the direction that it favours. By and large, that direction seems to me good - and that leads to my next point.

Christianity is inseparably bound up with moral intuitions - the sense that this is good, and to be sought after or protected; and that is bad, and to be avoided or opposed. The trust we ought to put in those intuitions is a major issue. It is one that science has a great deal to say about.

If the Universe had no direction, it would be difficult to see how our moral intuitions could be anything but arbitrary. Given that the Universe does have directions, it is difficult to see how our moral intuitions can be separate from the directions embedded in the fabric of the Universe. We should expect organism to see things as good if they align with the directions inherent in the Universe, and bad if they oppose them. To put it another way, if that is what moral intuitions are, they are ways of expressing affinity with the world we live in.
There is already research on some of the ways that moral intuitions might be grounded in the objective world - such as research on the evolutionary basis of altruism. I was involved a while ago in a related area, which is response to landscapes. Again, I think Christians should be keen to see that kind of research developed and understood; it helps to silence the deadly whisper that tells people our moral feelings have no more grounding in reality than a preference for beige shoes. By the way, one of the problems with attempts to insulate Christianity is that they suggest morality has no connection with the solid, everyday world. That is not actually what people mean by morality, and when we offer people so-called moralities that have no grounding in the real world, the hidden message is that they should give up on what they mean by the word: it is a delusion. Giving that kind of message doesn't protect Christianity: on the contrary, it does the sceptics' work for them.

Research on morality has another level. There is a pragmatic tradition of psychology which has shown that various aspects of religion have practical benefits - for life expectancy, wellbeing, social order, and so on. That links to a key point in the argument I made earlier. I said over and over that Christian trust is deeply important to the quality of our lives. That can and should be demonstrated - which is something Christianity has always been clear about. I think Christians should be eager to see systematic research help with the task. I also think they should have reservations about the research as it is currently conducted, and should help to reshape it. With due respect, increased life expectancy was not a major motive for Jesus, Stephen, Peter, Paul, James, and so on. What set their lives apart was richness, not length; and of course, enriching other lives. I wish Christians would settle to offer pragmatic research some more appropriate ways to measure the benefits that Christian life brings. I also wish that they would settle to identify better ways of recognizing Christian life. The commonest measure is Church attendance, and sadly, it is not a measure that I find totally convincing.

That leads me to a final area, which is close to my heart. I have been working for several years now on the description of emotional life. People tend to assume it is just a matter of applying the obvious emotion words, but of course it is nothing of the sort. The obvious words correspond to striking peaks that serve as landmarks in the landscape of emotion. Most of emotional life happens in the ground between the peaks, and it involves all sorts of interactions other areas of mental life, not to mention external people and situations and tasks. I believe that experience should be translated to the description of spiritual life. It seems obvious to me that is at least equally complicated. But I do not see why we should not make progress. There have actually been interesting steps in that direction - I think of William James a century ago, who put together a genuinely interesting 'composite photograph' of the saintly life. We have techniques that James didn't, and there are many respects in which we could do better. I find it quite sad that we haven't.

I said at the beginning that I wanted to lay before you pieces that are crying out to be put together. There are so many others that I would like to mention, and it would be very easy to go on for several hours more, But that would stretch the patience even of this audience. So let me try to draw the threads together as best I can.

My kind of Christianity is about allowing people to form a right understanding of their world and their place in it. What I have called scientia is part of a right understanding, but not the whole of it. There are ways of extending scientia that can help to consolidate parts of our understanding that are constantly threatened by destructive simplifications, and I think Christians should be eager to contribute to the consolidation. And where scientia does not resolve the issues of choice or feeling that we have to deal with - which is most of everyday existence - Christians can and should direct people towards an understanding grounded in sophisticated trust. I think that is both reasonable and consistent with the core values of Christianity through the centuries.

I feel that if the right mind took hold of these pieces, our understanding of the world could be reintegrated in a way that enriched humanity, and spared countless people needless distress. Alas, I know the task is too big for me. But I can lay out the pieces I see, and ask: please, will somebody competent pick these up? If you have the ability to do the task, please do. And if you know someone who might have the ability, please pass on my efforts. They might just help to seed a good solution. That would make me very happy.

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1. At 5:09pm on 15 Dec 2008, John_Wright wrote:

I feel obliged to read the entire thing before assessing it, but I have two thoughts at half-time:

1) This is a fantastic speech. Cowie understands the subject well, and it shows. There's also a fascinating freshness with which he deals with "pistis" (which is a great word to say in church without giving context beforehand, and provokes many a raised eyebrow). Using the word "trust" rather than the word "faith" is useful in itself, as it unpacks it to a degree from the beginning.

2) Cowie mentions the empirical nature of Christianity, and also its invitation to "trust." But if that trust is based on empirical facts, isn't it necessary to demonstrate at least a likelihood that those facts are true so that the trust is well-placed? Saying that God came to earth as man 2000 years ago and died, was resurrected and ascended to heaven where he waits for us to make a choice to trust him is a very specific empirical claim. Any other event (such as those from any other religion) would not gain Cowie's trust without some empirical - even "scientific" - evidence. Which is why, so far, I don't find that the objections of men like Dawkins have been addressed in Cowie's speech, and proposing a Flying Spaghetti Monster still seems a valid way to critique what he says about trust.

I'll continue reading once I get some work done!

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2. At 9:23pm on 15 Dec 2008, persistentpanda wrote:
to John Wright:
your point 2 is on the nail. We don't have an agreed way of discriminating between claims that you should trust and claims that you shouldn't. Hence, we tend to fall back on a binary divide - is it almost certainly true, or is it dodgy?
That is not what we do in everyday life. We do think there that are grounds for trusting certain things (like the good faith of friends), and not others (like the spaghetti monster). With due respect to Bayes, it is not a matter of probabilities, a priori or a posteriori. Descartes highlights the issue well at the start of Meditations - should I believe all my impressions are manufactured by a powerful, deceitful demon? Obviously not - but why not?
I personally feel pretty comfortable taking the decision to trust that Jesus was right when he said 'he who has seen me has seen the Father'. Part of that is willingness to doubt my a priori ideas about what the Father is. I am content to say: the reality behind my ideas about the Father is what we see in Jesus.
I don't think that is unreasonable - but I can't articulate why, and I know very well that other people can't either. That is a symptom of a huge problem facing the disciplines of knowledge - we really don't have a grip of reasoning that includes values as well as straight facts. Given that a lot of important reasoning does include values, it is surely an issue we should put real effort into.
By the way, anyone who wants to look at reasoning involving values can check out references on 'deontic logic' in Wikipedia, the Stanford Encylopaedia of Philosophy, and lots of other sources. It is hairy stuff - and if anyone tells you that it's all straightforward, you can be pretty sure they haven't read the relevant stuff.
Happy reading ...

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3. At 10:26pm on 15 Dec 2008, Heliopolitan wrote:
PP, try some bamboo shoots ;-) I agree with John - that is a very good talk, but you (and Roddy) seem to miss the point that "values" and "ethics" map just as easily to a non-theistic viewpoint as to a theistic one. Indeed, I would argue that the mapping to a non-theistic viewpoint is more natural, and less likely to be corrupted by the cancer of "authority worship". Also, the benefits chalked up to Christianity are equally claimed by any number of religions. Which might lead us to the conclusion that we are "good" (either morally or scientifically) *in spite of* religion, rather than because of it.

Just be good, for goodness' sake!

-H

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4. At 10:49pm on 15 Dec 2008, portwyne wrote:

I listened to the lecture, now I have read it carefully and I will read it again in due course. I still find much I agree with and much with which I find it hard to come to terms. I imagine there are probably two main reasons for this: (1) my understanding of Christianity is very different from RC's and (2) I insulate, big time!

My reason tells me that the world is without meaning or purpose; that humanity is of no particular or special significance; that there is no god; that if I had to assume a creator and director of the universe the notion that he is an evil demon is, if anything, more plausible than the contention that he is a benign divinity; that the Bible is a collection of entirely human writings deserving very little credence. These thoughts do not greatly perturb me, whether or not there is intrinsic meaning to life, humans have evolved to such a state that we are capable of investing the life we enjoy with meaning and purpose.

What I feel, however, is quite different. I feel that, beyond the universe there is something wholly other, something I have directly experienced, something which I can trust is good, something the experience of which has the ability to transform radically vital areas of my personality and agenda. One might apply the word God to that something. I cannot, however, connect it to the physical world neither as its creator nor in any other way; I cannot conceive of any way of empirically verifying anything whatsoever about it.

I resolve the potential conflict by saying that I accept that my feelings are as important and as valid as my thoughts and that each may to some extent modify the other. I am not sure how one might talk sensibly of one in the terms of the other though the possibility of so doing fascinates. Most attempts to rationalise the emotions I have encountered have simply produced horrors.

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5. At 10:54pm on 15 Dec 2008, Heliopolitan wrote:
And indeed, the "trust" business is more appropriately applicable to a purely humanist scenario - an atheistic universe is not one without meaning - it is up to us to give it meaning, and to take responsibility. That's the sort of trust that you can trust, and respect.

Rather than the nutrition of the bamboo shoots of "scientia", I rather suspect that Roddy wants to get us hooked on the carcinogenic and utterly nutrition-free ciggies of religion. Yes, they suppress your appetite, but they are not a substitute. Slap a patch on that man!

-H

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6. At 10:50am on 16 Dec 2008, gveale wrote:
H
Are you ignoring my needlessly long and incredibly boring reply to your criticisms of the soul? Whatever could your motivations be?
mereorthodoxy.blogspot.com

GV

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7. At 11:05am on 16 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

John / Panda / Helio

If Christ came to deal with sin then it should not be too difficult to devise some method for investigating his effectiveness.

A test for removing anger, lust, addiction etc etc?

An objective person who has tried to self-reform their character should be able to make some judgments about this;-

A friend told me last night that she knows several Christians who actually left athiesm after trying their luck with Pascal's wager. I was quite surprised.
So again, it is not difficult for individuals to "test" the reality of Christ for themselves if they so wish.

If you read Appleyards piece from the link at the very top of this page you will see proposed experiments to test out of body experiences; this raises big questions about whether supernatural causation can be a part of modern science!

Helio, if there is no creator God then how will you define the "good" in "Be good for Goodness sake"?

You say it is easy for values and ethics to be mapped onto an atheistic system and I dont doubt it. The problem is that you skipped the difficult bit - what rational and trustworthy source have you to create your values from that dont come from faith indirecly via culture?

Also, I think you are missing the point to assume that there are only bamboo shoots or ciggies to choose from.

It is quite clear that even if you dont like ciggies, bamboo shoots alone cannot give us a system that takes into account universal knowledge.

That takes us back to Cowies point that both science and faith need to own up that both see through a glass darkly.

Can we all agree on that perhaps?

OT

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8. At 11:22am on 16 Dec 2008, petermorrow wrote:

OT

You ask Helio how he is going to define the good in 'be good for goodness sake'

That's easy to answer.

He's just going to go right on ahead and define it! ; )

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9. At 11:36am on 16 Dec 2008, persistentpanda wrote:
It would be great if we could move this off set piece positions. One of the key issues is how much ground is genuinely open to explore.

Yes, Heliopolitan - let us be good. But what should we identify as a good life, and how can we manage to actually lead it? What is the relationship between being good and the kind of experience that Portywyne describes (and I recognise very well)? How much credence should we place in the intellectual faculty that tells Portwyne the world is without meaning or purpose? What is the status of that faculty in the light of what we now know about knowledge, and to what extent does the science (as against its popularisations) actually require us to accept that image of a meaningless universe? Which of these questions can an average intelligent person answer a priori, which should be sending us to technical literatures, and which should we be going out and looking for new evidence on?

Opening up includes opening up what we mean by Christianity. Of course not everything called Christianity is valid. If it is a list of doctrines propounded from pulpits, I probably like it no more than Heliopolitan does. If it is a tradition that invites us to trust until proven otherwise that the most positive answers to key questions are the right ones, then I think it makes a lot of sense. Jesus - the historical individual, not the stereotype - is key to that, because if the New Testament is substantially right about him, then the answers can be a lot more positive than most people think. That doesn't mean they are simple - they are clearly not.

The ciggies I personally would like to take out of circulation are the ones that encourage people on both sides to feel that we know the answers to all these questions without too much thought. I think our place in the Universe is very, very unclear. It is an issue that is ripe for intellectuals to get their teeth into seriously. Let's dump both the ciggies and the patches, and chew.

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10. At 11:43am on 16 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

Peter M;-

:-)

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11. At 8:18pm on 16 Dec 2008, John_Wright wrote:

OT- That you can filter a speech of this richness and diversity of thought into your standard evangelical rhetoric is indicative of how little you've actually apprehended and appreciated what you've read. And Pascal's Wager? Really? I would have thought that positing the existence of even a single other god or a single other Christian theology destroys Pascal's Wager completely.

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12. At 10:41pm on 16 Dec 2008, Heliopolitan wrote:
Folks, why do you need to *define* good to *be* good? Are we really back to arguing that morality can only come from a theistic viewpoint? Tell that to the chimps and dolphins.

I think after all this, I'm still lost as to why Roddy thinks his Christianity actually brings anything to the party. We can bank all that is good about Christianity (and I will not be so disingenuous as to claim that there aren't some nice things about it) without the silly nonsense that goes along with it, such as belief in virgin births and resurrections and divinity of Jesus and that sort of thing. But maybe that's what Roddy is talking about - I remain confused...

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13. At 01:04am on 17 Dec 2008, portwyne wrote:

PP asks extremely pertinent questions, questions I have struggled with for many years. I was taught always to trust my reason and distrust my feelings; taught that conclusions derived from rational consideration possessed a validity which hunches or intuitions signally lacked. It has not been easy to set this ingrained belief aside and I am far from sure that I have managed to do so entirely successfully.

Nonetheless I have, for some time now, accepted that any knowledge which does not both cohere intellectually and feel right is likely to be partial, incomplete and inaccurate. I acknowledge that, if I have experiential apprehension of something which my intellectual model of existence says is implausible, then it is as legitimate to question the accuracy of my model as it is to question the state of my mind. (I do think both should be subject to scrutiny - I also fear that it is entirely possible that the human mind, in its current state, may not be capable of uniting its two most obvious means of processing information/experience).

Theologians and philosophers of religion generally leave me cold, I have often more than a faint suspicion that they are talking extremely learned nonsense. Mystics, however, often spout what appears an equal load of drivel but perhaps they are using language in a wholly different way. I have a long-standing interest in how people experience the other - divine or demonic - and how they convey that experience to others. History and literature are strewn with references to encounters with God, with angels, with devils. I am interested how sensory perceptions, expressed in terms of known and familiar faculties, feature in accounts of what we might loosely term theophanies. I have been collecting such references for a few years now and have found much that intrigues.

The subject of another post perhaps, I have just realised how late it is...

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14. At 12:03pm on 17 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

Hi John Wright, hope you're well

It appears your last comment to me is more at risk of being a sectarian ad hominem than an attempt to engage with what I actually said.

I actually made quite a lenghty post with a number of quite different points based on the views of a scientist of Christian faith...

A major point in Cowies talk was about evidence and reasons to trust.

I suggested several experiments.

Have you actually read Bryan Appleywards article yet - link is at top of Williams piece on this thread?

It is hardly "evangelical" whatever that label is supposed to mean...

Personally I find it a very restricted and misleading term.

I prefer to think of myself as someone who makes up my own mind about the bible in the context of consensus of church views on it over 2000 years....

hence... orthodox tradition.... geddit?

;-)

evangelical is such a modern narrow misleading term IMHO.

incidentally...

If we want evidence to trust the resurrection;-

F. F. Bruce: "...if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond doubt" [New Testament Documents P.15]

sincerely
OT

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15. At 2:58pm on 17 Dec 2008, gveale wrote:
John
No, Pascal's wager doesn't fall to that critique if evidence is factored in before the bet is placed.
GV

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16. At 5:15pm on 17 Dec 2008, gveale wrote:
The point of the wager is to guide belief and action when the evidence underdetermines a conclusion or a policy.
It does not address what to do in the absence of any evidence.
It also deals with "subjective" probability (your best judgment) not "objective" probabilities, which in the instance of religion are difficult if not impossible to obtain (see any discussion of probabilistic versions of the problem of evil).

GV

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17. At 5:57pm on 17 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Pascals wager has to be one of the worst pieces of special pleading ever.

Appleyard's piece is interesting however it still does not make it true. I have had a look at Quantum Physics and by no description would I label myself an expert-far, far from it(unlike a certain poster on here), one thing I did learn is that because QM is so mind-boggingly difficult it has become the refuge of al sorts of cranks, weirdos, new-agers etc.

OT

The Orthodox Tradition of the Church has changed over the past 2000 years...once geo-centrism was the norm, then creationism(enlightened Christians know that it's twaddle), slavery/racism/segregation were once the norm for many who followed an Orthodox Tradition.

Anyway OT no matter what this article says Biblical creationism is still twaddle.

Regards

DD

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18. At 8:10pm on 17 Dec 2008, John_Wright wrote:

Oh, come on, GV - Pascal's Wager is nonsense the minute someone objects by arguing that there could be:

- a god who doesn't reward people for belief,

- an afterlife without heaven or hell

- reincarnation

- a Flying Spaghetti Monster

...or any number of other theological positions. In order to appeal to the probability that one of the three monotheistic religions is correct, one would have to establish some basis for believing that that is more likely to be true than any of the above. You can't sensibly do that by appealing to the number of adherents or anything else.

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19. At 9:51pm on 17 Dec 2008, Heliopolitan wrote:
Helio's theological position statement:

I don't believe in a god who loves atheists.

Come to think of it, that's PBOT's position too!

Can we all be friends now?

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20. At 10:20am on 18 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

John

I think you have entirely missed my point about Pascal's wager.

I fully accept its limitations.

I dont believe it is a fail safe argument in favour of God.

But I do believe it is a convincing starting point which demands that the claims of God be very closely examined.

Cowie is in part arguing that for science and Christianity to be reintegrated, Christianity's empirical nature must be affirmed.

In your very first post on this thread John you challenged this and undermined the idea that Christ rose from the dead.

I just dont understand therefore how you didnt "get" my suggested empirical tests!!??

If you note, I said I was surprised that people were currently coming to Christ through Pascal's Wager but I could still obviously take you to meet such people - evidence!

My main point is this John - you may not find the philsophical argument of Pascals wager very appealing but if anyone is really a seeker after truth I argue that they really have no choice but to personally plunge in PERSONALLY AND EXPERIENCE IT rather than casually dismissing it intellectually.

ie you voice a sincere prayer to a God you arent sure is there to make himself real... what has anyone got to lose?

That is certainly moving in direction of real evidence. You may argue it is crude and subjective but it is obviously having a real impact in athiests lives - how can any honest seeker after truth you dismiss it out of hand if they don't try it?

Call it a proto-experiment...;-)

If I didnt know better I might imagine that some folk are getting offended by the audicity of a real spiritual and moral challenge trying to break into the pleasure of their abstract philsophical debate!

The foolishness and offence of the cross, as Paul put it?

Hi Dylan Dog

I think you have entirely misunderstood Appleyards piece - he is not arguing that anything is true. He is reporting on the early stages of an experiment and what the possible implications are.

Helio

Very funny - post 19.

Unfortunately it also seems to be the fall back position of all the Dawkins fans here ie to present me as some sort of angry stereotype.

You are so keen on empirical evidence yet it usually fails to escape your notice that the vast majority of posts from Dakwins fans on this site to me are perjorative, ad hominem, strawman, stereotyping attacks.

My normal response is to keep focussing on the subject or facts in hand and to consistently bring humour and courtesy into my posts.

I suggest that is a gracious response that nods in the direction of the Master.

Of course of course, I know Helio.

You are only joking ;-)

Thats ok so am I.

But the empircal analysis of the posts mentioned still confirms what I am saying, with courtesy and humour of course!

;-)

OT

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21. At 2:56pm on 18 Dec 2008, Heliopolitan wrote:
Hi OT, well, I think you are moving in the *direction* of rationality - maybe you should view DD's gentle encouragement as a good thing.

You're right - the resurrection is an *empirical* claim, and it is one that you cannot demonstrate. FF Bruce is quite wrong (surpriso) to suggest that if a secular historian had come up with such a cock-and-bull story, that people would accept it. The counter-examples of this, from Herodotus to Seneca to Dio, are too numerous to mention - lots of the ancients got lots of things wrong. No biggie.

And, given that the consequences for making an error re the resurrection are so great (apparently), it makes it even more absurd that this would be some sort of intelligent god's "Brilliant Plan" to save a doomed mankind. Even Steve Chalke has come to the conclusion that it's pants (although why he hasn't gone the full Jonathan Edwards, I don't really know).

Incidentally, Will, you know this stuff - what's the current deal with Jonathan E?

Cheers,
-H

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22. At 4:53pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Hi OT,

I have read Appleyards piece and it is full of quackery.

Anyway...

You are a rather angry stereotype of a Protestant fundamentalist-you complain about posts that have the temerity to put up an opposing view then...complain that no-one can offer up evidence! Also you did eat the face of Graham Veale in the other thread because he seemingly disagreed with you(thankfully you apologised and Graham had the graciousness to accept).

"perjorative, ad hominem, strawman, stereotyping attacks." like...Dawkins fans!?or the strawman attacks on science? Oh I see its the nasty wasty atheists.

The truth of the matter is we are only trying (unsuccessfully) for *you* to back up the points that *you* made!bloody hell! sorry about that!

"My normal response is to keep focussing on the subject or facts in hand"

No you don't-you run away.

"and to consistently bring humour and courtesy into my posts."

See above re: Graham Veale

And please Pascals Wager! it is a form of hedging your bets-to accept your god I would also have to accept Allah, Amon-Ra, Zeus, the FSM etc etc all gods that ever existed to be sure. Then again the one true god could be that of a tribe/people that were annihilated-in which case we are all screwed. Then the argument moves onto special pleading eg: my is god better than all the other gods and of course Muslims and Hindus etc can make the same claims.

Regards

DD

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23. At 5:02pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Helio is right to say that FF Bruce is quite wrong. As Helio relates ancient literature/history are full of examples of the ancients getting things wrong. Nearly all the biggie "secular" historians of the period eg., Tacitus, Cassius Dio, etc all mention the supernatural. Suetonious mentions in his life of Caesar that when Julius died he was seen to ascend to the heavens on a golden cloud and this was an eye-witness event. No historian I have *ever* read gives this story credence.

I think what annoys FF Bruce is that most historians apply the same standard to all literature of the period.

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24. At 5:09pm on 18 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

Hi again Helio -

Isnt the point that Cowie is making that "rationality" in itself is way beyond systematic definition by your worldview?

I think the most striking thing about your post is your absolute certainty.

You can tell all the readers here that you are absolutely certain that Christ did not rise from the grave and that you are absolutley certain you have got the full story on all the evidence?

To me that is an indefensible claim - where you there? (prove me wrong!)

Otherwise you are going to have to give us a percentage probablity on how certain you are and justify it.

Why would his closest disciples go on to give their lives for a false resurrection hope? makes no sense...

But while we are at it, that is a lazy strawman version of FF Bruce of course.

Go on ahead and give your other examples please.. genuinely interested.

But please don't give us legendary myth literature because the New Testament is not at all that style of writing. It has all the hallmarks of genuine news reporting with the hum drum detail of everyday life in the midst of the story.

You have also been taken to task for lazy reporting on Jon Edwards in the past too..

Doesnt bode well for your presentation of the other "facts".

Can you clarify exactly what you think is Steve Chalke's view on the divinity of Christ and the way of salvation..?

Yes we all know what he DOESNT believe but if you are going to claim his view is that God didnt have a brilliant plan to same man through Christ you are going to have to answer this one!

And what exactly are you suggesting Jon Edwards did... you know I corrected you on your website before when you claimed him as a new athiest...

cheers

;-)
OT

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25. At 5:11pm on 18 Dec 2008, John_Wright wrote:

OT-

I don't think Pascal's Wager is anything. It's nothing. Perhaps the reason some people found it persuasive is because it was assumed that there was only one choice in the wager: belief in the Christian God who rewards people with heaven for belief, or no god at all. But as soon as anything else is proposed, the wager goes to s***.

Oh, and plenty of people have had what they claim to be very real experiences with other religions. People have also seen UFOs and even been 'taken' by them. Any number of experiences, if that's the criteria for establishing evidence, could be taken as proof of a thing's existence. That's why we look at science instead.

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26. At 5:11pm on 18 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

the most interesting attack on the resurrection story - personally - is when people use the gospels to contradict each other.

How do the sceptics know which parts of the unreliable mss to depend on???

its like, I know this part is "gospel truth" - sorry - because it suits my athiestic agenda and I know this part isnt because it doesnt....

;-)

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27. At 5:18pm on 18 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

John you are still completely missing the point.

Have YOU actually tried Pascals Wager out for yourself since you began to critique it?

No - well fair enough but that is an abstract opinion, you didnt actually test it out.

Yes - "I sincerely tried it and gave God a fair crack but he didnt show".

What have you possibly got to lose?
sorry - couldnt resist that!

"Thats why we look at science instead".

So science cant examine the supernatural??? did you read Appleyards piece?

OT

DD - you are talking complete nonsense. Any real question of substance I have been asked about on this blog I have given my complete views on. It is all there for you to google. But you are not really interested in that at all. You just want to troll away here and create a controversy that isnt there. Fair enough, its your time.

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28. At 6:45pm on 18 Dec 2008, John_Wright wrote:
OT-

Pascal's wager does not attempt to try to get God to show himself. It's a logical argument which says basically that if a specific deity - the Christian God who rewards people with heaven for belief (let's call him "God A") - does not exist, then there is nothing to lose, but if he does exist and you don't believe in him, you have a lot to lose (your eternal salvation). Therefore, the argument concludes, you should live as though he does exist because otherwise you're risking a lot. But the argument doesn't work when you postulate a God B or a God C. Because you can't coherently believe in them all!

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29. At 7:32pm on 18 Dec 2008, petermorrow wrote:

Ach Heliopops

I just love the way you critique Evangelical Christainity and it's weird and whimsical sub-culture.

Why hasn't Stevie Chalke done the full Johnny E? Probably cos he can hop and he can skip, but can't take a leap of faith, or would that be unfaith? Dunno. Would that be a three to the minus three jump?

The pants bit I suppose would be the 'My dad beat me up' version of the cross, I mean you didn't ever fall for that one, did you, dumb theology, don't you think?

And as for trinity jumper loosing his faith - did you ever read about the faith he lost, or mislaid or forgot where he put it. This is the guy who according to reports at the time of his desalvation carried a tin of sardines into the Olympic stadium with him to remind him of Jesus. Something about loaves and fishes, it's a wonder he didn't have a Nutty Crust or a Barmbrack in there too. I mean, a tin of sardines to remind him of Jesus, and there he was surrounded by people from a good few of the nations of the earth, and he had a tin of John West, it's no wonder his faith went west. Sorta faith you need to loose, don't you think?

But isn't evangelicalism just sooooo full of this? In fact, been there, done that and yep, got the t-shirt too. After all what's an evangelical without a religious t-shirt?

Anyway Happy Snowymas, and remember keep Jesus out of Christmas, wouldn't want you to overdose on too many cultural myths.

BTW a thought - why don't we run up a t-shirt with, 'I gave my heart to Jesus and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' on it.

We could sell it at Summer Madbelt!

Enjoy your holiday!

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30. At 7:34pm on 18 Dec 2008, petermorrow wrote:

Come to think of it, if he'd passed his sardines round, and everybody had had lunch then....

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31. At 7:44pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:

Complete and utter tripe and a perfect illustration of why you are held and treated the way you are by a lot of the long term posters on this blog. There is a long, long list of questions that you have avoided, ran away from.

On the theological navel gazing thread you should that you "comprehensively dealt with all issues"-unfortunately you could not name where they were "comprehensively dealt with" because they were not "comprehensively dealt with"-Really OT! Telling lies for Jesus is still telling lies!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/11/theological_navelgazing.html#comment134

I see you are treating me in the same way you treated Graham in m78 when you ate the face of him!

Or where did you answer us when you were questioned on the disappearing posts? that's right you didn't! You have ran away in a pique of prevarication and bluster to every point you have raised-very fundamentalist behaviour. You should feel lucky OT that the long term posters on here are so forgiving.

Regards

DD

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32. At 7:56pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
"Why would his closest disciples go on to give their lives for a false resurrection hope? makes no sense..."

Why did the followers of David Koresh kill themselves and many others in a bloodbath? why did Jim Jones kill himself and hundreds of others? why are there Islamic suicide bombers? Bloody hell! since they were all willing to give their lives then it all must be true!

"But while we are at it, that is a lazy strawman version of FF Bruce of course.

Go on ahead and give your other examples please.. genuinely interested."

We did.

"But please don't give us legendary myth literature because the New Testament is not at all that style of writing."

We didn't we gave you actual historians-please try and keep up and maybe try and use google then maybe you would not look so ignorant.

"Doesnt bode well for your presentation of the other "facts".

I know OT-you gave us many posts on Biblical creationism and science unfortunately for you they all turned out to be twaddle-and when asked to back them up...you ran away.

In any case OT your case for the resurrection is immaterial since you gave us empirical/testable evidence for the existence of your god in your posts about creationism(like fossils supporting Genesis, the flood etc) and by that criteria your god does not exist! many thanks to you and Ken Ham!

Regards

DD

Also I do not think

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33. At 8:07pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Missed a bit at the end:-/

Also I do not think that you have read Appleyards piece.

QM has actually added further death blows to creationism.

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34. At 8:08pm on 18 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Oh! Merry Winterval to you Peter ;-)

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35. At 12:28pm on 20 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

DD

Post 31 is such a laugh!!?

You dont give single example of anything I havent given my full views on this blog on.

Please note - I have nowhere claimed that I have unrefutable "scientific" proof for my faith, my position is that I believe it to be rational and congruent with the evidence. after that it is faith.

i even admit i may be wrong on numerous points about origins.

The evidence is clearly there DD - it is unavoidable, I have given my full views on every significant issue you have raised, it is all here on W&T.

DD - I have to wonder why my views bother you so much that 99% of your posts are aimed squarely at me.

It is quite a compliment that my views and comments occupy so much of your waking thoughts.

I guess I must have raised so many questions that you simply can't get out of your head??

surely it is only a matter of time?

happy holidays anyway friend, have a good one...

OT

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36. At 12:28pm on 20 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:
John Wright
I guess it is a but laughable to ask a confirmed deist and a group of militant athiests to actually try Pascals wager out for themselves.

You have all already made your position very clear, that you are very hostile to the idea of an involved creator Father God (do correct me - have I got that right?)

So you have declared yourself hostile to the hypothesis and agressively rejected any variation of the terms of the experiement.

You could repeat the experiment any number of times for however many "gods" you like....if you were interested.

There is nothing unscientific about this, on the contrary.

Scientific studies have been done of the mental affects of various drugs, so recording subjective feelings need not be "heresy".

Another point is of course that the track record of faith in Christ is that it is not accessed by philsophy or science.

The Bible from start to finish is a story of "religious experiences".

At some point the thinking and reading have to be jumped off from to see if there is anyone there.

Put it another way, what if the Christian faith is true, lets suppose.

Lets us argue that faith is truly the only door; that finding God is synonymous with religious experiences.

By the terms of this debate all of that is possible, some may argue unlikely, but definitely not disproven.

so it is actually possible that my main argument for christ is true - and the means to find him - and nobody here can prove otherwise.

that means it is still feasible that christ is God and that it is impossible to access him by philosophy but by experience only.

that is possible in this debate. but convinced deists and athiests are never going to knock that door becuse they have chosen to reject even the possibility.

another question is that if everything i say about christ is true, how could you ever expect philsophy or science to prove him to you? what evidence might appease you? it is impossible.

Eve if he appeared to you and answered all your questions you could dismiss it as an hallincination...

it seems to me that this debate is all about people who dont want to know setting the bar high enough to ensure that christ is never proven - by their imappropriate standards.

you insist that he must be proven by philosophy and science when the entire new testament and main testimony of the church for 2000 years is that Christ can only be met through faith.

It seems the search for God here is deliberately rigged for failure every time...

OT

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37. At 12:28pm on 20 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:
Helio

I think this confirms my point about how Dawkins disciples define "goodness".

You call to "be good for goodness sake" is just laughable in the face of the continued pejorative ad hominem attacks by his discplies on this blog.

How do you square this with "goodness" Helio?

OT

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38. At 1:50pm on 20 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Hi OT

Prevarication and bluster noted (sadly) yet again!

"You dont give single example of anything I havent given my full views on this blog on."

Errr I have!

Here for instance

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/11/theological_navelgazing.html#comment134

You ran away yet again and as you know there is a long list of questions(points you have raised) that you have ran away from.

You claimed many things about science-you had evidence but when questioned ran away.

The evidence is clearly there OT - it is unavoidable, you have not given any full views on every significant issue you have raised, it is all here on W&T. Strangely enough you can never show this "evidence".

"DD - I have to wonder why my views bother you so much that 99% of your posts are aimed squarely at me."

Because you have needed to be corrected more than other posters on this blog.

We must occupy your thoughts since you did spend so much time removing our posts-who were asked to explain yourself by Christian posters but you ran away. At least the other Christian posters on this blog have forced you to moderate your behaviour and perhaps you have learned that fundamentalist censorship is not the way(especially so when you complain for eg., that you have not seen evidence to the contrary to a position you have made-when you had the post removed!?).

"I guess I must have raised so many questions that you simply can't get out of your head??"

Errr no I have seen your canards many, many times over the years(and they were boring then).

"surely it is only a matter of time?"

That you actually provide positive evidence for an empirical claim that you made? well we have been asking for over two years and...diddly!

Merry Christmas mucker and you have a good one...

ps. your posts on empirical evidence for your claims on the resurrection are immaterial since you provided many, many examples of empirical evidence (fossils, flood etc) that can be tested and if that is your yard-stick then your (and Ken Ham's) god do not exist.

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39. At 4:41pm on 22 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

DD

I have made it clear that I dont think it is possible to "prove" ID by current scientific standards.

However by the same standards I dont think macro evolution can be proven either. Peter Klaver once called it "conjecture".

To prove the point, have you ever tried to identify the various stages of evolution which life supposedly evolved from the creation of life to man?

What are all the various stages, take your best guess.

It is not enough to say that fossils are very rare because the living natural world and the fossil record are in borad agreement;-

although macro evolution is currently science's best guess this is in spite of the huge lack of evidence.

Where are the transitional forms between;-

one celled organisms
plants
fish
amphibians
mammals
birds
reptiles
...man......?

I can accept a theory which hypothesises these transitional forms did at one time exist.

But to go further and say the theory is almost beyond challenge is special pleading to try and surmount the lack of evidence/transitional forms.

Can you suggest the chain of evolution that has taken us to man today DD?

Can you suggest how life formed?

Can you suggest the first cause of the universe?

Can you suggest what keeps the universe and natural world so stable if they all came to this point by complete chance?

None of this demands "empirical evidence" but, which is apprently not needded to justify a Godless creation and evolution anyway.

sincerely
OT

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40. At 5:09pm on 22 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Goodness OT!

You are hitting me with the Ken Ham canards again!

I thought you had binned those canards!

We have been over fossils with you time and time and (yawn) time again! We have supplied links-we have had scientists trying to explain to you! We have done everything in our power to try and explain this matter to you.

However you are incredibly wilfully ignorant and a religious fundamentalist and as such (as you have so ably demonstrated over the past two years) NOTHING is going to convince you otherwise.

"What are all the various stages, take your best guess."

We provided links/explained(yawn).

"although macro evolution is currently science's best guess this is in spite of the huge lack of evidence."

WOW! you should immediately inform the world scientific community!(oh thats right-I did provide links) Gee! they all must be really thick and ignorant! how could they not notice this!bloody hell! why do creationists spend all their time on MB's/ writing letters to local papers and not actually going out and getting evidence for their own explanations? are they stupid?

"Where are the transitional forms between;-"

Yawn! been explained, you have been given links-it is not our fault that you are so wilfully ignorant.

"Can you suggest how life formed?"

Bugger all to do with evolution.

"Can you suggest the first cause of the universe?"

Sweet FA to do with evolution.

"Can you suggest what keeps the universe and natural world so stable if they all came to this point by complete chance?"

Nowt to do with evolution.

Please try-I beg you! to just simply think!

As I said OT all this is immaterial since you provided many, many examples of empirical evidence (fossils, flood etc) that can be tested and if that is your yard-stick then your (and Ken Ham's) god do not exist.

Now I know you use some very common creationist tactics

http://www.sullivan-county.com/bush/tactics.htm

Yep you have ticked quite a few...

Now for the umpteenth time what about the *positive* evidence for *your* position? Why is that it is only Protestant fundamentalists can find the "evidence" to back up your position?

Or as you admit above you have been "wrong" do you refute all the creationist propaganda that you posted before? you know all those dishonesties that you were caught out telling?

Then again OT...as I have often told you intelligent Christians have no problem with science...so please don't worry about it!

Kindest regards

DD

ps. still waiting for you to show me how you "comprehensively dealt with issues" on the theological navel gazing thread but...you ran away!

pps. where exactly and in what context did PeterK say this? I do hope that you are not perverting/misrepresenting what he said?

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41. At 5:23pm on 22 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Look OT you have google, you can look through old threads on W & T(it's so easy-I can do it to look up all the many dishonesties you have told), why not do some work yourself-look up where we answered your boring canards many times? Go to the many links I gave you many,many times and go and ask actual scientists working in related fields-and why not stop wasting our time!

I can remember I told you ages ago that I was not looking anything up for you again as it was a complete waste of my precious time as since you are an absolutist fundamentalist and as such you are not interested in anything which may challenge your very narrow religious outlook.

And please don't give me the old those nasty. wasty atheists line-posters from whatever persuasion(from hardcore Christian to hardcore atheist) have expressed their complete and utter frustration in having to deal with you.

You have some cheek when you run away from questions that have been asked of you-simply to back up what *you* said-and their you come back with a massive dose of the either/or fallacy.

I know you get frustrated OT with myself and others labelling you a fundamentalist and you don't view yourself as such religiously but in every other respect eg., your style of "debate" you most certainly are!

Merry Christmas and all that

DD

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42. At 5:23pm on 22 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
OT

You are very sad :-(

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43. At 5:29pm on 22 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
44. At 1:01pm on 28 Dec 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Orthodox-tradition,

My tragically dishonest pastor, once again it is obvious that you are up to the same low tactics in your new identity as you were in your old PB identity from which you unsuccessfully try to divorce yourself in shame. If only the people of your church knew what their pastor is up to! No wonder that you hit the complaint button for every post that mentions your real life name.

"However by the same standards I don't think macro evolution can be proven either. Peter Klaver once called it "conjecture"."

DD is right to call you out over that one, as I never said that. Once again we find you citing people in support of your position who never supported you on it in any way. Same as you've done a number of times with Will himself.

And when DD posted some answers with scientific data to your questions in post 43, you couldn't handle reality again and pressed the complaint button once more. Same as when I posted a link that showed the strong mutual exclusivity between science and faith today or links to data on transitional fossils.

No matter how many new identities you adopt, you won't improve anything, will you?

Peter

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45. At 12:59pm on 29 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Hi Peter,

Good to see you back and hope you had a great holiday!

As you have noticed OT is up to his old nefarious tactics of late and took your name in vain and indulged in a bit of false witnessing.

As for the missing post, it was initially post 40 that went missing but passed moderation post 43 was just a rehash. Again we are witness to more of OT's ability to handle anyone having an opposing view to his own-then again this is the sort of behaviour we can expect from an absolutist fundamentalist.

Regards

DD

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46. At 3:09pm on 29 Dec 2008, gveale wrote:
Hi PK
I hope you enjoyed scuba diving in Egypt, and it's good to have you back.

I put a couple of longer posts up in response to your queries/critiques/insults on a blog.

mereorthodoxy.blogspot.com/

It seemed to be unfair to take up too much room here.
You can take a gander and lob in the appropriate criticisms and put-downs (which I take to be part of the sport).

Graham Veale

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47. At 7:09pm on 29 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

Hi Pete

Hope you had a great scuba trip.

This is where you described evolution as conjecture;-

http://waspofscience.blogspot.com/2007/06/excellent-religion-for-humanists-fsm.html

I didnt complain about DD's post above, as I've said before, while William advised me to use this facility against your posts before, I am far from the only one who uses the facility.

If an individual makes jokes about raping and crucifiying an individual on this blog - and using the apparent endorsement of a university - is that of any interest to;-

1) The moderators?
2) The university?
3) The hate crime unit of the PSNI?

answers on a postcard pls....

Stop being so childish the pair of you.

Peter you have a phd and should know better.

If athiesm promotes such high standards of morality why should you be engaged in constant personal attacks, straw man arguments, ad hominems etc.

Peter - remember the laugh you had with friends over on FSM because they were creating multiple false identifies to debate me with? ( I never attempted to hide who I was when I took a new moniker).

DD - remember appealing for help on a message board in how to refute my point on QM - now also made by Bryan Appleyard; you admitted you had no idea what I was talking about but knew I was wrong. How is that for honest debating?

The pair of you never engage in debating the facts anymore.

But I repeat, the fact that 95 per cent your substantial posts track mine across the web are something of a back handed compliment;-

The message is that there is no need for Christians of any type to be bullied and intimidated by lies thrown at the Christian faith by disciples of Dawkins.

The traditional historical Christian faith is more than able to stand on its own two feet against apostates coming from any quarter.

History, literature, archeology, science theology... I have satisfied myself it is stands up on every front....

obviously you both agree with me on this or you would not be bothering to tackle me...

anyway happy new year and lets hear it for real quality debating..

OT

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48. At 7:18pm on 29 Dec 2008, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

sorry, add arguments from authority ..
to the ad hominems and straw man arguments...

thanks

OT

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49. At 9:10pm on 29 Dec 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello pastor OT,

The scuba diving was excellent.

Thanks for showing me right that you'll always be the same dishonest character. I never described evolution as conjecture. On the page you link to, the creator of Pastafarianism Bobby Henderson does so. I merely noted he did so in his letter to the board of education, neither endorsing or rejecting his description. So after making up quotes from prof. Prum out of thin air, you're now making them up from me. Keep posting, OT/PB, keep posting, FSMs greatest gift to atheism. Such a fine demonstration of christianity inspired dishonesty.

And given your record, I'll assume that your quoting of Will is also not as it was.

You mention the moderators in connection to some posts. Funny that the posts you mention were on the 'old' W&T blog, where every post was approved before posting. So clearly they were all ok.
And besides, let's be honest now, the thoughts expressed in those posts made your day like nothing else could have, sweety. You love it!

And finally, if you are in favour of posters here using open, honest identities here, then why don't you stop hitting the complaint button every time someone addresses you by your real name, dear pastor? You wouldn't mind the people of your congregation finding out what you're up to over here then?

greets,
Peter

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50. At 9:11pm on 29 Dec 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:
Graham, the posts on your blog are indeed a bit longer, will take some time to give a thorough reading. I hope to get back to you on them later this week.

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51. At 2:01pm on 31 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
OT

Wise up!

You did appear to complain about post 41 but it did pass your censorship.

"If an individual makes jokes about raping and crucifiying an individual on this blog"

Oh please! you still going on about this! That post of course referred to
a pastiche of Monty Pythons 'Life of Brian' see...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/04/will_testament_bloggers_dinner.html

Obviously not meant to be taken seriously-all the other posters got it so catch a grip.

"If athiesm promotes such high standards of morality why should you be engaged in constant personal attacks, straw man arguments, ad hominems etc."

I think you should learn what these terms actually mean, you are that ignorant that you actually commit them in your post. What annoys you is that we correct you and highlight your many dishonesties and your extreme fundamentalist behaviour(which has been noted by many on these threads whether theist or not).

"DD - remember appealing for help on a message board in how to refute my point on QM "

Yes I did because unlike you I do not admit to know all about QM or biology, chemistry, physics, palaeontology etc so I go and check and lo and behold you were talking nonsense-maybe you should check your posts before you post then you would not end up looking so silly.

"How is that for honest debating?" so you don't want me to check what you say? ahhh thats right you are of course an absolutist fundamentalist and as such you believe you are always right!-well I have news for you it does not work like that.

"The pair of you never engage in debating the facts anymore."

You complete and utter hypocrite! I and others have attempted in vain for you to clarify points *you* made but you keep running away. I am still waiting for you to answer points that *you* made on the theological navel gazing thread.

Well OT we do need to keep track of you because 95% of your posts contain errors, lies, fabrications of some sort-I know you are a fundamentalist and would like everyone to agree with you(even the Christians-btw I am so glad that you apologised to Graham Veale for that awful, invective post that you made against a brother in Christ).

It is *your* lies that we throw back at you OT and you don't like it as it exposes you for what you are and please try and not associate yourself or try try to attempt to say that you represent all of Christianity as you not like the other Christians on these threads nor Christians I have the pleasure to know. Indeed why can everyone of whatever ilk get on here(there is robust conversation) but when you enter the equation.

As you the rest of your post...OT! it is all immaterial because *YOU* showed us that your god doesn't exist!since you provided many, many examples of empirical evidence (fossils, flood etc) that can be tested and if that is your yard-stick then your (and Ken Ham's) god do not exist-thank you OT! you must try and understand that atheists love fundamentalists such as yourself and Ken Ham because you actually show us that your god actually exists!

I do hope that their is some real debate and you moderate your terrible behaviour or you may need to go in pre-mod again. Please stop telling/repeating falsehoods, bearing false witness against people, quote-mining etc

Indeed you could start the new year in a new light by apologising to Peter Klaver for your quite disgraceful false witnessing against him.

Anyway you have a good year!

Regards

DD

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52. At 4:30pm on 31 Dec 2008, Dylan_Dog wrote:
That should of course be...

"you must try and understand that atheists love fundamentalists such as yourself and Ken Ham because you actually show us that your god does not actually exist!"

I do hope that in the new year that you desist from the many fallacies that you continually commit.

ad hominems-"disciples of Dawkins" whilst not being a big fan of Dawkins it is indeed a compliment to be compared to someone so witty, intelligent and humane.

straw man arguments-your post 39 is an excellent example.

arguments from authority-again you have provided many wonderful examples of this fallacy eg., Prof Nevin this, Prof Nevin that, Prof Nevin invented science etc etc 400 Phd's from AIG etc etc

To be fair to you OT I do not believe that you are an inherently dishonest person rather paradoxically it is your fundamentalist faith which has made you dishonest or to give it it's medical/psychological term-cognitive dissonance. It is your faith which has driven you to behave in such an underhand, childish manner on these threads. I do sincerely wish that your behaviour does improve, perhaps you may start by addressing the many falsehoods that you have told?

Kindest regards and a very happy new year!

DD

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53. At 4:50pm on 31 Dec 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham,

The scuba diving was terrific. :)

Let me dedicate my last posts of the year to what you wrote on your blog, before I'm off for the evening. I've just read your post entitled Science as Mythology. The other one is longer, not sure I'll get around to that one before I go. So just one response for now, maybe the other one will follow today, otherwise next year.

In the post that marked the beginning of our more frequent encounters I had assumed you held the negative view against science, seeing it as threatening to your beliefs. While you strenuously denied it, the Science as Mythology posts makes it clear that that is very much part of your thinking. I'd almost come to think that the idea of conscious thinking one day being well understood as neurons firing etc has you seriously worried. Maybe reinforced by slightly theatrical language you use, 'puts the lie to the Myth of Science', etc.

So in response you pull out some rather unconvincing negativity preaching, of how it will never work. As substitute for valid arguments you come up with things like

"The Darwinian view of man (that puts flesh on the mythology’s bones) gives no guarantee that our minds are suited to studying the deeper structures of the universe, or to grasping the many unobservables that give rise to our sense experiences. Nor can Darwinism guarantee that the Experimental method can bridge any gaps between our world and the inadequacies of our minds."

Indeed, no guarantee, but it has worked extremely well so far. The past does offer reason for confidence in the future. And just pointing out that there is no guarantee that it will work offers only pessimism, no solid ground for thinking that it won't. Except perhaps for those who would rather think it won't work, they'll probably buy into it without a hint of criticism.

And the bit about how our technology might prematurely end humanities quest for greater knowledge is not a very convincing argument about the fundamental impossibility of obtaining the greater knowledge about the workings of the brain etc.

Your blog post goes some way in making me think that my initial impression of you was not that far off.

greets,
Peter

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54. At 5:56pm on 31 Dec 2008, PeterKlaver wrote:
My goodness Graham, you really needn't have bothered going over to your own blog to save space over here. I just read your second post. You could have condensed it to its reasoned steps and put it over here in a post of very manageable length indeed.

For the most of it, it is just postulating that science will never nail down the workings of the brain as being small electrical currents, complex molecules interacting, etc (and using superfluous numbers of lines to compensate for the lack of reasoning in it). A claim of a scientific nature. You basically claim to have that certainty. But not offering anything that shows that you do. It is 'just so' repeating. Examples are when you write that if we could know all particles that make up the brain plus their interactions, we'd still be nowhere:

"Even with all this knowledge you will not have encountered a single thought. Thought is subjective and private. You can’t measure it, you can’t break it down into simpler parts and each person has access to their own thoughts in a way barred to others."

Please notify those doing research into exactly that. And who have made small steps that suggest that it might be possible (although admittedly a long way away, if it would ever work). I'll ask you the same question as on previous occasions, expecting a simple 'no':

Did you research scientific literature about the subject you make such far-reaching statements on?
Do you even have access to scientific literature? Or a scientific database that would let you search journal articles about a specific subject? If I asked you how many scientific journal papers you've read on any subject, would I be correct in estimating it to be a single digit number, maybe even a number that that could be counted on the fingers of one hand?
I ask the latter question because if you had read any science, surely you would have noticed that anything significant (and the claim that the workings of the brain can't be explained in terms of electrons, molecular bonds, etc is a very significant claim) can't just be postulated. Or be based on scifi analogies, as was the case with part of your post. So just you saying

"It’s simply impossible to imagine how a physical object could have thoughts. "

doesn't do anything. Maybe you can't imagine it, lacking scientific insight as you do. But fortunately, what others can understand and do is not limited to your grasp of things.

And after all the nay preaching of how science will never cast the working of the brain in a neat physical explanation, you apply the same out-of-nowhere standard again. But in the opposite direction, when you go on about the superiority of theism. While science with its tremendous track record doesn't get any future prospect credit, the unreasoned case for theism is postulated to be superior. Again, not giving any reasoned arguments, just putting up the names of Galileo and Aristotle instead, etc.

So it short, your post was a less than useful thing to spend my time reading it. But maybe I'm too negative or just not bright enough. I'll tell you what. After reading it, I thought your overly lengthy post offered practically nothing of substance, but I may simply have missed the brilliance of your deep insights. So maybe I could ask you to summarize these insights step by step in a short sequence of reasoning steps here on the W&T blog. You say that an explanation of conscious thinking in terms of electrons and molecules won't work. Quite a statement, and a statement of a scientific nature. If you could elaborate your insights underlying it, in a clear sequence of reasoning steps please, that would be much appreciated.

Happy 2009,
Peter

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55. At 10:38am on 05 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Peter
I'm a bit red-faced here. I was meant to put the argument in short points on this blog wasn't I? That's a major oversight on my part, and it was very generous of you to wade through a lengthy article before you had any idea if it would be of interest to you. The blog was put up for several reasons - partly I just wanted to see how easy it was to set one up. I'll post something here by the end of the day, but in the meantime, thankyou. Either you're very kind or the scuba diving put you in a very good mood. Or both.
As for Science, I think you've got me wrong. I find that it reinforces my beliefs. It shows that inferences to unobservables can be reliable, it shows that the universe is highly ordered and that there is an unexpected "fit" between our minds and reality. My point about Darwinism is that we may expect it to give reliable beliefs about predators - but electrons or infinities? Thats not and argument against Darwinism, just a point that it can't be the whole story. And that's an argument that needs to be given in more depth.
The point about science as mythology isn't dependent on Theism - actually John Gray, Mary Midgely and Anthony O'Hear all make similar points, and they're atheists. You can have a very high view of science - even take a materialist view of consciousness - without expecting science to replace God. If science is expected to become omniscient, omnicompetent and bring in an eschatological new Earth then you've something more than a high view of science. I think that New Labour under Blair had a faith in technological progress that ran ahead of the evidence.
Furthermore a high view of Science shouldn't preclude a high view of literature or philosophy. Peter Atkins and Lewis Wolpert would be examples of Scientists who would give their discpline the final say in all rational disputes. Johnathan Miller would be an example of an atheist who disputes this.
So Theism isn't the issue. The question is, given a high view of Science, how do we rank it compared to other disciplines? What place do we give science in deciding on social policy? What place does it have in forming morality? And can Science answer the "ultimate" questions - where did the laws of nature come from, why does anything exist, does life have a purpose?
Rejecting revealed religion doesn't allow you to dodge those questions. And I think the power that Science puts in our hands means that it is important to have good answers to those questions.

GV

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56. At 11:35am on 05 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Peter
The Argument from Consciousness

1) Mental States have properties that Show that they are not Physical (a) they cannot be measured or broken up into "units". (b) they are known immediately by the person having them (c) they are "private" the person who has a particular the mental state has "priveleged" access, and others depend on their testimony or actions to infer the state.

2) Physical states can be correlated with mental states, and physical states can cause mental states, but that does not mean the two are identical. A complete physical description of a conscious being experiencing pain, that leaves out the subjective quality of what it feels like to have that pain, is an incomplete description of pain. (But of course there are very good reasons to continue the search for the physical correlates of mental events).

3) Science was designed to deal with physical reality, by abstracting concepts from the physical world and using the tools of mathematics to understand how the parts of the physical world relate. However (a) mental events are not physical and (b) it is impossible to express the vast majority of mental events in words or art, nevermind a mathematically rigorous manner. So a scientific explanation of consciousness is *by definition* impossible (unless we want to make science a branch of philosophy, and that would be disastrous).

4) The absence of a scientific explanation means that the materialist must accept consciousness as a "brute" fact. Mental events follow from certain physical events without explanation. We do not know how or why consciousness entered the universe, which is ultimately a physical universe. For the Theist the personal is fundamental, and a personal explanation is given for physical reality.

As for checking the Scientific accounts, I've read Susan Greenfield's "The Human Brain", articles by David Chalmers and I try to keep up to speed with Scientific American "Mind". I'm no scientist and I've never had a deep thought in my life - but at least I'm not trying to be stupid.

GV

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57. At 11:39am on 05 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
And once more, apologies to you (and Helio). That really was intolerable of me to ask you to read what was really an essay before I summarised it as promised. You had every right to be irritated.
GV

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58. At 1:45pm on 05 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I do have to say that I'm a little puzzled by the "how many journal articles have you read" argument. (If you count psychology journals or philosophy of Science/Biology or Britism Medical Journal quite a few I suppose. Otherwise none spring to mind, but I could be wrong).
I suppose I could reply "how many philosphical or historical journals have you read?" Or I could point out that the physical sciences are not my chosen subject area but that hasn't stopped me reading as widely as possible. I think I don't do too badly compared to other laymen. And my subject was Theology and I'm not a professional academic (I haven't the brains and I'm too lazy). It hasn't kept me confined within my subject area.
What I'd rather point out is that appeals to authority are a species of gigantic and rather unimpressive bluff. I've disagreed with plenty of atheists and theists who are in post-doctoral scientific research or who are University Lecturers in the physical sciences. Some have agressively argued their case. But this is the first time I've ever encountered this type of conversation stopper (medical students aside). I imagine that this is because most of these scientists knew that it wasn't much of an argument. In fact proving that you're smarter or better educated than me (a) is quite a trivial accomplishment and (b) doesn't prove that I've got a better argument in the *one* area we're disputing, even though your knowledge would be far superior in many, many others.

However as a put-down or rhetorical strategy, it's pretty good. It certainly was very helpful to find out that my style of writing was too "theatrical", so I think I merited the insult.
But I still think that the argument stands, and that put downs, however fun and entertaining (and to be fair, PK, yours was well phrased) don't constsitute counterarguments.

GV

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59. At 4:58pm on 05 Jan 2009, Heliopolitan wrote:
Hi folks,
Quick smash and grab here:

1) Mental States have properties that Show that they are not Physical (a) they cannot be measured or broken up into "units". (b) they are known immediately by the person having them (c) they are "private" the person who has a particular the mental state has "priveleged" access, and others depend on their testimony or actions to infer the state.

There's your problem right there. That's meaningless twaddle, that is. What we perceive as consciousness is an emergent property from a brain. Of course you have privileged access - how can any other brain see inside yours?! Of course they are known immediately by the "person" having them - that's part of the same thing. And of course they can't be broken down into physical units, because no-one is reifying them. They are not a "thing" - they are a *behaviour*.

Now you may ask how this behaviour gives you feelings and all that sort of thing. Who knows? But it seems premature to then suggest that an explanation for this intriguing phenomenon is an even bigger disembodied (look ma - no neurons!) nebulous "intelligence" that hosts the rest.

Graham, happy New Year, my man. You are a fine chap, and please be aware that the abuse and name-calling that Peter and others (including me) heap on you is all in jest, because we like you and respect you. Not all theists are bad! (and some are even quite clever. Keep it up)

-H

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60. At 5:15pm on 05 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
I'll try to play the cop and quickly grip you by the scruff on the way out of the shop...

"What we perceive as consciousness is an emergent property from a brain."

That still doesn't explain what it is though.

"Of course you have privileged access - how can any other brain see inside yours?!"

That's a dud argument. We are already NOT discussing simply "looking at a brain", either your own or someone else's. We are already discussing something else beyond what the inside of a brain looks like...surely.

"Of course they are known immediately by the "person" having them - that's part of the same thing."

Well, it depends what we mean by "known", obviously. If you conceive KNOWING as LOOKING, then mental states are not "known immediately by the person having them"...as no one ever SEEs emotions or feelings. So "known" means something different in this context to "looking at" or "seeing"...it must mean something more like conception or visualisation...which already takes us beyond physical brain states.

"They are not a "thing" - they are a *behaviour*"

Unless, of course, there is no complemetary behaviour. I could experience a deep sense of pain or loss that is never transmitted as behaviour. We do it all the time. In fact, if mental states were simply BEHAVIOUR, then it would be quite easy to ascertain someone else's mental state....but you've already admitted that we can do no such thing.

"Now you may ask how this behaviour gives you feelings and all that sort of thing"

Ah, so there is SOMETHING other than the behaviour...feelings and all that sort of thing, as you put it.

"Who knows?"

That's precisely the point...it is something that is not open to standard scientific models. Who does know indeed...not the scientists, that's the point.

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61. At 5:28pm on 05 Jan 2009, Heliopolitan wrote:
Bernard, even if what you say is correct (and I will quibble, because I have functional MRI machines and EEGs and SPECT scanners that can tell me quite a lot about the behaviour of the brain, even if it is not transmitted through to motor impulses, but let's let it sit), that gives you even LESS ammo to go a-huntin' for gods!

Science is more than happy to call some things "black boxes" and get around to filling them in as and when. Proper scientists (even theist ones) *never* put pixies into their black boxes. Pixies are problematic little blighters, and stymie any attempt to figure the heck out what is going on.

Another part of our problem is that the terminology is all over the shop. You are assuming some sort of external observer that "sees" mental states (maybe I've misread you), but my assertion (and it's a goodie) is that you ARE your "mental states", and that you cannot do anything other than be aware of them, unless of course you are anaesthetised, asleep, dead or some equivalent.

HNY to you too, BTW :-)

-H

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62. At 5:30pm on 05 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
I accept your last paragraph. I was arguing precisely that no one can "see" mental states, and as such they are not open to observational method.

I'll come back to this later, have to rush

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63. At 6:24pm on 05 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
oh, and Happy New Year to you all.

As I was saying;

"You are assuming some sort of external observer that "sees" mental states (maybe I've misread you), but my assertion (and it's a goodie) is that you ARE your "mental states", and that you cannot do anything other than be aware of them, unless of course you are anaesthetised, asleep, dead or some equivalent."

You are misreading me. My point is actually that mental states are in principle, "unobservable", at least in the scientific sense. You seem to recognise that there are such things as feelings, emotions etc... in fact, we cannot help but be aware of them... while in the same breath acknowledging that these cannot be observed, and that we must therefore speak only of behaviour.

My point is that, scientifically, we can ONLY discuss physical behaviour and physical brain states. you accept that there is, however, more than such brain states and physical behaviour, but you don't know how to explain them; Whetther they are caused by the brain states, concurrent with the brain states, or just coincidental with the brain states, is neither here nor there. the result is something more than brain states, and, furthermore, something that cannot be objectively observed like brain states.

"Now you may ask how this behaviour gives you feelings and all that sort of thing"

It's precisely "all that sort of thing" that is at issue, and "all that sort of thing" that, you seem to admit, is unobservable and cannot be scientifically explained. But there are "feelings and all that sort of thing". they do exist.

As for God, I don't think that mental states can be used to prove the existence of God. They are simply examples of non-physical, non-scientific aspect of reality, which you tacitly admit the existence of, even while admitting the inabilty of science to explain them. That has theistic corrolaries, but I don't think anone's claiming it provides an absolute proof.

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64. At 6:28pm on 05 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
When i say "Feelings and all that sort of thing DO exist", i don't, of course, mean that these exist as independent identities. i fully agree that we do not HAVE mental states, we ARE mental states.

However, that merely strengthens the point, that there is a mode of being, i.e., the different aspects of human being, including "feelings and all that sort of thing" which is above and beyond the observable, physical matter of scienctific inquiry.

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65. At 7:54pm on 05 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham,

Let me deal with your post 55 first, I'll see if I can find time for 56 hopefully soon. I'll limit my comments, as much of it is rather less directly relevant for the points we were discussing. Or suggests I'm taking a position I'm not taking.

The first thing that seemed strange to me was when you said

"there is an unexpected "fit" between our minds and reality."

Why unexpected? I thought our minds had developed precisely to be tuned to that reality. I would have thought it very strange if our minds (of those of higher animals with brains) didn't fit in with reality in some way.

You also aid

"My point about Darwinism is that we may expect it to give reliable beliefs about predators - but electrons or infinities? Thats not and argument against Darwinism, just a point that it can't be the whole story."

I agree, but when did I ever say Darwinism (why can't you and other believers call it evolution, that would be a more correct term) was good for explaining electrons etc? I don't remember saying that.

Near the end you said

"The question is, given a high view of Science, how do we rank it compared to other disciplines? What place do we give science in deciding on social policy? What place does it have in forming morality? And can Science answer the "ultimate" questions - where did the laws of nature come from, why does anything exist, does life have a purpose?
Rejecting revealed religion doesn't allow you to dodge those questions. And I think the power that Science puts in our hands means that it is important to have good answers to those questions."

Some of these are interesting questions, but not very relevant now for our discussion about whether physical explanations are sufficient to explain human thinking. Some other time perhaps.

greets,
Peter

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66. At 9:44pm on 05 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello again Graham,

"1) Mental States have properties that Show that they are not Physical (a) they cannot be measured or broken up into "units".

Nonsense. There were all sorts of things we couldn't measure at some point (think e.g. radioactivity, pheromones that induce mating behaviour, the alcohol in your blood that influences peoples behaviour so clearly, etc). But that was only lack of knowledge and understanding, no proof whatsoever that they weren't purely physical in nature. As shown when they were demonstrated to be very well explained exclusively as physical phenomena.
This is such a fine example of the christian negativity view, 'That can't be done, it's impossible' when even very simple thinking would make you conclude otherwise. All you have is 'They can't be measured yet', and you try to make that into something that supposedly is an argument as to why it will never work (and hence introduces a need and justification for your immature beliefs). Empty.

"(b) they are known immediately by the person having them"

As said by Helio already, yes, conscious thoughts appear immediately when you have them, by definition. How is that re-affirming by circular definition supposed to be an argument for saying that conscious thinking can't be explained by electric currents, molecules, etc? Please elaborate in more detail, as I don't see why what you're saying constitutes an argument. Not even wrong, as far as I can tell, nothing there to agree or disagree with as argument.

"(c) they are "private" the person who has a particular the mental state has "priveleged" access, and others depend on their testimony or actions to infer the state."

As Helio said, thoughts are not even 100% private anymore if we stick all sorts of measuring electrodes into your head. Any detail is still private. But how on earth is that supposed to be an argument that we won't be able to read your conscious thoughts from an oscilloscope or other instrument in more detail in the future? Again an empty postulate, wrapped in new words.

"2) Physical states can be correlated with mental states, and physical states can cause mental states, but that does not mean the two are identical. A complete physical description of a conscious being experiencing pain, that leaves out the subjective quality of what it feels like to have that pain, is an incomplete description of pain. (But of course there are very good reasons to continue the search for the physical correlates of mental events)."

More of the same empty postulating, wrapped in yet again new words. I say there is tentative indication that all the workings of the brain may be down to physical phenomena. I've presented some (admittedly modest) examples of why a very big extrapolation our our present knowledge appears to go in that direction. Fully admitting the great uncertainty in that idea. Yet you now state, again as as 'just so' out of the blue, that the experience of feeling pain can not be down to purely physical phenomena. I have a rather limited amount of facts at hand to support my case , but at least some. But while you can't do anything but invent new wording for postulating 'just so', you claim to have absolute certainty. They key bit here being

"A complete physical description of a conscious being experiencing pain, that leaves out the subjective quality of what it feels like to have that pain, is an incomplete description of pain."

Are you ever going to present anything to support your case that exceeds the modest amount I've presented about? You accept the correlation between mental and physical states. I say they may be the same, mental states just being very complex physical states. Where is your hard evidence from which you draw the conclusion that there is something else involved than the physical world? Such unreserved, fully certain statements require more than the line I picked out to re-quote above. So please present something!

"3) Science was designed to deal with physical reality, by abstracting concepts from the physical world and using the tools of mathematics to understand how the parts of the physical world relate. However (a) mental events are not physical "

Can you waste any more words to repeatedly postulate the same thing in more different ways?

"and (b) it is impossible to express the vast majority of mental events in words or art, nevermind a mathematically rigorous manner."

Since when does all science have to be captured in mathematics? That's pure BS. For example, think of what we know about what DNA base pairs from which proteins are produced, and what the functions of those proteins are, which helps explain, and yes, even predict, if a person could be born color blind, susceptible to certain diseases, you name it. And a very great deal of biology, and other fields of science as well, describe phenomena and insights that make for Nobel prize winning science, yet little or no mathematics in there.
The argument that mental states can't be captured in math is the poorest bit in your entire post. I can smell your empty desperation that makes you come up with such straw-grabbing nonsense through my broadband connection. First of all, it should be extended to 'can't be captured mathematically at present. And even if you were to prove they could never be captured in math, it's a hogwash argument for the reasons that science doesn't necessarily all have to be captured in math. Congrats Graham, you actually managed to construct a single argument that all by itself fails in multiple ways.

"So a scientific explanation of consciousness is *by definition* impossible (unless we want to make science a branch of philosophy, and that would be disastrous)."

Nothing but a repeat of the already often-reiterated emptypostulate, so I'll just continue my laughing from the previous paragraph.

"4) The absence of a scientific explanation means that the materialist must accept consciousness as a "brute" fact. Mental events follow from certain physical events without explanation. We do not know how or why consciousness entered the universe, which is ultimately a physical universe."

You're getting so boring Graham. Yet another repeat of 'It will never work' without any proper argument. Just the repeat of the fallacy of 'We don't understand mental states in detail now, therefore it will never work.'. If it were left to you that might be true. But fortunately others don't take the self-confirming negativity approach. Praised be the Flying Spaghetti Monster for positive-minded, curious, inquisitive and creative scientists (as well as philosophers or thinkers of any other flavour) that help us move forward. And out with those whose prime thinking activity seems to be geared towards erroneously justifying their state of happy ignorance and negativity toward those who try better.

Peter

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67. At 9:52pm on 05 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Ok Graham, after a strongly dismissive post, I do have something positive for you. You've repeatedly wished for me and Helio to go head to head. Maybe we will one of these days, as from what I read in Helios posts tonight, I think I disagree with him on some bits.

But even if that turns out to be false alarm, I can give you a point on which I definitely disagree with him.

"Graham, happy New Year, my man. You are a fine chap, and please be aware that the abuse and name-calling that Peter and others (including me) heap on you is all in jest, because we like you and respect you"

Have you gone blind and illiterate at the same time, Helio? If you want to praise the King of Empty Repeated Postulates, then don't presume to speak on my behalf! :D

greets,
Peter

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68. At 09:28am on 06 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Peter
A little confused on that last point - you are quite serious? Your insults are to be taken literally?

GV

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69. At 10:12am on 06 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham,

You shouldn't take my jabs at you literally like some do the book of Genesis, perish the fundamentalist thought. Though Helio seems to have a considerably higher appreciation of your posts than I do.

greets,
Peter

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70. At 2:38pm on 06 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK

More bluff and bluster (and a hint of nastiness?! I'm heartbroken to learn that I haven't earned your respect. Remind me - why do I need it?) In reply to the incisive and devastating criticisms of the arguments I presented

1) They're not my arguments, and they're not essential to theism. For example atheists like Colin McGinn and Chalmers have raised similar concerns, and orthodox christians like Peter van Inwagen and Nancy Murphy would say that I'm wedded to a Cartesian or Greek paradigm, and that a truly Biblical Christian shouldn't be separating the physical and the mental. And your comments about FSMs and the way that all Theists think show me that you haven't the slightest grasp of theism, or the history of thought, or philosophy. That's inexcusable from someone being so dismissive. It would take a long, long time to bring you up to speed. May I suggest something like "Pooh and the Philosophers" to begin with?:)

2) I have mental states all the time. I assume you do as well (although sometimes I feel that you don't understand any intellectual activity that couldn't be performed in principle by an Artificial Intelligence). I didn't say that we did not understand mental states. We know exactly what they are as we experience them directly. I said materialist science could not explain how they arise from physical states. Once again Peter, you did not follow the argument (an awful lot of bluff and bluster disguises that, but Bernard certainly sees the argument. Judging from Helio's counterattack, he sees the argument as well. He is certainly making the standard counterpoints). So there is a substantial argument that is passing you by, and that physicalists like Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland and Christof Koch feel compelled to reply to.

3) The argument is that even once all the physical data is in, a complete description of brain states and their physical causes, the phenomenal experience of conscious states is left out. So physical states are not mental states. The two are radically different realities, and it is impossible to see how one could produce the other.
So, in all probability, one day I'll be able to see everthing that happens in your brain and explain it in terms of say mass, charge, spatio-temporal position; or maybe properties characterizing the distribution of various spatio-temporal fields, the exertion of various forces, or the form of various waves. (All of which can be described in mathematical terms can't they? A mark of the physical is that it can be measured, isn't it?) But I won't be able to see your thoughts. Seeing what is happening physically when you think is not the same thing as seeing your thoughts.
Or, to put this another way discovering what physical states are necessary for, say, perceptual experiences does not mean those states are sufficient to produce perceptual experiences. That's simple logic.

4) Or as David Chalmers put it in his seminal article "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" - (an atheistic editor on the Journal of Consciousness Studies but he obviously doesn't understand science, PK, so you'd better let the journal know ASAP).
"The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whirl of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel [and what a Bible bashing fundamentalist Thomas Nagel is PK] has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience...

"It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does."

Just quoted to show you that this is not a concern limited to Theists, and that if this is all Empty Repeated Postulates, you'd better break the news gently to a lot of researchers. (For the record Chalmers does think that a materialist explanation will be available- but that we will have to rethink the nature of matter and physics to reach this explanation. See, when you read scholars who challenge your fundamental beliefs you discover all sorts of interesting things!)

5) As for the BS - The blog passed you by here, as I looked at two forms of scientific explanation - reduction and physical law. They would seem to be the most pertinent types of explanation to this topic. As (3) shows, reduction to physical events or a description of physical causes, does not make consciousness any more explicable.
It might be psychologically reassuring to set up straw men and knock them down, but it's even more reassuring to watch an intelligent atheist miss the points of a simple argument.

6) As long as research funds are available I fully expect scientists to be able to deal with such questions as -How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately? How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behaviour? How is it that subjects can verbalize their
internal states?
Now you say the evidence you have presented is modest - but I think the methods of science are so good that even with a meagre amount of progress towards these goals, we can safely conclude that the goals can be reached.
But I cannot even put what I am experiencing right now into *words*. And this is a very trivial experience. Artists and poets struggle to represent their subjective experiences accurately. Yet, with no evidence *whatsoever* you assume that subjective experience can be measured. That's a leap of blind faith.

7) Have you even consulted Koch, Dennett etc?! All that talk of radioactivity and alcohol just makes you sound silly and poorly informed. (A little history wouldn't kill you Pete). The analogy you are groping for is vitalism.
Vitalists argued that life could not be reductively explained - that is to say that life was something in addition to the physical facts. However, vitalists worried that the *functions* associated with life could not be explained by material facts. As our knowledge of biochemistry, and in particular the complexity of the cell, increased these worries disappered.
However, even when we have explained the function of a mental event (fleeing, fighting, ducking etc) we haven't explained the experience. So the reductionist can take no comfort from the history of science.

8) As for the privacy of our experiences - to establish a correlation between Brain States/Mental States you will first have to accept the testimony of agents whose brains are being examined. (Reports of "I'm sad", "I see blue" need to be recorded along with the appropriate brain states). So first person experience cannot be written out of our accounts of consciousness.And, as I have repeatedly said, many of our first person experiences cannot be conveyed accurately in words, painting or music. So it is improbable that an exact correlation will be established beyond descriptions like "fear", or "I see a tree." The existence of metaphor an analogy show that such descriptions cannot give an exhaustive account of our experiences.

Helio
1) And correlating these actions with brain states isn't the issue either. Behaviorists try to define mental events in terms of behavior; physicalists try to define them in terms of brain states. When it is pointed out that both reductions leave out the experience/awareness of the conscious
agent, it does no good to reply that we can correlate brain states with different types of behavior. You're still leaving out the agents experience/awareness.
2) I think I've presented a strong argument against materialism, but not necessarily a strong argument for theism. It provides some support, but as you've said an atheist could just say that conscious experience will remain a brute unexplained. Theism may come out better in this area but weaker in others.
3) But cheers for the compliments and the insults. All part of the sport. And happy new year to you both!

GV

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71. At 2:51pm on 06 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
Glad to see the nastiness is in good sport, and you've acclimatised to Ulsters debating standards.
Take my digs in the same spirit. And don't feel obliged to read that all at once (or at all).

I wouldn't mind picking your brains (and Helios) on another topic at a later stage - what exactly does it take to have a Scientific consensus on something like GM crops, or Global Warming?
It just occurred to me as I was jotting some of the above ramble down during the day, that despite all my digs at you, I do just tend to accept what I take to be the Scientific Consensus on these things. But I don't have a clear definition of a Scientific Consensus.
This sort of thing is very important to many ethical debates, as you can imagine.

GV

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72. At 10:33am on 07 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
I've been enjoying the exchange, and hope I haven't offended. I do have to concede that I butchered the English language in a cruel and unusual manner in post 56, (although I'm pretty sure you discerned the point that consciousness is immaterial and the brain is material). But you certainly force me to think these issues through. And unlike a lot of professional scientists I've met you read about science as a whole, not just the part you specialise in.
Your post 69 was excellent, and I wouldn't mind using it as an example when discussing Genesis 1 if you don't mind. It's a perfect example of two simple but very important principles. (a) sometimes we can think a literal interpretation is warranted just because a literal interpretation is possible. That's a mistake. (b) Whenever we mistakenly intepret a text literally we can discredit the author.

GV

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73. At 12:07pm on 07 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham,

I'm not offended, just busy now that I'm back at work again. I'll try to get you a reply this week. Small hint: it will be about how your extensive reply goes on about authors whose works I haven't read, throws about some more 'isms', complains of bluster, etc. But is dedicated only to a very small portion to your reasoning steps I had called nonsense. No reply to my counter-examples to the idea that our (present) inability to measure thoughts in detail is proof that they are non-physical, etc.

So hail to King (oERP) Graham!

And feel free to link to my posts. No need to ask approval for that I think, what people say on the blog here is public.

greets,
Peter

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74. At 12:50pm on 07 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Pk
Actually, that's a bit of a relief. A bit busy myself.
We're not going to leave ALL of the insults aside, are we?
GV

PS I was looking over some of Koch's research ideas yesterday. Maybe you're already familiar, but if not take a gander -

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness

While I'm sure we'll disagree whether he is getting close to explaining consciousness in terms relevant to our debate, I had forgotten just how interesting his whole research programme is. Maybe I'm swallowing the hype, but it will be a real shame if he doesn't get the results he's after.

GV

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75. At 5:03pm on 07 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
I've fifteen mins before I head home so...
Some psychologists have suggested that fMRI scans are too gross a technique to reliably tie mental functions to areas of the brain, as fMRI detects neuronal activity indirectly (by measuring blood flow) and because fMRI may overlook work distributed over many parts of the brain. But nobody, anywhere is suggesting that this debate has any relevance to deciding if mental states are identical to physical states.
So your counterexample of radioactivity is way off target. This isn't a matter of creating or fine tuning instruments to measure a physical cause inferred from physical effects.

We're not inferring conscious experience - we directly have conscious experiences. We know what they are directly. We also know that there is a subjective, phenomenal feeling attached to consciousness. Koch (physicalist research scientist) defines Phenomenal consciousness as
"The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation ... What can be reported, signaled or said about such a sensation is termed access consciousness." (So physicalists don't dismiss phenomenal consciousness as an empty postulate).
The bottom line is that subjective feelings are not objective physical events. That they resist mathematical measurement is only one way to illustrate this. The most obvious is to use the "thought experiments" I dumbed down in my blog. Postulate any technology you like. Once that technology has discovered all that can be about brain states you still have to describe conscious feelings. So consciousness cannot be reduced to physical interactions, unlike, say plant cells. Ignorance is not the issue.
Not only will explanation by physical reduction not work, but a physical law cannot be produced either. To put this in physicalist terms - access consciousness cannot accurately tell us everything about phenomenal consciousness. And the qualities that access consciousness misses are the things that matter most to us. There is more to phenomenal consciousness than capturing information. If we can make inferences from the history of science we can make them from the history of art. We cannot convey all that we want about our experiences.
However I fully expect science to explain how and why the brain focus on one sensation over another, or pull together information from many different sources. That seems to be a safe inference.
Two other quick points (1) I prefer "evolution" to "Darwinism". (2) You don't hold to the idea that any theory that makes a prediction is Scientific, do you?

Yours,
KERP

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76. At 10:56pm on 08 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail King Graham!

First let me deal with a couple of points that were either irrelevant, off-topic, misunderstood, mixed up, etc. In the post after this one I'll address the points relating to our discussion of your 4 reasoning steps outlined in post 56.

So on what points were you too far off to consider it worth including the dismissal in the actual discussion?

"I'm heartbroken to learn that I haven't earned your respect. Remind me - why do I need it?"

I never said you did. Lucky you for that, if you did need it, you'd have a bit of a problem your hands.

"1) They're not my arguments, and they're not esse" etc

In response to my request, you gave 4 reasoning steps in post 56. I found all of them hogwash and stated for each why that is so in post 66. Nothing in your point 1 in post 70 does anything to rebut my criticisms.

In point of post 70 you said

"I didn't say that we did not understand mental states. We know exactly what they are as we experience them directly. I said materialist science could not explain how they arise from physical states."

You said more than that. That last bit I would at present agree with, as far as any detail of conscious thoughts are concerned. But you said more. You also ruled out that it would ever be possible, as there is according to you more to it than than materialist science. I asked you to support that latter statement. Sofar you haven't done it in any of your posts.

Point 3 was actually relevant, let me deal with that in the next post.

I love what you bring up in point 4, where you make my point for me with part of the quote you put up:

"Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does."

And you realized it yourself, as you said Chalmers thinks a materialist description will be found. I'm fine with it if that requires a rethinking of physics. Actually, radically new insights make it all the more fascinating. Thanks again for digging your own grave in this discussion! Why do I even need to go on from here? Yet I will.

I'll deal with points 5-8 in my next post as they are on topic (although variations of the same mistake).

Cheers Your Majesty,
Peter

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77. At 00:00am on 09 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Ok, then the relevant bits, although I need to get rid of a technicality in point 3 first:

"A mark of the physical is that it can be measured, isn't it?"

That coming from the man who likes to go on about mathematics and quantum mechanics. You demonstrate far-reaching ignorance of both in just one example. Have you ever heard of the concept of the wave function in quantum mechanics, Highness? It is a complex quantity. Complex in a mathematical sense. Since I suspect you still don't know what complex means here, it is a quantity involving a number i, where the square of i equals -1 (making it go beyond your high school math, where the square of a number was always positive). There are more complex quantities, like some optical properties of light absorbing materials like metals (n - ik, if you want to Google). Good luck measuring those complex quantities, like the phase of the wave function. Or in short to your question: no! You really are very, very far out of your league in your game of bluff poker, aren't you, KoERP? But back to point 3.

"physical states are not mental states. The two are radically different realities, and it is impossible to see how one could produce the other."

That is the central flaw in all your points from post 70 I'll deal with now. The inability right now to see how it could work, is not proof that it can't ever work, see previous examples of things once unexplained but now explained by physics. Re-read that bold bit 10 times, it is a mistake you make so often, wrapping it in different text in your various numbered points.

Same story with points 6-8, see later. In 5 you say

"As (3) shows, reduction to physical events or a description of physical causes, does not make consciousness any more explicable."

Point 3 didn't show anything Graham. So if you want to claim that physics will not explain it, you'll have to provide something in support of that certain claim.

In point 6 you say you can't put certain feelings in words. I agree that capturing feelings that can't be verbally expressed would complicate an already difficult task still further. But even if it proved devilishly, nay, impossibly hard, the lack of success at some arbitrary point in our knowledge development is no proof that it will always remain fundamentally impossible. Or even if were never practically possible, would the limits of our scientific and technological ability prove the fundamental impossibility? I don't think so, we could simply not be smart enough to figure out what to smarter creatures would be a manageable task.

And it's the same story in point 7.

"However, even when we have explained the function of a mental event (fleeing, fighting, ducking etc) we haven't explained the experience."

Pointing out that the function of a mental event won't explain conscious experience does nothing to prove that something else won't ever do so. So again you are very thrilled about how something won't work. And then just postulating out of thin air that nothing ever will either. That last step is where the empty postulate slips in, apparently without you seeing it.

And finally point 8 is a repeat of the verbal expression problem of point 6. Again confusing what would likely cause a practical problem describing certain parts of consciousness with what constitutes fundamental proof that there is more to it than just physics.

Graham, Graham, Graham, you haven't even properly understood the difference between our technical abilities at any point in history (or in the far future) and what makes something fundamentally impossible. Even if we were not to achieve the goal, that failure would not provide positive evidence that there is more to it than physics.
Do you see the analogy of your thinking to the god of the gaps fallacy? In the god of the gaps fallacy an unexplained phenomenon is erroneously taken as positive evidence for god. In your thinking about consciousness, lack of an explanation, or lack of your imagination how it could ever work, is erroneously taken as positive proof that there is something more to consciousness than just the physical brain.

After a last bow to your highness, I'm gonna get some sleep now.

greets,
Peter

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78. At 1:28pm on 09 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
A reply of the top of my head -
Every time you find you're out of your depth swim back to the comfort of the day job.
Why is it, though, that you're out of your depth every time religious or philosphical ideas are discussed?
OK, putting the obligatory insults down, and writing this as it comes to me.
1) No, I've never heard of imaginary numbers, the square root of negative 1, never asked what their physical correlate might be, or whether a constructivist account of Mathematics might be superior to Platonism or fictionalism, nor would I recognise that you're missing the point completely. People outside your subject area never peek in to see what's going on.
2) In any case if I use "description" instead of "measurement" you're back to square 1. And saying that Math can map physical reality doesn't mean that every mathematical concept directly refers to a physical reality. Hence Platonism and fictionalism.
3) Have I missed something? The probability of certain measurable outcomes occurring depends on the square of the magnitude of the wave function, and this of course doesn't involve complex numbers.
4) However it is refreshing to learn that you believe that the Wave Function corresponds to a physical reality, and is not simply a mathematical device that allows us to make predictions. Because if you don't believe that is the case you don't have an argument here at all. Which makes me wonder if you've thought your argument through, or if you're just pulling facts about physics out of the air in an effort to intimidate me. Oddly enough, PK, we all know lots of people with Science PhDs. Some of them might even be smarter than you, if that were possible.
5) In any case I've lost count of the number of times that I've stated to you (and others) (a) I'm not that bright (b) I'm not an academic and (c) I just like to read different points of view. I don't mind the put-downs and insults if they imply I'm thick, or I'm ill informed or whatever. And if you want to establish that you're brainier than me, I'll concede that point once again.
6) I'm more than happy to discuss possibility and necessity with you any time you like. Given that you probably think that Possible Worlds have something to do with MWI. That's why thought experiments are more relevant to the discussion than fMRI's. Conceivability based on present knowledge and experienceis the issue, not what we can imagine. (Otherwise you could argue that one day Physicists will create whole universes filled with intelligent life ex nihilo. And then become incarnate in them etc.)
7) Again you have made no argument, and presented no evidence to show how subjective mental qualities that we all know through direct experience can be construed as objective physical events or facts. That's a leap of faith you're making PK.
8) The prediction that you're making - that technology will progress to omnicompetence - is a philosophical and historical thesis. You need to show that something other than an aspiration lies behind your confidence.
6) A radical thought here - perhaps you should actually read Chalmers, and see just what he's proposing. It comes very close to Panpsychism. He wants to view consciousness as a fundamental property like spin or charge. I referenced his views indirectly on the blog. I don't think you'd find them comforting at all.
7) To suggest (like Helio) that consciousness is an emergent property misses the point. Pay attention here, and you might see where you're going wrong.
An emergent property supervenes on more basic properties or substances. Digestion would be an example. Life might be another. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. There are functions performed by the connected whole that could not be predicted by studying the isolated component parts.
Take a watch. Break it into it's parts, and if you had no prior experience or knowledge of watches, you would not be able to predict what the parts were for. However, as soon as the parts are assembled in the correct manner, your knowledge of the physical parts explans everything that you need to know about the watches behavior and functions.
The difference with consciousness is clear. Knowledge of the physical parts does not explain the emergence of a non-physical event/fact. You have no idea why certain types of physical complexity correlate with non-physical facts.
8) The only other hope for materialistic explanations is to suggest, like Churchland and Dennett, that subjective awareness should be eliminated from our data. Otherwise known as cheating.
9) And you haven't seen the point about first person experience. The *only* direct access we have to mental events is first person reports. We can infer mental events from brain states
once agents tell us what they are experiencing. Or we can recognise certain states, like pain or fear, in others without making any inferences at all. But we do not enter into that person's experience and feel it "from the inside." We don't feel their pain, however much we sympathise, or whatever "mirror neurons" might be firing in our own brains. I do not know, nor will I ever know what Vermeer experienced while painting "View of Delft", or what Munch felt before e painted "the Scream" (which was one of the selling-points of Expressionism as I see it).

KERP

PS Have a good weekend. I enjoy the exchanges, even if I haven't gained your respect.
PPS At some stage, if you get time, I would like to get your ideas on "Scientific Consensus" etc.

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79. At 2:57pm on 09 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
A quick reflection on bluffing. Take your last paragraph. The "Graham, Graham, Graham" (preceded in earlier paragraphs with the astonishing revelation that Physicist knows more physics than someone who just reads the occasional popularisation) gives the impression that an intellect infinitely superior to my own, vast and cool and unsymapthetic to my arguments, has spotted the obvious flaw in a trivial religiously motivated argument.
But
(a) the argument is not religiously motivated (as it is has been advanced by atheists and denied by Theists)
(b) the argument has been totally misunderstood/misrepresented (that consciousness is mysterious in a materialist universe counts against materialism; that we know what consciousness is by direct experience, and all our experience shows that it is felt, fundamental and basic; no amount of information from a third-person point of view can let us know what a first person experience is like; that conceivability based on knowledge and experience is the issue, not imagination; and that an inference is being made from what we do know about consciousness, not what we don't know).
(c) that nothing will falsify physicalism/materialism for some folk.
(d) so the argument seems to be that even if no evidence can be offered in favour of materialism, and even if evidence can be offered for dualism, materialism wins because PK is a physicist and is more intelligent than I am.
Presumably a person is not allowed to have philsophical, religious or moral opinions until they are bi-lingual and have 6 years study in Applied Mathematics behind them.

Couldn't a person just admit that this is one area in which materialism is very weak? But that more than one argument makes a world-view so they'll be sticking with materialism in the meantime?
Or is bluff and bluster more fun?

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80. At 3:27pm on 09 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I'm also pretty sure that you're not reading the arguments, and very sure that you're not reflecting on them.

eg. From the start I made it clear that the argument could be falsified (so what?! that makes it false, or improbable??); that a inference was being made from direct experience, and history, and from the conceptual limits of material explanations; that I never said anything about the function of a brain event explaining consciousness (I said there is a difference between a brain function and mental experience; that I explained the disanalogy between physicalities like radioactivity and suggested a better analogy; that the "privacy" of conscious experience has nothing to do with practical measurements and everything to do with what is unique to consciousness; that point6 was not an argument against materialism but your belief that we will be able to measure experience given time.

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81. At 8:05pm on 09 Jan 2009, John_Wright wrote:

Dear guys,

This is entertaining!

Yours,

A satisfied reader.

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82. At 8:29pm on 09 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hi John,

Glad you like it. No time today or tomorrow for my reply to Graham though.

Any chance you'd give us your own views on it?

greets,
Peter

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83. At 9:34pm on 11 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail King Graham,

You say you require the element of obligatory insults in our exchange. Far be it from me to refuse a royal edict. So here it goes.

I love to see a bit inferiority complex shining through in your posts (finally, it's well deserved, what took you?). You bring up academic titles and your lack of it. I never mentioned mine, I never do, that's your frustration. And it's not exactly a sign of confidence that you once again have to proclaim own your superiority in philosophy. Small hint: it's better if others do it.
But I guess I shouldn't hold it against you. Contrary to your suggestion that I need to read some history, reading history is long-time a hobby of mine. I read all about your royal family background. And about the rule they long adhered to about only marrying other royals, the limited gene pool that that meant, and the rather less than pretty results that followed from it after a number of generations. I shouldn't be so hard on you, as you can't help the way you are. You're a victim.

Sofar for the insults. Then some remarks about the general picture of the discussion. You bemoan the lack of evidence I present. It would be well to remember that the burden is almost entirely on you for that. Let me remind you why.

My position has been a rather careful one. The idea is simple. Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics. Where at some point that wasn't yet the case. Other parts of our consciousness are only partly explained from physics, or not at all yet. But the pattern of how we went from understanding nothing to understanding part of it bodes well for the future. If we optimistically extrapolate the picture, we might imagine a point where we understand all of it. Fully accepting that that optimistic extrapolation introduces great uncertainty for the idea. But as I've fully accepted that, many times restated that I do, I don't make any overly ambitious claims. I haven't even quantified my estimate of the likelyhood that it will work, if it's 90%, 10%, 1% or a billionth of a billionth of a billoionth. So I don't have very much territory to defend.

You by contrast have made sweeping statements, without any reservation, claiming to have 100% certainty. You have put hugely more on your plate than I have on mine. So the burden of evidence is mostly yours. That might be a good thing for you to keep in mind, given your bemoaning of my lack of evidence.

I'll deal with your specific point in the next post. No time for reading the urls you posted or discussion on scientific consensus etc I'm afraid.

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84. At 10:45pm on 11 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Point 1 and 2 in your post 78. You made an ignorant mistake. You now try to move the goal post by saying 'But what if I had said something else than I did, like....'. You didn't say something else, one of your five original arguments was just pure bunk. The end.

Point 3, did you miss something? Yes, you missed the word 'phase' in connection to the wave function I brought up. That makes a rather critical difference. The wave function exists of a real and imaginary (in the mathematical meaning of it) part. The real part can be related to things we can observe, like the electron density for wave functions that represent electrons. The imaginary part is out of our reach.
I will say something else here, positive. While you had missed a part, this is the first time (that I remember from the top of my head) that you try to argue science from science, rather than by throwing isms and author names about. While it was in error, which is perfectly ok, it was the best bit you've produced sofar. And I feel I may need to state it separately here, given our exchanges sofar, but it is true: no sarcasm on this one. I mean it. Point 3 is going in the right direction.

Your points 4 and 5 do not rebut any of my rejections of your original 5 points, a useless distraction in our discussion (though I sure like the point where you felt you had to drag in academic titles, yummie).

quick remark: your numbering is off (I'll refrain from using the obvious space for put-downs here, I've already served you your course of obligatory insults). It's up to 8, then goes down to 6 and from there goes up to 9.

Point 6, first occurrence, fMRIs, did I mention those anywhere? I was merely pointing out to you that you seemed unable to distinguish between our technological limitations at some point in time and things which are fundamentally impossible. Could you please explain in small reasoning steps what I'm supposed to do with point 6? How any of that helps any of your five original points. I don't get it, I think.

Point 7, first occurrence, bemoaning my lack of evidence presented. See second part of my previous post.

Point 8, first occurrence. There is where you go into distortion. I never predicted technological omnipotence. I said nearly the exact opposite in fact, how technological failure to fully get to the bottom of conscious thinking doesn't prove the fundamental impossibility to do so. Scraping to bottom of the barrel Graham, that you have to attribute invented statements to me to attack, which I never actually made.

Point 6, second occurrence. Advising me to read a particular author. So definitely running on emtpy then, as far as presenting reasoned arguments is concerned.

Point 7, second occurrence. Yummie, one where ignorance of quantum physics trips you up again, badly. You say

"The whole is more than the sum of the parts. There are functions performed by the connected whole that could not be predicted by studying the isolated component parts."

Graham, when physicists give a quantum mechanical description of something (assuming that we would like to use quantum physics to describe the workings of the mind, which I would certainly deem the best candidate know today) it describes the behaviour of all particles that make up the object. That description comes in the form of the all-particle wave function. The splitting-up into parts that you find troublesome, never occurs. You get a description that basically says 'everything together does THIS'. That means that the individual atoms, electrons, etc are in that description, but generally not individually distinguishable. So the general case works in the opposite direction of what you assumed. That really, really bums out the point you were trying to make, doesn't it?!
Scientific knowledge trumps pseudo-philosophical tosh once again.

Point 8, second occurrence. You mention Churchland and Dennett, but don't present their case in any detail. Please elaborate.

Point 9. Thank goodness, you Majesty. I hadn't spotted much postulating in all of your post. I was almost beginning to think your signing of the post as KERP was unnecessary. But in point 9 you come to the rescue.

"The *only* direct access we have to mental events is first person reports."

At present, mostly true. How wonderful that you then use yet new verbal wrapping paper to repeat what is again a matter of 'I doesn't work right now, therefore it will never work, no matter what we try and learn.' What was the name of that third Lord of the Rings movie again? Oh yes, I remember. The return of the King!

Hail Graham, King of Empty Repeated Postulates!

greets,
Peter

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85. At 10:54pm on 11 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
I see I've poorly chosen my words in the second part of post 83. That could lead to confusion, or open up my posts for criticism. Let me hereby correct. It would be better to replace the first two occurrences of "of our consciousness" with "the workings of our minds", to avoid any mix-up between consciousness and what you like to see as very very separate phenomenon of conscious experience.
So when I then say "a point where we understand all of it" I mean where we understand all aspects of the mind. Ones I had mentioned, like sensory perception, arousal and storage of memories in adhesive molecules, your favourite of personal experience, and any others not yet mentioned.

Sorry for sloppy initial formulation.

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86. At 11:33pm on 11 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
I just also read your somewhat upset sounding post 79. It was clear to me in your post before that you seemed aware you're running on empty, or very nearly so. But I hadn't picked up yet on the small hints of frustration, or maybe even some anger, as clearly as in post 79. At the end of your rant you write two bits. First

"Presumably a person is not allowed to have philsophical, religious or moral opinions until they are bi-lingual and have 6 years study in Applied Mathematics behind them."

You bring up peoples education again, rather than just presenting better arguments. The two are not unrelated of course. So I gave you a bit of a kicking on e.g. point 7, second occurrence. Well, that's one point where a purely scientific answer does put your philosophical argument in its grave very effectively. Just plain wrong, stemming from lack of scientific knowledge on your part. Should I refrain from advancing my argument because my scientific education gives me an advantage over you? Shees, quit the pathetic whining. If you can't stand being trumped in a discussion occasionally, then seeking discussion on a blog is not the wisest thing to do.

You also said

"Couldn't a person just admit that this is one area in which materialism is very weak?"

Did I ever say it wasn't? I certainly never said it was a strong case. Not stating it either way actually. Read the second part of my post 83 again (plus errata to it in post 85), I take a rather careful position.
I feel we are nearing the end of our discussion as your recourse now seems to be criticizing me for positions I never that I never took, that are your inventions. And also the anger, frustration and 'How can you be so mean to me. Me, the kind and gentle man against whom you so nastily apply the cold brute force of academic education. YOU ARE SO MEAN!!'.

Go and have a long, cold shower Graham, come back when you're ready to try and present some reasoned arguments again.

Peter

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87. At 4:38pm on 12 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PeterK
1) Do I feel inferior to you? I've never met you. Don't be silly. And I'm not angry or upset with you, or the discussion. I certainly don't think you're mean. I'm just pointing out where the bluff lies. You're making an argument from authority in lieu of substantial arguments for materialism.
You refuse to say whether materialism is weak and speculative in this area. That is anything but a carefully laid out position. It is a refusal to take a positon. Which means I'm far from "running on empty." To be honest, I'm only warming up.
2) I didn't claim certainty. I've oft repeated that my view, like any inference, could be falsified. But if consciousness has a low probability on materialism, and a high probability on religious worldviews, doesn't that mean that I have an argument against materialism and for a religious worldview?
3) You do seem strangely proud of your academic achievements (but then going on about my lack of scientific training the only way you can score any points). Whatever. A bit of self-deprecation wouldn't hurt.
In any case I'm pretty sure your scientific arguments reduce to philosophical tosh. Which is to say, your views aren't coherent or convincing.
For example, what's the alternative to first-person reports of another persons conscious experience? Mind-reading? We can only make the necessary correlations that will allow us to make inferences to mental states from brain states by first *asking* people what they're feeling. And we'll *never* enter into their experience by examining their brain states.
Another example. Suppose "measurement" turns out to be too crude a term(possibly - I'm discussing this with some other folk). "Mathematical description" seems to capture the essence of my original point, and retain the force of the argument. Forcing a refinement in terminology is one thing, defeating an argument quite another.
But if you don't like the idea that physical reality has a stucture that can, in principle, be described by mathematics, the difference between what is physical and no-physical should be intuitively obvious using examples from the physical sciences. You can't dodge the argument with these sorts of quibbles.
4) I've looked at three types of Scientific explanation - by reduction, by scientific law, and by emergence. All three are used regularly in Science, and none will account for consciousness.
Now, again you reply with more astonishing news. Macroscopic objects have a wave function. Who'd have thought it! Esoteric knowledge indeed.
So you've offer a reduction. Consciousness can be reduced to a quantum state of the brain. Which is an explanation by reduction. Which I've already dealt with.
In any case I was waiting on Penrose making an appearance, and I'll describe why many *materialist* researchers don't see QM as having any explanatory power in consciousness studies below.
5) How are Hameroff's and Penrose's views superior to say Koch's? QM is a bit mysterious. Consciousness is a bit mysterious. So there's probably a connection. Is that the argument?
Let's look in a bit more detail. Penrose takes microtubules, tiny structures built from a lattice of the protein tubulin, which determine the strength of signals between neurons in the brain. The long tubular nature of the microtubules and the *possible* presence of ordered water outside
them *may* help isolate the interior and permit largescale quantum behaviour. So you can get a quantum superposition of states that is maintained and spread to surrounding tubulins.
Now according to Penrose wavefuctions do collapse, and they collapse due to the different space-time geometries of each state in the superposition. So if a particle is in a superposition of being in two different positions the curvature of space-time will differ according to where the mass of the particle is more likely to be. Once the difference in geometries reaches a certain level the particle becomes entangled with it's environment, the superposition becomes unstable and collapses into one of it's possible states.
Now two points. It's not at all clear what "particle" refers to in this account. And the mechanism of collapse is speculative.
Penrose and Hameroff suggest that a quantum superposition extends over many neurons and lasts for the order of a second. The brain is thus seen as being in a macroscopic quantum superposition. Penrose and Hameroff then argue that basic conscious acts are to be identified with wavefunction collapse. As I said explanation by reduction.
Now it's not at all clear that the "large, warm, wet" brain can exist in a Quantum superposition of states long enough. Or so Koch says. Chalmers agrees. And they can do all those sums that impress you so much.
But more to the point it's not at all clear how the collapse of a wavefunction can be the cause of conscious acts, or be a conscious act. Which leads us back to Hawkings quip - "his [Penrose] argument seemed to be that consciousness is a mystery and quantum gravity is another mystery so they must be related."
There is no reason to conceptually link the collapse of a wave-function and consciousness. And explanations are all about conceivability. And materialism prides itself on the economy and power of it's explanations.
(It also seems that there is more to a person that a series of conscious acts. We have not even commenced a discussion of the unity of the person, free will, human responsibility and human rationality.)
6) What are you meant to do with Chalmers? Well, stop making lazy assumptions about his proposals. And I suppose you could read some of his work if you wanted. But I can't see you buying pan-proto-psychism.
7) It is the magnitude squared of the wave function that relates to *what we can observe* and that includes a contribution from the imaginary part. Isn't it? Unless you want to maintain that the wave function is physical real itself, I'm not sure what you're achieving here. As I've said the outcomes are measureable.

GV

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88. At 4:39pm on 12 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Oh and (a) far from banging on about QM I've only ever discussed it with you on W&T because you raised the issue.(b) At least we're entertaining John. He's quite high standards.

GV

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89. At 4:46pm on 12 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
I'm not really interested in this tiff, but;

"Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics"

PK, could you explain this? I'm not aware of any system of physics that explans ANY element of consciousness. I know there are a lot of causal theories, and correlations can be drawn. but what system of physics "explains" happiness, or joy, or despair?

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90. At 5:27pm on 12 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello guys,

I'll take some time for a more extensive reply to Grahams post 87 lateron.

Bernards_Insight, that bit you flagged up was wrongly phrased in my post 83. I had realized so, see erratum I put up for that post in post 85. Stating that various aspects of consciousness are today well explained by science was in error, sorry again for any confusion.

greets,
Peter

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91. At 5:34pm on 12 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Ah, Fairy nuff. I must have missed your clarification among all the name calling.

:)

So consciousness is not well explained by science then. Today.

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92. At 09:59am on 13 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Bernard
The name calling might be immature.

But he started it.

And hopefully there are some substantial points in there.

(In any case, what round are Brian and you on now?)

I think it's fairly clear that PK has very little respect for me(if any), but he's assured me that the name calling is to be taken in good sport.
If I voice respect for him again I'll sound obsequious. I'll just point out that the feeling isn't mutual.

GV

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93. At 5:39pm on 15 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail to the King.

Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance of science by citing the crank work of Penrose and Hameroff on quantum effects in microtubules!! Graham I love you for that! Little did you know that you just held up a piece of work that has as much credibility in research on consciousness as geocentrism has in astronomy?!?!?
That bit on quantum gravity effects in microtubules more than anything else is what Penrose did to obliterate his credibility gained from other real scientific achievements. Anyone with any knowledge would instantly know it's hogwash. First of all there is no good theory yet of quantum gravity at the moment. Theoretical research is littered with the corpses of previous attempts to incorporate gravity into QM. On the length scale of neurons gravity effects would be outweighed by other interactions by many orders of magnitude anyway. The time scales are off by possibly even more orders of magnitude (physical effects related to consciousness, like synapses, are, from the top of my head, at least a million times slower than the fading of coherent quantum states that you mention, probably more than millions). So it's a completely different regime in terms of length scales, time scales and also energies involved. With Penrose not presenting anything on how to link these different universes.
How wonderful. You just made yourself look like someone in a black sorcerers dress, carrying a broom and crystal ball, walking into a convention centre that is hosting a medical science conference. The other attendant are smiling at first, thinking that you're joking. Until it dawns on them that you are serious. That you actually want to seriously talk about these fairy land ideas.
If you'd like to read a science paper (hey why not, there's a first time for everything!) that pours rivers of icy cold water on Penrose's fantasies, then try Physical Review E 61 (2000) p4194-4206. And if you find a reply that meets scientific standards then I'm sure you'll point it out to me. Hint of caution: if you think holding up Penrose's reply to the Phys. Rev. E paper will bail you out, you are inviting more torment on yourself.

While the rest of your post was not the unmitigated disaster that was the Penrose roll-out, I did find plenty wrong in that too.

First I'll note a similarity to our previous iteration. You made a mistake, I pointed it out, you then tried to worm your way from under it by saying 'Yes, but if I had said something different...'. The same happens in point 4 of post 87. You tried to argue that understanding of the individual parts could never explain the whole. I pointed out that QM gives you the explanation from the whole, not the individual parts. So you were wrong, the end. You bringing in different types of explanations like reduction etc is merely a diversion. You were simply wrong, no point wasting so many key strokes trying to obscure that.

In point 6 it's back to mentioning authors again, without stating what their arguments are, or whether those are the arguments you are advancing in support of your original 5 points. What's the use Graham?

And a third familiar bit (this one a more recent development in your posts) is you attributing points to me and attacking them, while I never made them. In points 3 and 1 you say I'm of proud of my academic achievements and make arguments from authority. I never do the latter and I remember mentioning my academic credentials on this blog only in response to either you or Orthodox-tradition (then under the identity of pb) bringing them up. So I would say it is the very opposite of what you say. Please give some examples of me mentioning my academic record other than in direct response to you bringing it up and some examples of me advancing argument from authority (which, anticipating your response, I point out is not the same as making arguments from knowledge I obtained as part of my education).

And I sense your frustration that I took my careful, reserved position. Difficult to get your finger behind that, isn't it? So you seem to try to get me to take a less careful position, your point 1. I'm not biting.
I'll be happy to point out your lack of substantiation behind your position of certainty instead. That's right, you seem to realize how bad a position that was to take, as you try to backtrack from it in point 2. But let me point out your own words how in the past you said things about how materialism would never give the full explanation. From your own blog:

"Whatever else we believe about beliefs we should immediately concede that they are not physical parts or events. This is very easy to illustrate."

"Assume that you can see how the physical “whole” works by studying each physical “part”, understanding how they all relate and being able to predict every physical interaction. Even with all this knowledge you will not have encountered a single thought."

"First person experiences are not merely physical events. There is a subjective element that cannot be described, let alone explained, in scientific terms."

Etc. No reservations there.

You have now in two posts sought to attribute statements to me that I certainly don't recall making (but I'll hold off on the final verdict, giving you the chance to show me wrong) and you try to distance yourself from your own initial position. Can't blame me for thinking that you're running empty.
But do keep posting. Your Penrose roll-out alone will keep me cheerful for a while. You said you were just warming up. I certainly hope that there is more where that came from.

greets,
Peter

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94. At 8:30pm on 15 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Bernard - I'm at at open night, and incredibly bored, so I'll fill the time.
Perhaps I should clarify my case, lest it was lost amongst the name calling (I could be wrong, but I imagine that you would advance a similar argument).

1 Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence

2 Mental states cannot be given a complete explanation that only uses physical causes

3 Mental states exist

From 1 and 3 it logically follows that:

4 Mental states require an explanation

And from 2 and 4 the conclusion follows

5 Mental states must be explained by something other than physical causes.

(1) Seems to be a presupposition of all rational enquiry. I won't defend it further at the moment.

(2) Is a carefully worded statement. Physical states *may* be used in an explanation. But they will never give a complete explanation.
So we need to be careful we analysing what I am asserting. There are obviously some ways by which science can explain conscious events. One example: I can explain why Jones is conscious and Smith is not conscious but explaining that I gave Smith a sedative and Jones a stimulant.
So Christof Koch may find exactly which "neural correlates" must be present for a human to be conscious. But neither Koch's experiments do not explain *why* or *how* matter can produce conscious events.
There is more to a good explanation than identifying a cause, or strong correlations. That is rather like explaining how morphine put a patient to sleep by citing it's "dormative effect". True, but hardly enlightening. Some coherent account linking cause to effect is called for. This needs to be conceivable. Of course what is possible and what is conceivable may differ at times. But explanations are all about conceivability.

(3) May be disputed by the physicalist. The physicalist may assert that what seem to be mental states are in fact identical with (that is in fact reducible to) physical states. The theory of "mental states" that removes these states and replaces them with "neuro-physiological states" or "collapsed wavefuctions".
(a) Against this, it needs to be noted that (i) we do not infer mental states, but rather experience them directly (ii) that mental states have properties that are radically different than physical states. Three examples. They are irreducibly first-person experiences (no amount of third person information allows you to enter into them), they can have intentionality (be "about" other things that they are not in a spatio-temporal realtionship with), and they have a "felt" quality that cannot be measured. Furthermore they can be difficult impossible to locate in spatio-temporal terms. Consider - Is a pain in my hand, my brain, my nervous system, or all of the above?
Where is the thought "2+2=4"? In one brain? Spread over many brains? The content of all those mental states is contained in one proposition. So where is that proposition?

(b) Another example. Suppose we create an artificial intelligence that experiences conscious states. Suppose that it experiences "pain". The physical description of the AI may be radically different than the physical description of a human or animal experiencing pain. All that they have in common is the "felt quality" that gives unity to that class of mental events. Saul Kripke made this point (no pseudo philosopher, he) - that it is the felt quality, not the physical state, that is essential mental events/states. Frankly, this is just common sense, so much so that detractors have labelled it "folk psychology".
(c) In terms of scientific evidence - Children are capable of attributing knowledge and ignorance to themselves *before* they are capable of attributing those states to others; they are capable of attributing certain perceptual states to themselves *before* they are capable of attributing such states to others.
When asked what another person thinks or wants, toddlers do not respond at chance. Rather, for an important class of cases, they tend to attribute their own mental states "egocentrically."
What does this evidence suggest - Access to one's own mental states provides a crucial basis for attributing mental states to others. And that we do not "infer" our own mental states using any theory. We know our states directly. Any scientific method of identifying mental states would involve inferences. So some psychological evidence reinforces the proposition that mental states are intrinsically private, first person and felt. If you need scientific data to tell you what you already know, you might find that reassuring.
(d) I mentioned mathematical measurement/description to give the flavour of something said by Galileo "In order to understand the universe you must know the language in which it is written. And that language is mathematics." We can examine the physical world using quantitative methods, or mechanistic models (although, we might feel that by so abstracting our scientific concepts from the physical world something is lost even about physical truths).
However mental experiences resist such treatment. So this seems to be one way of illustrating (not defining)the difference between the physical and mental world. (Definitions of "physical" and "material" that give necessary and sufficient conditions are lacking. We have to make do with paradigms, and I happen to think Galileo's has stood the test of time.
The following quotes may give a flavour of what I am trying to say about reality (and the PCW Davies-Feynman exchange also brings the difference of the mental into focus).
Eg
Newton - "God created everything by number, weight and measure."
Einstein - "How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?"; "But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain."
"I.. once asked Richard Feynman whether he thought of mathematics and, by extension, the laws of physics as having an independent existence. He replied:""Where is it, what is it, where is it located, what kind of reality does it have?' And yet you came upon it. When you discover these things, you get the feeling that they were true before you found them. So you get the idea that somehow they existed somewhere, but there's nowhere for such things. It's just a feeling...Well, in the case of physics we have double trouble. We come upon these mathematical interrelationships but they apply to the universe, so the problem of where they are is doubly confusing...Those are philosophical questions that I don't know how to answer."

GV

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95. At 9:07pm on 15 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Just noticed your post Pete. Have you been on the booze?!! I was criticising Penrose, and you've basically repeated my criticisms. Relax, man. Now, how exactly do you see QM helping your case here?

Let's see - you can't tell the difference between a reduction and emergence. Helio raised the issue of emergent states, so they needed to be dealt with. You then offer a reduction to a Quantum State of the Brain (or something extremely vague...)

I could accuse you of being many things, but never careful or reserved. Or of having a position...

Last paragraph of my blog
"But of course my theory is falsifiable. Maybe the methods of science will change as radically as they did in the 17th Century, and consciousness will become just as explicable on physicalist as theistic terms. But just because a theory is falsifiable it doesn’t mean it’s wrong or even bad.
In fact, isn’t falsifiability a virtue?"...

The concluding paragraph is usually quite important when trying to put a piece in context, isn't it? ...

Other than that, nothing to respond to.
Because you're not actually reading the arguments. You're looking for an opportunity to throw insults.

Quite a surprise.

KERP

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96. At 9:17pm on 15 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
OK, you did a better job of criticising Penrose. But why? Why not just point out that I was making a lazy assumption about your views?

I think you miss scuba-diving in beautiful surroundings, and you're taking it out on me (;

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97. At 9:35pm on 15 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Oh, I should point out that you latched on to one statement in a Chalmer's quote, and then claimed that it did away with my whole argument. Pot. Kettle. Very black indeed.

KERP

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98. At 9:48pm on 15 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Psychology isn't a science. Biology isn't a science. BMJ isn't a scientific journal.

Odd that.

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99. At 11:20pm on 15 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
The King is dead.

I felt our exchanges were nearing their conclusion, as noted in my previous posts. Now it seems the end is here. At the end of post 95 you pull out the 'You are so mean, such insulting language' card as reason to withdraw. Contrary to your earlier statement that it didn't affect you anything. Well fine, as you wish.
But that was at the end of post 95. Such treasures came before that. After that Penrose present you now lavish even more gifts on me tonight. Such generosity makes me wonder. Your intentions with me are still honourable and platonic I hope?

In point 5 of post 87 you spent 428 words seriously discussing the ravings of a partial lunatic (or cynic who discovered that writing books can be an easy way to make a living, if sufficient numbers of people like you buy them). Such an amount of serious attention for something that should simply be summarized as 'nonsense' by anyone with a clue, oh my FSM! When I point out to you how you demonstrate your scientific ignorance by the attention you pay to that idiot Penrose, you try to worm your way out of your error (yes, there is a pattern here, we've seen that before), this time by divorcing yourself from him, claiming your position is actually close to mine. Bwahaha! You don't expect me to fall for that do you, especially after you even brought up "neuro-physiological states" and "collapsed wavefuctions" again in the same sentence in your post to Bernards_Insight. You must regret not having seen my post earlier before you seriously rolled out the "neuro-physiological states" or "collapsed wavefuctions" bit again, tripping up your attempts to divorce yourself from that blunder. I think there is no way out of this one for you Graham. You've shown with electron microscope resolution that you simply do not know even some of the most basic things about the science you like to make far-reaching statements on.

And such a coincidence that you now withdraw from the debate, after I called you out directly over things like where I ever made arguments from authority, not letting you get away from your errors with verbally intensive diversions, etc.
But so, the king is dead. Long li....good riddance?

Final question then to those members of the audience who still have the patience to follow any of this. John and Bernards-Insight being the only ones who have so indicated. Your views on final stages of the exchange I've had here with Graham?

Your humble subject,
Peter

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100. At 5:09pm on 16 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is very like conducting a discussion with a Young Earth Creationist. You search for insults, you bluff, you bluster, and you avoid serious argument.

And then you ask for the applause of the audience?!! Do we have self-esteem issues PK? ( ;

We're not on Pop Idol, son. Just having a conversation. Relax and enjoy it would be my advice.

Anyway some responses - the first two responding to insults, the rest substantial

INSUBSTANTIAL REPLY
i) Not that it's relevant, but I do not care what you call me, or what you think of me. (I've never met you.) I am enjoying the discussion, and I am very keen to continue it. I would be very disappointed if you gave up before addressing some of the questions that I've raised and will restate. I'm not withdrawing from the debate until you define your position, and until you give some (any) reason for inferring that we have a good reason to believe that consciousness can be given a purely physical explanation. Something beyond an aspiration, or a promissory note.

What made you think I was withdrawing??!! Seems odd.

ii) I compliment you because (a) I've learned manners (b) you seem to think that proving you are smarter than the person you are debating has some relevance to the outcome of the debate (c) you keep implying that I view myself as an expert on QM, who is self-deceived. Once more - I'm not an expert on anything. I'm not smart or well-educated. Regular posters know this. I'm not good at soccer or video-games either. I don't sit up at nights feeling inferior.(If you want to wound my pride, suggest I'm a poor Dad, or a bad son or brother, or that I can't teach. Those things matter to me far more to me than my IQ.)

SUBSTANTIAL POINTS
iii) The bluff actually gets nauseating after a while. You took four paragraphs to discuss Penrose. Two of those contained substantial argument. Pot. Kettle. Black.
INSUBSTANTIAL ASIDE (And you won't acknowledge that you didn't read my post or my blog correctly. I'm hurt ( ;
And Penrose is an idiot? He didn't just advance an idiotic argument? Everyone in QM agrees with you? That he's an idiot? What's your evidence? What your colleagues think? A survey of book reviews? Or are there stats about physicists opinions of Penroses' brain?)

SUBSTANTIAL RESPONSE RESUMES
Didn't I already indicate that Hawking's quip dealt with Penrose?
And can you explain exactly how that quip doesn'y apply to your position? Are you advocating Stapp's position? "My approach is to recognize, among other things, that quantum theory probably gives only a partial description of the causal
connections between our experiences. ...it allows there to be another causal strand that is
entangled with the physical, but is not causally determined by
physical. It acts through conscious experiences that "supervene" on
the physical, but that are not causally determined by the physical." Well, that would be dualism (although Stapp maintains it is a pragmatic position, not a truth claim).
Or what about Wigner? - are you advocating his view that conscious agents cause wavefunction
collapse? I'm told the idea provides an intelligible solution to the measurement problem. Basically, everything physical can be described by the dynamical equations of quantum mechanics, but conscious minds cannot. Have I got this right?
This means that electrons can be in superpositions of spin states, macroscopic devices can be in superpositions of their states and even brain states can be in superpositions.
Minds, however, cannot. Once an observer looks at the measuring
device the wavefunction collapses. Again, is this an adequate summary of his view?
This interpretation does have some pretty odd consequences. For example,
Schrodinger’s cat really is in a superposition of dead and alive states until someone looks in the box (unless the cat is conscious!). Furthermore, before conscious beings ever appeared on earth the world must have been a very strange place indeed as superposed states would have been the order of theday. If this view is correct the nature of the world depends very strongly on
minds. So I can see why most physicitst reject this interpretation of quantum mechanics.
But how does this interpretation sit with theories of the mind? Clearly this is
a dualist position since minds are not part of the physical world.

iv) Now, personally, I *don't* think these theories help the dualism I'm defending. So why mention them? (a) they again illustrate that the difference between the physical and the conscious world is intuitively obvious. (b) I can't critique your position until you set it out. So I have to content myself to attack what you may be thinking. (c) It shows that QM suggests dualism to those who want to speculate about the conscious world just as much as it suggests materialism to other researchers. In and of itself it does not lead to materialist conclusions about the nature of mind. Just don't want you to get carried away...
In any case, until you set out a position, you fall prey to Hawking's critique. Just because QM is mysterious and consciousness is mysterious, it does not mean that there is a connection.

iv) I didn't say YOU identified consciousness with collapsed wavefunctions or neuronal-physiological states. It's Koch who is searching for the "Neuronal Basis of Conscious Perception" and Penrose who wants to identify "basic conscious acts are to be identified with wavefunction collapse". They were examples of reduction offered to *Bernard*, if he can be bothered. Google "neurophysiological state", and you'll see that this is a popular reduction. Bluff and insults do not make an argument. They're fun, but they do not make an argument.

v) Our positions seem to be polar opposites. We might agree Penrose is wrong, for different reasons. Something has gone very wrong if you assume that agreement on this is a sign that I'm in sympathy with your view, or that I would attach any significance to this agreement.

Still, I'll bet Penrose is smarter than you.

vi) Now, what is your position?
Take this very, very odd post.

"The idea is simple. Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics. Where at some point that wasn't yet the case. Other parts of our consciousness are only partly explained from physics, or not at all yet. But the pattern of how we went from understanding nothing to understanding part of it bodes well for the future. If we optimistically extrapolate the picture, we might imagine a point where we understand all of it. Fully accepting that that optimistic extrapolation introduces great uncertainty for the idea. But as I've fully accepted that, many times restated that I do, I don't make any overly ambitious claims. I haven't even quantified my estimate of the likelyhood that it will work, if it's 90%, 10%, 1% or a billionth of a billionth of a billoionth. So I don't have very much territory to defend."

Now post 95 paragraph four makes it very clear that from the start I admitted that my position was falsifiable, and that I might be wrong. I subsequently made it clear that I was inferring from what we DO know that physicalism will never explain consciousness. This is softer positions than Plantinga's or Swinburne's, who argue that it is a logical truth that materialism is false.

http://unfspb.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/an-interview-with-richard-swinburne/

philosophy.nd.edu/people/all/profiles/plantinga-alvin/documents/AGAINSTMATERIALISM.pdf -

KEY POINT FOLLOWS
---**Now if you feel that I can attach a probability of .9, or.99, (or greater???!!!!) to the proposition that physical causes are not sufficient to produce conscious states, and that I can be entirely rational in attaching such a probability to that proposition, you have conceded that it is entirely rational to reject materialism. If you concede that point, we've nothing more to argue about. That's all I wanted to prove.**---

In fact, when discussing worldviews I think it is the most that can be achieved. Decisive knock-down arguments are rare.

vii) Let's show where you haven't followed the argument. On my blog I dealt with explanations by reduction or scientific law. Helio - and I made it clear in point 7 in post 78 that I was responding to him - raised an important type of explanation I had not discussed; Emergence. So I explained why I don't see that as a helpful explanation either.
So you type
"You tried to argue that understanding of the individual parts could never explain the whole. I pointed out that QM gives you the explanation from the whole,
not the individual parts. So you were wrong, the end. You bringing in different types of explanations like reduction etc is merely a diversion. You were simply wrong, no point wasting so many key strokes trying to obscure that."

No it's not a diversion. I never said that Emergence was the only type of scientific explanation. If I say that everything that exists is either A or B or C, and you reply, well I can think of Z, which is not a B, I can safely ask - what is the relevance? If it is an A or a C you haven't produced a counter-example.
And in fact I didn't say that explanations were confined to Emergent states, or Physical Laws or Reductions. Just that these seemed to be most pertinent to our discussion.

(Nor is every Emergent State/ Entity comparable to the analogy of the watch. The point is (a) the whole is more than the sum of the parts. In fact the functions, roles and identities of the parts can be changed by the whole but (b) the whole is not an inexplicable mystery given our knowledge of the parts and their properties. A living cell is a very good example.)

"When physicists give a quantum mechanical description of something (assuming that we would like to use quantum physics to describe the workings of the mind, which I would certainly deem the best candidate know today) it describes the behaviour of all particles that make up the object. That description comes in the form of the all-particle wave function. The splitting-up into parts that you find troublesome, never occurs. You get a description that basically says 'everything together does THIS'. That means that the individual atoms, electrons, etc are in that description, but generally not individually distinguishable." Not at all like an emergent state then!

Anyway, is consciousness identical to a wave-function? Or does it supervene on a state described by QM? What is your point? Do you have one?

viii) I think you were correct and "measurement" was too crude a term. "Description" gets closer to my meaning. The sense I'm after is given in the Feynman quote above.
What follows from this? You spotted a mistake. A poor choice of words. Now how does this show that materialism is true?

ix) You seem to be quite irate that I should have an oinion on this at all. So once more, these are *not* my arguments. It would be horribly rude to dream up an interpretation of QM and then foist it on you having read a grand total of two books dedicated to the topic. And it would be insufferably arrogant to pronounce that science would not answer all our fundamental questions if I had not consulted and read scientists, and scientifically trained philosophers, who produced arguments to this end. Historians and other philosophers contribute to the argument.
So *I'm* not pronouncing on this topic. I'm assembling arguments produced by others that I have found convincing.

GV

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101. At 5:12pm on 16 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
In case you didn't get the hint - I'm not withdrawing from the discussion.

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102. At 5:56pm on 16 Jan 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Hi Peter

Long live the King!

Incase you're wondering, I haven't really been keeping up, just skimming the comments to get the gist. As I told you before I sort of struggle when it all gets scientifically technical. If this isn't actually a technical conversation then it goes to just how much of a struggle mine is!

However, when people start asking questions seeking the views of the audience I sit up and start to get interested again, real interested. And why? Well one of the things that interests me on this blog is to try and read a post with the same intention with which it was written, something which is not at all easy. But your motivation does interest me. So, a number of questions:

Why do you feel the need to name call? You've had plenty of opportunity to confirm that it is what most people suspect it to be on this blog, a kind of friendly communication, but to my knowledge you haven't taken it up. Indeed when Helio, earlier on, clarified his view on this, you clearly distanced yourself from him. Now it could just be me, but double sarcasm is pretty difficult to get, especially without a facial expression.

Why do you feel the need to claim a win in the argument? If yours is as watertight as you say, or Graham's as dumb as you suggest, then it should be fairly obvious to everyone, even a non scientist like me. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but you don't actually seem to have made an argument for what consciousness actually is, other than saying someday we should know. Of course maybe I've missed this too but I'll come back to that point in a minute.

But let's continue with the topic of motivation. The debate is about consciousness and therefore directly relates to the question of self awareness, self worth and self identity. So my next question Peter, is, who are you? I'll not add any clarification to what that question might mean at the moment, I'll let you make the next move regarding an answer. Should be interesting.

And now back to the concept of consciousness again and what it actually is or how it might be understood. Now remember, this has to be a "Science for Dummies" answer, in fact it probably has to be a "Science for Dumber than Dummies" answer when it comes to me, but here's what I want to know, how, beginning with the impersonal, do you think we can explain personality of each individual? Fire away? You have an audience.

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103. At 9:19pm on 16 Jan 2009, davidjagnew wrote:

Peter

I would like to know what quantum operator you are going to apply to the wave function from which you will derive intelligence, consciousness, epistemology. When you do this, and only when you do this, can you claim to have won the argument.

I will not be holding my breath.

David

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104. At 3:08pm on 18 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello people,

It is such a relief to see that the House of ERP has managed to avoid dynastic extinction. :)
There are now posts by three people addressed to me. One of them is pretty long and will take some time to fully address. For now let me take care of the single issue davidjagnew raises and one part of Grahams post.

David, your question seems to suggest that you expect an answer in the form of a single operator, right? If so, I'm going to give you something a bit different than what you were expecting.

Understanding what a system whose wave function you have determined usually involves applying several operators, for something as complicated as a thought pattern inside a brain I would imagine it involves the application of just about any know operator, to learn different bits from the application of each one. And it wouldn't be the data you get back from applying these operators that directly gives you an insight of what would be going on inside the brain. What comes out of the application of quantum operators would be truck loads of numbers from which you could proceed to assemble your insight. I'm not holding my breath any more than you that merely the application of a single operator would tell you about intelligence. Let me elaborate with an example.

Neurons firing involve transport of atoms, since the signals are carried not by the electrons like in a copper wire but by ions. So the momentum operator should tell us something of what is going on. That same neuron firing will require some energy, so let's apply the Hamiltonian to see what we can learn about the energetics of it. Maybe spin will tell us something (although I don't see how), so let's gather the data we can from that. Etc. Apply any operator you know of.

The application of any these single operators is going to give you information on one aspect of the brain. I.e. it gives you raw data to analyze. In the case of momentum you should be able to distinguish the flux of ions that makes up the neuron firing.
Then we give our patient a tiny bit of that white powder that causes him to have feelings of exhilaration. And we observe that that chemical causes a strong increase in the neuron activity we had just learned to disentangle from the numbers flood that came out of our quantum calculations. So then we have learned what chemistry in what part of the brain makes our guinea pig patient feel so exquisitely happy.

So in short, it would not be the application of a single operator that explains the brain but many, and it would not be the outcome of applying these operators that would directly give you any insight. They would provide the raw data that can be analyzed to get it.

That answers your question as I understood it. As I said in the beginning of my post, I wasn't entirely if this is what you were looking for (regardless of if you think it makes any sense at all). If you meant something rather different, then please elaborate in more detail what you meant to ask.

Graham,

There is one bit I want to get off my chest, before I answer petermorrows post and then yours. You say "Now, what is your position? " and then go on to quote something I had written earlier. I had noted I had mixed up my wording, corrected it before anyone else made posts in this thread. Then Bernards_Insight mentioned it, I pointed out the correction, he accepted my correction. Yet after several posts being dedicated to it (you said something about me not reading your arguments properly?), you go on to knock me over that "very, very odd post. " in its uncorrected form. How very big of you.

greets,
Peter

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105. At 09:59am on 19 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I'll post in three parts.

PK Tidying Up

Perhaps a little tidying up would be in order. I concede that your rhetoric and astringent comments have been fun to read, and I have always assumed that they were offered in that spirit. Once we have chipped away the acidic rhetoric and the remaining astringency has been dusted off I can find two substantial arguments in your posts.

1 That the progress of science gives us some reason to believe that one day we will be able to give a materialist account of consciousness.

2 Even if we cannot give a materialist explanation of consciousness
I We would have no reason to believe that consciousness is not physical
II We would have no reason to believe that materialism is false

In reply
1(a) it is not sufficient for materialists to assign a very low probability to [PropositionA] science will explain consciousness given our current evidence. It would follow that we should assign a high probability to [PropositionB] science will never explain consciousness given the evidence. It is important to remember that the evidence includes the progress of science.
(1b) the physical sciences have made progress examining the physical world. Some argument is needed to show how consciousness could yield to the methods of physical science
(1c) physical science may explain many of the conditions NECESSARY for human consciousness.
(1ci)For example there are many different structures and functions at work in each brain. So physical science can search for the physical conditions for different types of awareness.
There are computations necessary to give us three-dimensional vision or those necessary to enable us to balance and to catch balls etc etc. There are of course unconscious computational processes of our brains that do engage with constituent features of what we experience, and/or representations of them in terms of types and mathematical variables; and these processes are essential to our having conscious experiences at all, and are essential in other ways to the determination of our decisions and actions. Extracting data from the brain as you suggest may help us understand how the brain processes such information. Yet this does not bring us any closer to undertanding why conscious experience emerges.
(1cii)In fact, consider what you are proposing. If physical inputs to the brain, physical processes in the brain, and physical outputs from the brain are all that is necessary to explain human action, why are conscious experiences necessary *at all?* What role could they play? Not only is the experience unexplained, it now seems completely unnecessary.
(1ciii) Identifying the structures that allow us to become aware or that give our brains computational power will be theoretically illuminating and practically useful. But it will not explain how the physical can cause the mental. It will not supply the SUFFICIENT cause of consciousness. And that is precisely what is at issue. Why can matter produce mind?

2 (I) Many reasons have been given for believing that consciousness in not a physical fact or event. These include (A) introspection (B) the subjective quality of conscious experience (C) the essential privacy of mental states. The history of the arts and psychology reinforce this point. (D) that conscious experience is a unity in the sense that many features are experienced all at once by the subject. It is characteristic of laws and rules that they apply generally over a range of circumstances and must engage with types or classes of things or features that different circumstances have in common, and or variable quantities that can engage with mathematical rules. Conscious experience is a seamless whole. If we take a persons experience at any given moment we would find that the person grasps a wide variety of features in a single gestalt. Each set of circumstances grasped in conscious experience has combinations of features that are not of a type or class but are particular and perhaps unique to that set of circumstances. The physical world can be examined by laws and rules. Conscious experiences cannot. This is the only point you have critiqued in any detail. Accordingly I have restated it thoroughly.

II If certain evidence is less likely given a particular hypothesis that evidence counts against that hypothesis. Materialism cannot account for consciousness. If a hypothesis increases the likelihood of certain evidence then that evidence confirms that hypothesis. Consciousness is likelier on Theism than on Materialism. On the argument that I have presented Consciousness counts as evidence against materialism.

KERP

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106. At 10:22am on 19 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK Misquoting you in a "big" way

"There is one bit I want to get off my chest, before I answer petermorrows post and then yours. You say "Now, what is your position? " and then go on to quote something I had written earlier. I had noted I had mixed up my wording, corrected it before anyone else made posts in this thread. Then Bernards_Insight mentioned it, I pointed out the correction, he accepted my correction. Yet after several posts being dedicated to it (you said something about me not reading your arguments properly?), you go on to knock me over that "very, very odd post. " in its uncorrected form. How very big of you."

Once again you did not read what I posted. I quoted you saying

"The idea is simple. Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics. Where at some point that wasn't yet the case. Other parts of our consciousness are only partly explained from physics, or not at all yet. But the pattern of how we went from understanding nothing to understanding part of it bodes well for the future. If we optimistically extrapolate the picture, we might imagine a point where we understand all of it. Fully accepting that that optimistic extrapolation introduces great uncertainty for the idea. But as I've fully accepted that, many times restated that I do, I don't make any overly ambitious claims. I haven't even quantified my estimate of the likelyhood that it will work, if it's 90%, 10%, 1% or a billionth of a billionth of a billoionth. So I don't have very much territory to defend."

Bernard had problems with the phrase

"Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics."

You pointed out that you had rephrased and clarified
Let me hereby correct. "It would be better to replace the first two occurrences of "of our consciousness" with "the workings of our minds", to avoid any mix-up between consciousness and what you like to see as very very separate phenomenon of conscious experience.
So when I then say "a point where we understand all of it" I mean where we understand all aspects of the mind. Ones I had mentioned, like sensory perception, arousal and storage of memories in adhesive molecules, your favourite of personal experience, and any others not yet mentioned."

So let's look at the result...

The idea is simple. Some simple elements of THE WORKINGS OF OUR MIND are at present rather well explained purely from physics. Where at some point that wasn't yet the case. Other parts of THE WORKINGS OF OUR MIND are only partly explained from physics, or not at all yet. But the pattern of how we went from understanding nothing to understanding part of it bodes well for the future. If we optimistically extrapolate the picture, we might imagine a point WHERE WE UNDERSTAND ALL ASPECTS OF THE MIND.ONES I HAD MENTIONED LIKE SENSORY PERCEPTION AROUSAL AND STORAGE OF MEMORIES IN ADHESIVE MOLECULES YOUR FAVOURITE OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND MANY OTHERS NOT YET MENTIONED... Fully accepting that that optimistic extrapolation introduces great uncertainty for the idea. But as I've fully accepted that, many times restated that I do, I don't make any overly ambitious claims. I haven't even quantified my estimate of the likelyhood that it will work, if it's 90%, 10%, 1% or a billionth of a billionth of a billoionth. So I don't have very much territory to defend."

The post remains very, very odd. For you are still conceding that (until you quantify your estimate)the probability of a materialist explanation for consciousness could be "one billionth of a billionth of a billionth".
I'm more than happy with that probability. I'm happy with 10% or 1%. Any probability that makes the probability of consciousness on materialism less than 0.5 means that it is rational to reject materialism in the absence of other arguments for materialism. Which are in short supply.

The ---***KEY POINT FOLLOWS***---
should have given away why I felt the post was strange. I'll try to be less subtle next time.

KERP

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107. At 4:11pm on 19 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK On Emergent States.

Take an atomic nucleus. Individual particles don't have a wave function in a complex system.

(Although in some cases the joint system can be descibed by the product of wave functions of the two particles or by superpositions of products of them. In other cases the wave function of the joint system cannot be represented by superpositions of products of individual wave functions, although it can be approximated by them. Have I understood this correctly?)

In any case the wave function of an atomic nucleus depends on the interactions of its protons and neutrons. The emergence of the wave function isn't surprising given what we know about the properties of protons, neutrons, their interactions and what we know about QM. The parts need be considered no longer – what matters is the whole.

So we are talking about an emergent state. I don't even think that's remotely controversial. And unless you can show how the many-particle wave function could give rise to acts of awareness, it wasn't even worth debating this point.

In any case, my substantial points are in post 105 "Tidying Up".

KERP

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108. At 4:49pm on 19 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham, petermorrow,

Any blog time available to me last 24h I've spent on the confession threads (maybe I shouldn't have). Your last three posts do seem to alleviate the need to go into the lengthy one a bit back and my reply would also take care of things addressed by petermorrow. I will try to reply to all of it no later than tomorrow evening.

And while I was emailing Helio, he said that he wold be deeply honoured to have a crowned head present at the bloggers Darwin Day dinner on the 7th. He's not alone.

greets,
Peter

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109. At 5:27pm on 19 Jan 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Hi Peter

Thank you for considering my post, no rush, I know how limited, and precious, time can be, and how much of it can be consumed in posting here.

I don't think you need worry too much about the confession thread either (I for one wasn't offended, but maybe that's just because I'm a Prod!! I probably liked Father Ted for the same reason, and then realized one day that so much of Protestantism is equally strange!) although a demonstration of sensitivity towards what one writes and how it might be 'heard' will always be well received. Maybe we can all learn from your willingness to apologize.

I see that you and Helio would be deeply honored at the thought of a king in attendance at the meal, interesting, the only true King I know is called Jesus, but he probably won't be there! I see too that you correspond with Helio by email, are you sure he believes it's you, he told me once that he didn't trust testimony! Anyway, looking forward to reading your reply.

regards

Peter

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110. At 6:26pm on 19 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello petermorrow,

As Dylan_Dog and Helio were guys I occasionally had dinner with during my stay in Belfast, Helio has some corroboration. Anyone who mentions the things we discussed over the previous dinner in an email, has a 50% chance of being me, based on that. And the King tells us that a 0.5 chance is acceptable (boy oh boy is the King in for a big bad spanking over that ill-reasoning lateron).

You could get at least the same level of trust/faith/confidence in who Helio/DD/peterJhenderson/me are if you joined too. The invitation is open to non-believers and believers of any brand.:)

Peter

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111. At 8:26pm on 19 Jan 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
PeterM

I have met PeterK on several occasions and he is indeed real! nothing "supernatural" was involved, well not if you include the divine oysters Rockefeller!so nothing to with "testimony" as such.

Incidentally the only true King that I have ever known was King Eric of Cantona, anyway Jesus will be there as he is everywhere-isn't he?

Regards

DD

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112. At 11:44am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
I'll have to post in parts as the darn site is up the creek again

I double dare you to come after me on epistemology.

(And you may want to keep in mind that I raised the issue of rationality - not knowledge. That is to say the difference between what is reasonable to believe and a strong truth claim).

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113. At 11:45am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Now if you consider Pr(h)>0.5, and you want to proportion your belief to the evidence, then it is reasonable (at the very least) to believe the proposition. That much is trivially true. And obvious.

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114. At 11:45am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Now perhaps you have in mind something like theory comparison (although I sincerely doubt it). What we are looking at here are likelihood comparisons. If Pr (e/h1) > Pr (e/h2) then (e) confirms (h1). We don't even need probabilities greater than (0.5) for this sort of confirmation.

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115. At 11:46am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Ideally we could raise the likelihood to over (0.5). But this isn't a simple Bayesinan account. Likelihoods don't tell you what to believe or how to act or which hypotheses are probably true; they merely tell you how to compare the degree to which the
evidence supports the various hypotheses you wish to consider. (It's helpful as it means that we don't have to quibble over prior probabilities).

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116. At 11:46am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:

Furthermore, improbable things happen all the time. Take Elliott Sober's reply to Dembski's use of Fischer (in an Article in the "Quarterly Review of Biology")
According to Fisher, if H says that
an observation E is very improbable, and E occurs, then a disjunction is true - either H is false or something very improbable has occurred. Dembski would want to take vanishingly low probability of certain observations as disconfirmation of the Theory of Evolution (TE). Sober points out that this isn't good enough. The disjunction does follow but it
does not follow that TE is false. As many statisticians have recognized perfectly plausible hypotheses often
say that the observations have low probability. This is especially common when a probabilistic hypothesis addresses a large body of data.

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117. At 11:48am on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:

If we make a large number of observations it may turn out that H confers on each observation a high probability, although H confers
on the conjunction of observations a tiny probability. If the likelihood of (e) (the observations) is greater on (h1) than (h2) then (e) confirms (h1) over (h2). If there is no difference between the likelihoods, then (e) doesn't count against (h1).

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118. At 12:12pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
So maybe you want to argue

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119. At 12:17pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
as in post 83

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120. At 12:17pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
(this is getting ridiculous)

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121. At 12:17pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
(but oddly addictive)

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122. At 12:18pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
anyway as I was saying about post 83

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123. At 12:18pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
that the likelihood of an explanation of consciousness on materialism

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124. At 12:21pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
hang on I forgot my pint

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125. At 12:21pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
my point, I forgot my point

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126. At 12:39pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Okay, I'll quit and try again later. At least you should get a laugh from that.

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127. At 12:49pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
In the meantime I managed to put the whole reply on

http://mereorthodoxy.blogspot.com/

GV

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128. At 1:46pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I'll try to copy and paste the reply later. It's second down on my blog. I am *not* typing that out again.

Feb 7th may clash with anniversary plans, but you don't get many opportunities to celebrate Darwin Day. I'll need to see what the baby-sitters schedule.

It occurs to me that you've been deluged at the moment on this thread. Take your time with replies.

GV

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129. At 1:52pm on 20 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Oh, I should mention that post 110 is a complete misunderstanding. Read the reply on the blog.

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130. At 10:41pm on 20 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello guys,

I'm gonna take some time now to answer some of what I have on my plate in this thread. Doubtful if I'll get through all of it tonight.

As promised, petermorrows post 102 is up first.

Name calling. Yes, I've done a good deal of that. It's probably that I channel annoyance into name calling. There are some aspects about Grahams way of debating that annoy me. These include things like argument by url posting rather than presenting a reasoned point (after repeated request to him to just present his arguments, summarized in his own words), argument by author name rather than presenting a reasoned point (after repeated request to him to just present his arguments, summarized in his own words), bringing in all sorts of stuff without stating which prior argument that is supposed to support. That's meant as an explanation btw, not a justification.
Let me note that in Grahams last substantial posts (like the 'tidying up' ones) he did at times clearly note his points. Much appreciated, more like that is good.

You said
"you don't actually seem to have made an argument for what consciousness actually is, other than saying someday we should know."
and
"And now back to the concept of consciousness again and what it actually is or how it might be understood. Now remember, this has to be a "Science for Dummies" answer, in fact it probably has to be a "Science for Dumber than Dummies" answer when it comes to me, but here's what I want to know, how, beginning with the impersonal, do you think we can explain personality of each individual? Fire away? You have an audience."

You are correct that I have not stated what I think consciousness is. Because I hardly know, and those who know better don't know it very well either at present. But I'll bring up the drug example again to tell you in what direction I think it would go.
Would you say that a state of extacy would be a part of consciousness? I'd say it would, I don't see how an unconscious being could say "I feel super-terrific today!". Consider how drugs can induce a state of excaty. Highly complicated chemistry is very much part of that. This is something Graham agrees with, he accepts correlation between physical states and mental states. Would you agree that chemistry is part of the explanation of that state of extacy? If so, then there is a small crack in the idea that more than physics must be involved. Let's take it a small step further. The effects of these drugs have been mapped to heightened activity in certain parts of the brain, i.e. loads of small electric currents. So we have another small piece in the puzzle of understanding the state of the extatic dope head.
We haven't got any detail yet. If you asked the dopey what he was thinking of, no electrodes strapped to his head would at present allow you to read the answer of an oscilloscope. But we did learn a few small bits, on how to determine if someone is in a state of extacy, without needing to talk to him/her. Give the brain activity scans of several people to the medic in the next room and he/she could say which one had been taking the drugs that make them happy. So contrary to what Graham says, I would say that science has already offered an explanation for a small piece of consciousness, i.e. drug-induce extacy. As far as we understand drug-induced extacy, it's all in terms of chemistry, electric currents, etc. Where is theism in all this? Graham says it has a stronger case than materialism. I fail 100% to see why. I'd say materialism has the day all to itself on that one. There is no need to bring in any theism. Materialism seems a pretty good, to some extent even sufficient explanation.

At some point we didn't know how to synthesize the chemicals inside prozac, if we had know how to make them 400 years ago, we wouldn't have had a clue how they worked. So we've made progress. The total progress sofar has consisted of many small steps, sometimes bigger steps. Seems a very rewarding way to go further. I thoroughly expect more steps to be made that will allow us to understand consciousness in more detail than the very broad things we understand about it now. Suppose you're confronted by the prospect of having to do something you find absolutely repugnant and that you just won't do. Your mind rebels at the very idea when it is presented to you. Keep in mind that we can read the extacy in your mind after the drugs you took. Are you saying that we will never be able to pinpoint the overwhelming feeling of 'Absolutely not!!' inside your brain? If you thought that that might be possible, then we could read your "NO!' thought from an oscilloscope.
I don't know if you go along with what I wrote just there? But if you do, would you still say that science can't crack more and more of our consciousness, and offer a sufficient explanation for it?
You also mentioned personality. That would involve uncovering a huge amount of things from someones mind. My guess of that working is fairly small. Not because I think it's fundamentally impossible, but technologically just too challenging.

So that is the direction I'm thinking in when I say that I wouldn't rule out that some day we might understand most of our consciousness sufficiently as a physical phenomenon. I'm fully aware of how far we are from that, and that it might never work. But unlike Graham, I won't rule out that at some point it would.

You also asked who I am, without elaborating further. My usual answer when someone asks me that is 'I'm Peter'. :D Maybe you will give me some more idea of what you mean by asking?

greets,
Peter

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131. At 10:45pm on 20 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hi Graham,

"Feb 7th may clash with anniversary plans, but you don't get many opportunities to celebrate Darwin Day. I'll need to see what the baby-sitters schedule."

And only one year do you get the opportunity to celebrate the bi-centenary. :)

greets,
Peter

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132. At 00:13am on 21 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail once more, let me reply to post 105.

Point 1 you attribute to me is indeed what I think, point 2 not fully. It's a bit stronger than what I think. I'm not saying failure would not give any doubt about materialism. I'm saying it's not the final proof that materialism can't explain it.

In reply to you replies:
1(a) Excellent, the sum of chances should add up to one. And?
1(b) Some aspects of consciousness have already yielded to science Graham, see the example of drug-induced happiness in my reply to petermorrow.
1(ci) You say
"Yet this does not bring us any closer to undertanding why conscious experience emerges. "
On the contrary. People on prozac benefit from how it gives them happy feelings already. As I said in my reply to petermorrow, it is one where materialism already has the day pretty much to itself (although it could do with understanding things in far greater detail). Or are you now going to argue that the thought of 'I feel happy' is not part of conscious thinking?
1(cii) "If physical inputs to the brain, physical processes in the brain, and physical outputs from the brain are all that is necessary to explain human action, why are conscious experiences necessary *at all?*"
Huh? I've been saying that I think the physical processes and the conscious experience might well be one and the same. The question seems to indicate you've not grasped that after all our discussion sofar?
1(ciii) "Identifying the structures that allow us to become aware or that give our brains computational power will be theoretically illuminating and practically useful. But it will not explain how the physical can cause the mental. It will not supply the SUFFICIENT cause of consciousness. And that is precisely what is at issue. Why can matter produce mind?"
Ah, the King of Empty Repeated Postulates is firmly back on his throne! After the bit about usefulness comes the statement that it won't be enough. Explain in more detail rather than just postulating, FSM dammit!!

And there is lots more ERPing in what you write under point 2.
(A) introspection is said to be indication that consciousness is not just a physical phenomenon. Not one bit of explanation offered in support of it, you KoERP.
(B) the subjective quality of conscious experience is offered as indication that consciousness is not purely a physical phenomenon. In point D you said something about how physical laws should be general as the only thing in support of that. I agree with the latter, but fortunately the synapses that bounce around your brain are governed by the same rules of physics as the synapses in my brain. No two trees look alike, but that is not an indication that they don't grow according to the same physical laws. Same with conscious experience.
(C) "the essential privacy of mental states. The history of the arts and psychology reinforce this point"
Please elaborate.
And in point (D) you might want to hold off on the self-congratulation of how thoroughly you restated it. First there's that math requirement again in that sentence about rules and laws. Can you explain why we need to introduce math into e.g. the rules in genetics that determine which features can be inherited? I see no need for that. I think that sentence was a lot of hot air.
And then that paragraph leads up to you saying "The physical world can be examined by laws and rules. Conscious experiences cannot." while what comes before that in the paragraph doesn't seem to support that at all. So, more ERPing?

And then finally in point 2-II you show yourself the KingoERP (while also using strange language like 'evidence is more likely') with

"Materialism cannot account for consciousness. If a hypothesis increases the likelihood of certain evidence then that evidence confirms that hypothesis. Consciousness is likelier on Theism than on Materialism. On the argument that I have presented Consciousness counts as evidence against materialism."

Pfffrrttt!! This is the biggest ERP yet. First you speak of evidence, you have not presented any evidence for theism, or reasoned argument for that matter, yet theism is pronounced more likely out of the blue sky, and that ERP is then supposed to be evidence against materialism. That truly is the thought of a King of Kings of ERP.

That's all I have time for today. I'll rip you a new rear lower body cavity over your probability fallacies later.

greets,
Peter

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133. At 10:10am on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
I'll throw up a longer reply this evening or tomorrow. I'll try to deal with the postulates that remain "empty" (although I've gone into quite some detail on most of them, I haven't pulled it together into a coherent whole. So, while I'm getting fond of the title, I'll try to get rid of some of the ERP. )
In the meantime, as I suspected, under all the fulmination lies a mind that does grasp the case against his preferred world-view.
I also should have said that your commitment to materialism was "pre-theoretical" not "pre-rational". Obviously if the commitment follows from your experience as a researcher, your education, the testimony of those you admire, etc etc, then the commitment is entirely rational. Of course other people with similar experinces reach different conclusions,but that's life.
By "pre-theoretical" I just mean that it guides and shapes your thinking. So the evidence, or what you experience could change your commitments at some stage.

I should also (again) remind you that my argument is an inference from what we know about the material world and what we know about experience. All inferential conclusions are underdetermined by the evidence. So whilst I would *love* to claim that I have a final disproof of materialism, I don't. (For example, as I noted in my blog, our way of thinking about nature shifted radically C16th-C17th. So you could hold out hope for another shift that would reshape the way we think about mind and material.)

KERP

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134. At 10:19am on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Oh, if (c) is more likely on (T) than (M), then (c) confirms (T) over (M). That's trivially true.
Of course you could argue that (M) has a higher prior probability than (T). Can't see how, but you could have a go.
You could also argue that (a,b,d&e) are more probable on (M) than (T).
I'm not saying that consciousness settles the issue. And (M) and (T) aren't the only options.
But consciousness supports metaphysical worldviews over materialism.

GV

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135. At 10:51am on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Oh, and I am waiting with bated breath for your thoughts on rational degrees of belief and inductive probabilities.

I've been thinking of renaming you "Dutch Book". You haven't gone there yet, but...

GV

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136. At 11:20am on 21 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Peter;

This probability and scientific stuff is a mystery to me, but I'd like to make a few points on your first of the two posts above.

"Would you say that a state of extacy would be a part of consciousness?"

No. I would say that it is a mode of consciousness.

"I don't see how an unconscious being could say "I feel super-terrific today!""

Indeed. In other words, a state of ecstacy is not "a part of consciousness", suggesting that consciousness is made of parts, and if we can explain one part, we should be able to explain the others.

Rather, a state of ecstasy is a mode of consciousness, but already presupposes a "consciousness" to be in such a mode.

In short, explaining a mode of consciousness in no way explains the existence of consciousness, not even in part. It merely explains how something already in existence can be effected by external forces.

It is like saying that WIND explains the existence of a flying kite.

It doesn't...it just explains why the kite is flying.

Similarly, we can explain how consciousness might be affected by physical elements, but none of those physical elements can't explain there being consciousness to be affected.

"he accepts correlation between physical states and mental states."

Yes, true...there certainly seems to be a correlation between two different modes of being.

"Would you agree that chemistry is part of the explanation of that state of extacy?"

Yes. it can be correlated to a state of consciousness...but not to "being conscious".

and even so...the state of consciousness is not itself chemical...we are already presupposing that it is something else.

"If so, then there is a small crack in the idea that more than physics must be involved."

No there isn't. There is a small crack in the idea that physics IS NOT involved, but then no one is arguing that. We are arguing that physical elements DO have an effect...but that what they effect is not itself physical.

You can empirically grasp the effective physical and chemical elements...but the only way you KNOW that they have an effect is by appealing to the state of consciousness that is effected...so you are already presupposing an EFFECTOR, which can be empirically grasped, and an AFFECTED.

Now, is the AFFECTED empirically grasped? The only way you can grasp that the AFFECTED has been affected is through consciousness......the only thing that can be emprically grasped is the EFFECTOR, and you already appeal to a non-empirical element when you states that anything is AFFECTED.

In short...while arguing that chemicals AFFECT consciousness, you also seem to be arguing that the only way to empirically grasp consciousness is through the chemicals that affect it.

You can say that chemicals CAUSE a state of ecstasy, but in doing so you are already appealing to a non-empirical CAUSED...unless you can measure and emprically grasp "the state of ecstasy"...which you cannot.

Really all you are arguing is that the material world EFFECTS consciousness...but in doing so you are already presupposing a non-empirical consciousness to be AFFECTED

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137. At 12:16pm on 21 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Bernards_Insight,

That is a very interesting post. Many thanks for that. Let me go over that in a less 'quick scanning mode' than I just did and get back to you. Although from just quick scanning I think you make an excellent point.
I will get back to you after I've addressed a host of other posts waiting for me in this thread. May take week or so before I'm there (presently only worked up to post 105).

greets,
Peter

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138. At 12:28pm on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Bernard
Exactly. Glad what I said wasn't totaly empty.
We've always known physical states were correlated with mental states. Drink to much wine, you get addled and think muzzily. Hit me on the head with a brick, and consciousness takes a break. Hit me on the shin with the same brick, and I feel sore.
Of course refining the correlations is very important. So for example, in Autism Studies, Baron-Cohen Chris and Uta Frith have suggested that there may be a neuro-physiological structure that allows us to "mentalise" - predict anothers mental states. If this is not functioning correctly in individuals with an ASD, not only will diagnosis become easier, but we can help develop better compensatory strategies.
But correlation of two radically different types of event is not causation. Behaviourist psychologists
correlated behaviour with "theoretical" mental states. Very crudely, "pain" was defined as wincing and saying "ouch", nursing the wound etc. But that’s obviously not what it means to be in pain. There is a "feeling" that defines pain. This was not an adequate account of our inner life.
Now PK feels that he has made progress to understanding consciousness by adding knowledge of brain states to behaviour. But a brain state is no more a "felt quality" than behaviour. It does not describe, let alone explain, our inner life - what we experience. What makes pain painful is what we feel.
And our inner life is not identical with a physical state. Beings with very different nervous systems can experience pain. And I suppose we could create a conscious artificial intelligence that could feel pain. But not on a physicalist definition of consciousness! The physical states would be different and we cannot make reference to the experience or feelings of the different beings – because consciousness is a physical state. To put this in other terms - what gives unity to the class of pains?
And we're only talking about pain. Ecstasy comes in many, many shades -even if you're on drugs. Poets struggled for generations to recreate their feelings in others. But what was ecstasy to one was not to another. Poetry could not capture ecstasy, never mind the word "ecstasy". Explicate that explinandum!

So how on earth do you get your correlations off the ground for anything other than generalised abstractions from what we actually experience? "Mentalising" can be reduced to a prediction concerning anothers actions. But even if the theory is correct (it's speculative)
that does not even begin to capture the difference in experience between a High Functioning Autitistic and a "neuro-typical" like me!

KERP/GV or whatever your bias prefers

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139. At 12:55pm on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I'll leave off posting for a week or so, given the current deluge. This discussion is opening up quite a bit PK. If you could persuade Dylan Dog to jump in and Helio to re-engage, we could make a lot more progress. (eg.You seem to "get" Bernard's way of stating the same points that I'm trying to make. Helio and I seem to "read" each other better than you and me.)

I know you hate urls, so I won't give any. But to be accused of "quite strange language" when I'm using terms standard to discussing rational degrees of belief and probabilities came as a shock. I could copy click and paste a thousand examples of this sort of language. Maybe we're going to hit a breakdown in communcation here. I'm talking about degrees of belief, not frequencies etc.

Anyway others seem to be jumping on, so I'll *try* to keep out of the way for a bit.

GV

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140. At 1:06pm on 21 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
In other words, maybe your not as narrow minded as you seem.

Poking and prodding you on QM is actually helping me understand it a bit more, so I'm grateful. The only reason that I ever read anything about it was in books I read at college
(a) Postmodernists were using it to back up their claims about rationality (b) Empiricists and anti-realists were using it as an argument to establish that we cannot infer to unobservables
(c) New-Agers were using it to establish their world view

I just needed to know enough to know these claims were silly. That's as far as my interest went. Maybe that clears the air a little, I don't know.

Graham

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141. At 5:22pm on 21 Jan 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
"If you could persuade Dylan Dog to jump in"

Sorry Graham, although I am following the discussion I have no interest in taking part! PeterK is the Quantum Physicist! In any case I don't see why you have to delve around in QM to prove the existence of your god(QM is beloved of Hindu mystics, new agers etc etc, precisely because it is so difficult to understand). Not so long ago GODDIDIT! was the only answer that was allowed not that has been squeezed and squeezed so much so that intelligent theists are left delving into QM.

Anyway...another time...

Regards

DD

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142. At 5:57pm on 21 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
That's saying the rosary 100 times for bearing false witness DD:

"PeterK is the Quantum Physicist"

I did Materials Science, not Physics. Although since the first year of my PhD, I have been moving more and more into electronic structure calculations to the point where that is now the main course of my research.

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143. At 6:38pm on 21 Jan 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Hi Peter

Thankyou for your reply, I do genuinely appreciate it.

Just one point about the name calling, but not actually the name calling itself. You say you wish Graham would just present his argument; that is something which has been mentioned before on the blog, by you, and others, while at the same time questioning the individuals academic experience, knowledge and expertise, e.g for example saying things like, 'and how much reading have you done on the subject? (that was not an exact quote, just something I noticed) Now it seems to me that we can't have it both ways. (or perhaps actually we can, present our own arguments, quote others and explain the depth or otherwise of our academic experience that is) Anyway a lot of the debates, particularly the science ones contain a lot of web links - you're being a bit rough, Peter, are you not? However, enough of that, it all seems to have calmed down and I think we all respect one another.

Now, consciousness.

So we don't actually know what it is. We're probably all agreed on that, however what you seem to be suggesting, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that consciousness is merely various types of brain activity, and what we must seek to do is to identify in increasing detail which parts of the brain are active when particular feelings are had. Now that's all very well, I think I said way back in the distant past somewhere that I didn't think consciousness was something independent of brain function, I mean I need my brain to think, to process etc. and obviously this (brain function) can be observed. But, it's one thing to identify what caused the feeling and where in the brain that activity is, it is quite another thing to observe the feeling. Surely what we are observing are symptoms? And that brings me to my next point.

In the drug example, and of course we know that drugs affect a person's emotional state, you said a person might say, "I feel super terrific today", and that brain activity can be observed, OK, with you so far, but, you also say that we don't know what dopey is thinking of, again, with you (and if this dummy is with you, you've explained it well!) Now, one, don't you think it's going to be pretty difficult to ever accurately discern what a person is actually thinking, from, observing the brain activity which happens when he is thinking, and two, and this is real important, what are you going to do with the little word 'I' in the "I feel super terrific today' sentence? Who is the 'I', Peter? How can the 'I' have a concept of feeling terrific, why is there a concept of personality or more to the point 'me'? How do you, after having observed countless examples of brain function and having identified the areas of the brain responsible for happy and sad and sympathetic and fearful and so on, explain the the 'I' who is feeling them. It's the 'I' that I want to know about, and I'm not convinced that explaining (and BTW I think it's a good thing that science has explained it) what the brain does and which part of the brain does it, is the same thing, (as explaining 'I') not unless you are going to say that 'I' am just, however it is manifest, merely a complex collection of brain states.

There is much, much more to discuss here, not least the fact that if everything is, in the end, the activity of particles, or whatever, at varying stages of complexity, then while we are using words like personality or, for example, beauty, we do not really mean personality or beauty in any substantial way, and we most certainly do not mean that there is an 'I'. That then was why I asked, who are you. I already know that others call you Peter (and of course I like the name) but, what of your sense of self, your aspirations, your identity, the meaning you make of the world and yourself, the stories you tell yourself, the reason you get up in the morning, or respect others, or have moral values, or love or cry, or laugh. I know that you do all these things and I know that your brain (see how we cannot escape the personal pronoun) is active in all these things but why Peter, why? Please understand I am not asking for personal details, I am not prying, but I am asking what you think 'I' is.

Is there room in your model for answers to these kinds of questions?

And of course we haven't even begun to discuss the implications which ensue from our definition of self.

Anyway thanks for taking the time to read this.

Regards

Peter

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144. At 10:10am on 22 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
DD
(i) The debate here doesn't involve QM all that much.(ii) I was just pointing out to PK that I know that by reading a bit on the topic I'm not even close to being slightly well informed compared to research scientists. Trying to pour oil on troubled waters, if that's the right saying. If we both collect "Bushisms" we've obviously similar senses of humour. And Bernard's argument is almost identical to mine, but he got Bernards'(and he's into scholastic philosophy) So I think we've been talking past each other, and I think we can get on better. (iii) QM doesn't feature in any "proof" or "argument" I know of. But, for example, take Johnny Wilkinson's pronouncements on QM. So it's helpful to know enough to explain to a Church member or student what he's trying to say, and why I don't take it too seriously. (iv) In any case, the QM stuff is pretty cool. And I learn quite a lot from PK's corrections etc.

GV

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145. At 10:18am on 22 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
DD

re. "GODDIDIT"

Which examples from the history of science do you have in mind?
Newton's is the only one I can think of at 10.16AM, but I haven't had my coffee yet. The whole Paley v Darwin thing is far from clear cut. There were so many Christian theists supporting Darwin, and Atheists opposing, and no-one got uptight so much about God's existence so much as man's priveleged status that the whole episode gives me a headache just trying to put al the pieces together. The Galileo incident wasn't about a God of the Gaps.
Which examples did you have in mind?

GV

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146. At 5:37pm on 24 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello guys,

Let me take care of a few things on my (it appears ever lengthening) todo list in this thread. I'll take care of things out of order, addressing a few things first that would likely move towards winding down issues, rather than answering one and possibly getting three extra back in return.

First what Graham said about him and Helio reading each other better then him and me.

"You seem to "get" Bernard's way of stating the same points that I'm trying to make. Helio and I seem to "read" each other better than you and me."

Yes, overwhelmingly yes. I voiced some nags about your way of debating and indeed Bernards way is so much the opposite of what my complaints to you were.
His post was clearly articulated, stating what his arguments are rather than linking to 12 pages of pdfs or websites and saying 'My position is as in those', or rather than citing an authors name and not saying what the argument advanced by that author is. And indicating clearly what bit is related to what bit I said earlier. I have spent quite some time going back multiple posts to see where the thing you brought up came from or what it was supposed to undo in what I had said earlier.

So you may well soon lose your crown. And after you are deposed, the throne of this thread will be occupied by Bernard, King or Clearly Reasoned and Articulated Posts.
But there are positive sides to that. Becoming a commoner will undoubtedly give you a better chance of freeing up time for the Darwin Day dinner the 7th. Finding a baby sitter for the heir to the throne would no doubt have involved extensive vetting procedures, whereas now you just need to arrange a normal baby sitter. Joining us?

After the teasing some kinder words. I do recall bits in your posts that overlapped with some of what Bernard said (not to indicate that I agree with all he said btw, I'll get to that later). To the degree that those bits overlapped and I agree with Bernard, I'll agree with you too. Reason I hadn't done so sofar is that I hadn't clearly distinguished those bits in the sea of other stuff. I did a word count of Bernards three posts to me and yours (including those you had referred to on your own blog). 602 words for Bernard, 13467 for you. Somewhere within that verbosity ratio of over 22 I lost a few bits.

greets,
Peter

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147. At 7:24pm on 24 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Then the QM stuff as last bit before I'm off for the evening.

If you read my post 130 to petermorrow, you won't find any QM being mentioned in it. And yet that gives a better idea of what I suspect a successful scientific effort to understand consciousness would look like. Detailing the chemistry involved, mapping the intricate currents flowing through the brain etc. So why roll out the heavy tool of QM, as I did? Well, for the very reason that it is the heaviest tool in the arsenal. Let's compare some different models that can be used for the same thing first, ie. the flowing of water down a slope.

We can capture the behaviour a small numbers of water molecules in a QM simulation. Computionally very expensive, but possible. We could insert the forces that gravity exerts on the molecules into the simulation and see how the tiny bit of water flows down a slope. Problem here is that all the combined computing power in the world today would still not let you simulate an amount of water visible with the naked eye. But of whatever amount of water we can simulate, we would know how it flows plus anything else.

We could also assume the water to flow as thin slices, with the pace of how those slices slide past each other depending only on the viscosity of the water. And then we can calculate the flow of a river of water on the back of an envelope, literally. So if flow behaviour is al we care about, we don't need QM, we have a much more practical shortcut available. But as far as water flowing is concerned, that simpler model would give you pretty much the same that the big expensive QM simulation would give you.

With the brain it's the same story. I hold out some hope for that to be explained in terms of ionic currents, adhesive molecules attaching themselves to proteins etc. If you read my post to davidjagnew, what I'm describing there is taking the QM bit to a coarser level of such currents etc and going from there. The only reason for me to roll out the heaviest nuke in the theoretical arsenal is so that I won't be caught with my pants down if something else turns out to be involved that is not covered by the synapses, molecules etc approach, but that would be captured by QM. A bit like using a battle ship to kill a small fish, rather overdoing it. But it is the surest way to make certain the fish is dead in the end.
Hopefully, there would be 'shortcuts' in understanding consciousness using synapses etc as elementary building blocks. That would make a still humongously difficult effort more likely to succeed than if you had to do things in QM terms.

Leaving out QM out of our discussion about thinking doesn't mean it has to go altogether. As you say you're interested in it, let me repeat the link to an interesting article about it:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=100-years-of-quantum-mysteries

Another page by religious nutters (who want to claim QM is foretold by the bible) mentions an interesting experiment with light. If you skip the christian rubbish portion, you may also find it interesting:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Apologetics/PSCF3-00Zoeller-Greer.html

And finally, there was the three part BBC series 'Atom'. I don't know if you saw that? If not, I recorded it. Bring a large enough USB key to the Darwin Dinner to copy it and enjoy, if you like.

greets,
Peter

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148. At 9:25pm on 25 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
testing

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149. At 9:36pm on 25 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Graham,

Let me address your various posts on probabilities and what conclusions to draw from them. That should cover your posts 106, 113 to 129, 134 and the all in one version of many of those on your own blog.

At first I thought we had another big disagreement on our hands, as you wrote in post 106

"I'm happy with 0.1 or 0.01. Any probability that makes the probability of consciousness on materialism less than 0.5 means that it is rational to reject materialism in the absence of other arguments for materialism."

That seemed very wrong to me, and indeed bits of what you wrote later do seem to me as if you realized that. The essential bit being when you say

"So maybe you want to argue (as in post 83) that the likelihood of an explanation of consciousness on materialism estimated smaller than 0.5 could still leave materialism as a rational position regarding consciousness. Technically I agree, as it happens. What you would have to do is show that all other hypotheses have an even lower chance of explaining the evidence."

Apart from you either putting the burden of evidence on the wrong foot (I don't have to show them lower, they must show their case to be high) or ERPing again (claiming in other posts that the case for theism is indeed so strong), we seem to agree. Or maybe we don't. Let me just give you my thoughts to let you see if you agree.

Sofar, I have held out two scenarios of what consciousness will turn out to be and you have offered one. Others may offer still others, but sofar the probability pie is set to be divided between saying
- physics will explain it (my optimism)
- it will always remain unexplained to us (my pessimism)
- the case for explanation from theism is strong (your ERPing)

I consider the last option your ERPing as I don't recall you ever presenting anything good in support of it. In the section 'But how does Theism Help?' in the first post on your blog you say 'Theism provided quite a neat answer.' when actually the best you manage in that section is rolling out the tired old design argument in new verbal wrapping paper when you said

"Why should mathematics and nature conform? asked the Aristotlelians. Because they have the same author”

And indeed you seem to be moving away from the case for theism as more recently you have switched to claiming 'metaphysical' explanation, rather than calling your explanation theism. Also, the arguments you mentioned in post 105, like introspection and the subjective quality of conscious experience, do nothing to necessitate theism.

So with the case for theism sofar not being supported at all, it's between throwing our hands in the air and saying 'We'll never know, give up forever' and trying, regardless of whether the chances are good or not. As you said, even if the chance of success was less than 0.5, it could be well worth it.
Suppose that research involving thousands of people, costing a few trillion pounds and a few dozen millennia of man hours offered a one in three chance of understanding conscious thinking? Go for it. Not all in once, don't halt the construction of all schools and hospitals for it tomorrow. Just dedicate some portion of our resources to it, as is being done.

If you were to convince me that theism has the remaining two out of three chance, then that would chance the picture. I would be less enthusiastic to put the resources into it then. But the If in 'If you were to convince me' is an awfully big if.

greets,
Peter

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150. At 9:41pm on 25 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Apart from Bernards post 136 and petermorrows post 143, which are still on my todo list, have I skipped anyone else?

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151. At 11:00am on 26 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
PK

I'm more than happy to hand over my crown to Bernard. We seldom disagree. And he's way smarter than me.

To deal with the probabilities...

" "I'm happy with 0.1 or 0.01. Any probability that makes the probability of consciousness on materialism less than 0.5 means that it is rational to reject materialism in the absence of other arguments for materialism."
"That seemed very wrong to me, and indeed bits of what you wrote later do seem to me as if you realized that."

The key word here is "rational" - less than a strong truth claim, more a case of being within your rational "rights" . If the odds of an explanation of consciousness on materialism are vanishingly small, then a person would be reasonable to reject materialism, even in the absence of an alternative. Consciousness is a significant datum.

However the point I was discussing at this stage was not the rationality of materialism. The paragraph that I discussed read -

"The idea is simple. Some simple elements of our consciousness are at present rather well explained purely from physics. Where at some point that wasn't yet the case. Other parts of our consciousness are only partly explained from physics, or not at all yet. But the pattern of how we went from understanding nothing to understanding part of it bodes well for the future. If we optimistically extrapolate the picture, we might imagine a point where we understand all of it. Fully accepting that that optimistic extrapolation introduces great uncertainty for the idea. But as I've fully accepted that, many times restated that I do, I don't make any overly ambitious claims. I haven't even quantified my estimate of the likelyhood that it will work, if it's 90%, 10%, 1% or a billionth of a billionth of a billoionth. So I don't have very much territory to defend."

I initially thought that you were discussing the proposition -
"conscious states have merely physical causes".
However, re-reading, it seems that you were discussing the proposition
"the physical sciences will explain consciousness".
The fact remains that if the probability is less than 0.5, then the complement is over 0.5. If I should proportion my belief to the evidence then I should believe that the physical sciences will not explain consciousness, given our current evidence. Does this make materialism irrational? By itself, no. Much more discussion is needed.

However, if an observation is unlikely on Hypothesis A, and likely on Hypothesis B, then the observation confirms B and not A. The lack of any explanation for consciousness given materialism makes it an unexpected "observation". But consciousness is fundamental to Theism.
Of course, this would only mean that Theism is superior to Materialism in explaining consciousness. Perhaps Theism is a priori much less likely than Materialism. Perhaps Materialism accounts for many more observations than Theism. So losing out on one observation isn't the deciding factor.
And, as we've both noted, there are metaphysical options beyond Theism. So Theism doesn't automatically follow even if it "beats" materialism. On that we're agreed. I don't think anyone has a "knock-out" argument.

It seems to me that Materialism will always struggle to account for consciousness, morality and rationality. But you are entirely correct to point out that Theism does not win by default.

I certainly agree that QM may be needed to give a physical description of the functioning brain. (An interesting "turf war" broke out when Francis Crick suggested otherwise). But you have a physical description that leaves out the inner life, the felt experience of the individual. And that's precisely what matters most.

GV

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152. At 1:18pm on 26 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Maybe I should also add that, at the very least, if materialism cannot explain consciousness then materialists cannot maintain that those who believe that there is an immaterial part to a person are out of step with science. Science would "leave room" for immaterial explanations. And the chief argument for materialism is the success of science in finding material causes for effects. A failure to find a physical cause for consciousness would undermine what is the chief argument for materialism.

KERP

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153. At 10:05pm on 28 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail to the new King,

Bernard, you make an excellent point about how the things I mentioned would elucidate how consciousness can be affected, but how they would not explain the origins of consciousness. Point taken. First I'll do a bit of nagging about some of what you said though, then I'll ponder some thoughts on a possible practical work-around and then question some of your conclusions.

The nag consists of me saying that I would feel short-changed if you said that uncovering how to influence or induce or switch between modes of consciousness tells us nothing about consciousness. Understanding how to go from one mode to another wouldn't explain the origins of consciousness, but certainly help us understand help how it works once it's there. Compare it to a black box experiment. We wouldn't be able to see inside the box, but we would learn what the things inside the box do, whatever they are. I'll immediately admit that the origins of consciousness would be (at least to my taste, you may agree?) one of the most interesting parts of it and without an explanation for that, the picture would never be complete. But would you agree that the origins of consciousness are not 100% of the story, and that the workings of it once there are also worthy of investigation, and amenable to such investigation?

Then for some gruesome experiments that on other threads might have brought about mentionings of Godwins law. Make sure you finish your lunch or dinner before reading on.
I see the point about consciousness already being there to be affected. But I'm glad I didn't reply immediately in full detail to your post, because a few days after I read it, something occurred to me. Let's take some newly born babies. I need to make the assumption here that you agree that the consciousness of newly born babies is not yet on the same level as that of adults. If you don't think so, then skip the next part of my post. Assuming that you do agree then let's imagine how we drill into their heads from all sides immediately after birth and insert every kind of measuring probe into their heads, connected to wifi. And then as the babies grow up, we do the lengthy experiment of monitoring what goes on inside their brains as their consciousness develops.
We could try something on a very short time scale too, i.e. see what happens to a person when they wake up from sleep and their consciousness 'switches on' (assuming they didn't wake up right from the middle of REM sleep, that their minds weren't very active just before waking up). We could even bring in other species to form another data set in which mankind is just one data point. Consider worms, very simple creatures with such a tiny brains that it's hardly worth calling a brain. Would you agree that their consciousness is not as extensive as ours? Elephants minds, while less complex than ours, are certainly a step up from worms. They display emotional attachment to their dead etc. So let's put the brains of a series of species in a row, going from very simple to more sophisticated, capable of higher and higher levels of consciousness. And then let's see if we can find out what that consciousness increase is related to.

While I see some possible 'attack vectors' for the problem of the origin of consciousness, I will still concede a lot of ground here. Earlier on Graham (now the Pretender of EPR, he gave up his crown to you, but still signs as KERP, the treasonous rascal!) and I distinguished between the fundamental possibility of explaining the mind from physics and our technical ability to do so. On the latter, I see no other option but to concede a lot of ground. Having a volunteer tell the lab coated researcher what he is thinking of, while his mind activity is being watched on all sorts of dials would be practical, but not of that much use in the case of the origin of consciousness. Bit of a chicken and egg problem, that by the time the volunteer is able to report what he/she is thinking of, they are already very conscious. It may not mean the final death blow, as I thought up some possible alternative approaches. Who knows what a bit of inventive thinking by those more knowledgeable in the area might throw up. But the alternatives I thought up sofar are certainly impractical and some also ethically unattractive. So your post has cetainly reduced my confidence in our technical ability to one day figure out the origins of consciousness.

Finally, and most importantly, does this affect the question of whether it would be fundamentally possible to ever do it? This is where I'm not so sure about your post, specifically some parts in the second half of it. At some point you say

"Rather, a state of ecstasy is a mode of consciousness, but already presupposes a "consciousness" to be in such a mode."

Fine. But then you also state, concerning brain chemistry,

"Yes. it can be correlated to a state of consciousness...but not to "being conscious". "

and

"and even so...the state of consciousness is not itself chemical."

and

"We are arguing that physical elements DO have an effect...but that what they effect is not itself physical. "

and

"the only thing that can be emprically grasped is the EFFECTOR, and you already appeal to a non-empirical element when you states that anything is AFFECTED."

and

"You can say that chemicals CAUSE a state of ecstasy, but in doing so you are already appealing to a non-empirical CAUSED."

and

"but in doing so you are already presupposing a non-empirical consciousness to be AFFECTED"

If I understood where those came from, I might be close to conceding the whole discussion. But how do you know that the thing being affected is not purely physical, or non-empirical as you call it a few times? You state it a number of times in slightly different ways, but I don't see the justification for it in any of those cases. The non-physical nature of consciousness it seems is again being postulated at those points, rather than reasoned? Or maybe I'm just not following it. Could you elaborate that point (which is actually almost the whole discussion here of course) in smaller reasoning steps please, where exactly the necessity of consciousness being non-physical/non-empirical comes in? Why can't the 'AFFECTED' as you call it, not be down to merely physics?

greets,
Peter

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154. At 12:23pm on 29 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Peter

I was getting attached to KERP.

I'll be interested to see what Bernard has to say. But if you had a complete physical description of, say, a Jellyfish's neural network, the brains and nervous systems of a number of vertebrates and similar descriptions of a Manic Depressives , an Autistic Savants, a neo-nates and a physicians brain/nervous system, important inforamation would still be missing.
You would not know what it was like to be one of these creatures. You would not have knowledge of their experiences. Describing your physical state is not the same as describing your feelings. So physical facts do not exhaust all the facts about a conscious being.
Maybe Bernard has a different take.
KERP

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155. At 12:30pm on 29 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
BTW some of your experiments are similar to the approach that Christof Koch would take. There are ways around the ethical and practical problems. But, in Bernard's terms, all Koch would be explaining what causes different "modes of consciousness". What is necessary for different types of conscious experience. Why physical complexity should produce conscious experience of *any* type in the first place is left unexplained.

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156. At 12:41pm on 29 Jan 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello Pretender Graham, just a short blurb,

Assuming a royal title when you're not blue-blooded is a grave offense, you PoERP.

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157. At 2:07pm on 29 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Gee whizz fellas, i don't know what to say...

I'm afraid I don't quite live up to your accolades, but I can only try.

As I probably mostly agree with Graham, I'll try to answer Peter directly.

So;

"The nag consists of me saying that I would feel short-changed if you said that uncovering how to influence or induce or switch between modes of consciousness tells us nothing about consciousness."

I'm not saying that. it tells us a lot about consciousness.

YOU are suggesting that that tells us EVERYTHING about consciousness.

That amounts to saying that a full description of "pain" is "the firing of certain neurons" (obviously, the more detailed version, but physical/electro/chemical nonetheless)

However, it is my assertion that this DOES NOT describe "pain". It may tell us a lot about pain, what causes it, how the mechanisms of it are caused and are part of a complex interactive system, but it doesn't tell us about the end result...the product of the system or mechanism....the feeling of pain. That feeling that you know as well as I do. the Qualia

"Understanding how to go from one mode to another wouldn't explain the origins of consciousness, but certainly help us understand help how it works once it's there."

But it's not simply the origin of consciousness we need to explain, it's the nature of consciousness, it's the nature of what those "modes" are..

Now, we may understand how physical mechanisms change the modes of consciousness, but that doesn't describe what those modes are.

We may argue that the consciousness is a product of physical mechanisms, but the product is not the parts, or the causes, or the stimuli.

"Compare it to a black box experiment. We wouldn't be able to see inside the box, but we would learn what the things inside the box do, whatever they are."

But we don't. Learning about the mechanisms of the brain is precisely the opposite. We learn what the things are, and how they work with one another, but what they do is produce something else...consciousness, qualia or experience. At the minute we don't know HOW they do this, but EVEN IF WE DID, the product and the producer are still TOW DIFFERENT THINGS....and only one can be described empirically.

I realise I'm becoming slightly unclear here, so I will move to what I think is the fundamental misunderstanding, and will try to address it through a response to your final paragraph. I am not ignoring the rest of the argument, but I think the fundamental point lies here;

"But how do you know that the thing being affected is not purely physical, or non-empirical as you call it a few times?"

Because the absolute starting point of the inquiry is not, as you seem to suggest, a grasp of physical, mechanistic works...

From the very beginning of this inquiry we are trying to explain the existence of.....something

Now, we all know what we are referring to. To consciousness, to first hand-experience, to the pure feeling of being alive and being able to ask these questions in the first place.

We are not, for example, trying to explain THE EXISTENCE OF PHYSICAL BRAIN STATES. We are trying to explain how those brain states appear to have an effect on the other presupposed element....consciousness

That is the thing we are trying to "explain".

We do not begin with a physical result....say, "behaviour", and work back to find the physical cause of that physical result.

In the beginning of the inquiry there is already the sheer data of consciousness. That's what starts the inquiry...the need to explain this "qualia".

That the physical mechanisms inside our brain seem to correlate to changes in the fundamental data of consciousness is what begs the question in the first place.

If we began with the brain, and worked through a process of cause and effect until we came to "behavior", we completely ignore the very data that we were questioning in the first place, the very qualia, or first hand experience, or ability to perceive and conceive any notions of "cause and effect" or "behaviour".

Were human beings simply a micro-physical process resulting in macro-physical behaviour, there would be no question to ask.

It is precisely the existence of the something in between, which is DIFFERENT from the micro and macro physical behaviour, that raises the question in the first place.

You argue that we may not know the exact correlation now....the fact that we have to look for a correlation already presupposes that there are two different things...the immediate data, for which we look for an explanation, and the physical explnation that we attempt to make fit.

"Why can't the 'AFFECTED' as you call it, not be down to merely physics?"

It can be "down" to merely physics. It could be CAUSED by physics. But that it is not THE SAME THING as the physics is implicit in the fact that you have to ask the question.

If the two were the same you would be asking "Why can't we accept that A is A?"

As it is you're asking "why can't we accept that A is the cause of B".

But we can can accept that. However, the basis of that question makes us unable to accept that A is B.

At the recognition of long-windedness, I'll stop there and await a few replies. This area is notoriously difficult to explicate, and I feel like I'm getting tied up in terminology, but I'm trying to make a fairly basic point. Hope you can make it out.

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158. At 3:13pm on 29 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
This seems to be the central point.
You can *infer* a mental state like pain or ecstatsy from a brain state (or from physical behaviour - and most of us can do this reliably). But you never *directly* observe or measure a mental state. Only the agent having the experience feels the pain or the ecstasy.

In psychology the behaviorists refused to admit any fact that had not been empirically observed into their science. So they identifed pain etc with certain reactions to certain stimuli. All observable, all physical.

So the "joke" went - two behaviorists meet in the street. They examine each others behavior, and the first says -"You feel fine, how am I?"

Replace "behaviorists" with "neuropsychiatrists" and "behavior" with "brain states". The brain state isn't the feeling.

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159. At 3:14pm on 29 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
I'll go away for a bit, and stop butting in. Sorry about that.

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160. At 3:24pm on 29 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
You're right though.

I think the point I was meanderingly trying to express is that behaviourism is the only cohesive purely physical account.

But behaviourism can be shown to fundamentally ignore the very thing it claims to explain.

We don't begin with the fact of behaviour and try to explain it physically via means of the nervous system and brain states.

By comparison, that would be quite simple. Physical electro chemical changes (micro) cause physical body states (behaviour).

But that completely ignores what raised the question in the first place. We're already TRYING to correlate physical brain states (or body states) with that extra thing of which we're immediately aware.

If you're simply arguing that it doesn't exist, then feel free. But if that's the case, although your "arguing" might exist, there must be no conception whatsoever behind it, and it must be, in a very real sense, empty arguing.

So, Peter, are you claiming that there are only physical states - micro (electro-chemical reactions/ neuro-firings) and macro (behaviour, bodily movements)?

If so, not only are you ignoring the very first-hand experience that raises the question (for it's obvious how the micro-physics could affect the macro-physics - that's not even a difficuluty)...

you are also ignoring the very intellectual process that has led you to your view. Your argument can't be found in the movements of the brain, or of the body.

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161. At 4:45pm on 29 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
The American philosopher Thomas Nagelillustrated the point by asking "what it is like" to be a bat. Most bats find their way about the world by echolocation, that is, they emit high-pitched sounds and use the echoes to construct a mental map of their environment. What would it feel like to be a bat? One might think that it would be like flying about in the dark and hearing lots of high-pitched noises. But this, if anything, is what it would it be like for humans to operate like bats, and presumably not what it is like for the bats themselves. Rather, bats must somehow sense objects outside themselves, with shapes, and.. but with what features exactly? Do they experience colours or sounds in the same way that we see "green" or hear a scream? There seems to be no good answer. Indeed, the more we think about it, the more it becomes clear that we have no grip on what it is like to be a bat.

The point of this thought-experiment is not to cast doubt on whether bats are conscious. Bats are higher mammals, and as such are just as likely be conscious as cats or dogs. Rather Nagel introduces bats to emphasize that consciousness inheres in the subjective side of mental life, and is not simply an objective phenomenon that can be captured in scientific terms. In the case of human beings, and even dogs and cats, it is easy not to notice that these two sides exist, for we usually don't notice that we simultaneously think of mental events both objectively, as caused in certain ways or as involving certain brain events, and also subjectively, in terms of what it is like to undergo the experiences. In the case of bats, however, our attention is drawn explicitly to these two different sides, for in the bat case we have access only to the physical facts. And the physical facts do not tell us what the bat experiences.

PK seems to want to advance a reduction.(Am I reading you right here Pete?) So, just as we can think of the same thing either as "temperature" or as "mean kinetic energy" so can we can think of the same pain either in terms of the way it feels or as the firing of C-fibres (or whatever).

Just as we can think of the same thing either as "temperature" or as "mean kinetic energy", argue the reductionists, so can we can think of the same mental state, pain, say, either in terms of the way it feels, or as the firing of C-fibres (if that is indeed the physical state that realizes pain).

But felt pains seem so very different from anything physical that many people find it hard to understand how they could be identical. Certainly it seems harder to make sense of this than to grasp the identity of temperature and mean kinetic energy. Conscious experiences are experiences had "from the inside" by a conscious subject. They are not like objective features of the world equally available for observation by anyone in a position to observe them. Other people may know that I am in pain, and can infer that from my brain states if they're so inclined, but only I *feel* my pain.
And Conscious experiences have features or qualities that go beyond the physical features that seem to cause them: the look of colours, the feel of pain, and so on. These features are what Bernard is calling "qualia". For example there seems to be nothing about wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, or physical brain processes caused by visually encountering them that captures or explains the actual look of a blue sky.

That's the "postulate". What we directly experience. This cannot even be described as a physical state. Consciousness and subjectivity go hand in hand.

Now I really will go away. I promise.

KERP

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162. At 10:25am on 30 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:
Er, I know I said I'd go away, but I thought of anothr way of putting this.

If I knew everything about a physical state you or I were in, everything about our brain and nervous systems I would still need to ask "And what did that feel like?" That wouldn't be captured by the physical facts.

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163. At 11:46am on 30 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
That's it, we're constantly trying to find better ways of expressing it, but the fact is that it's the fundamental postulate in any inquiry in the first place.

A point that i think is important is that the very question itself presupposes something that must be explained. That's why we're trying to find a connection between brain states and mental states.

If mental states WERE brain states, and nothing else, we wouldn't be striving to find a connection.

It would make no sense to say that certain parts of the brain are active when pain is felt if THE FEELING OF PAIN were no more than THE ACTIVITY OF THAT PART OF THE BRAIN.

The question wouldn't even arise. there'd be no sense in which we could make a connection. There wouldn't be a correlation, but an identity.

But no such identity is grasped in any way whatsoever, either perceptually, conceptually, emprically or intellectually.

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164. At 11:49am on 30 Jan 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
What is grasped, and which Peter K has provided lots of examples, is that there is a DEFINITE correlation between parts of the brain and mental states.

To reduce that CORRELATION to a simple identity is not only unwarranted, it undermines the question in the first place. There was a reason we noticed a correlation.

But it doesn't take medical science to notice that there is a "correlation between" one identical thing. that correlation is usually called identity, and generally doesn't need medical discovery.

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165. At 3:02pm on 30 Jan 2009, gveale wrote:

The correlation also wouldn't rule out the possibility that the mental states could be causing physical states of the brain. In some cases that seems intuitively plausible. My reasoning, my choices and my emotions, I hope, are not caused by impersonal physical interactions over which I have no control. (In fact, is there really an *I* on materialism. Or just a sequence of mental events united by their underlying physical cause? Am *I* no more real than useful fictions like "the average man"?)
I don't want my love for Nicola or my belief that 2+2=4 to be an unintended side effect of physical interactions. I think this was Peter Morrow's big question. Given the truth of materialism, how do we think about ourselves?

GV

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166. At 1:43pm on 01 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail to the King, hello petermorrow and PoERP,

petermorrow, your post with the 'Who is "I"' question has been on hold longest. Yet I'll answer other posts first, as after a little thinking I haven't found a good answer to your question yet. I'm not sure what to make of much of Bernards post this time either, but at least there I can pinpoint where the problem is.

So Your Majesty, the thing you say in post 157 is lacking in a scientific explanation of consciousness is the personal experience of it, right? In post 153 I had quoted a number of your statements that asserted that consciousness was more than just physics. I didn't see those as more than merely assertions, and asked you to provide reasoning (in small steps) to support them. Yet now that you have turned to personal experience, I see the same happening to some extent. You say things like

"We may argue that the consciousness is a product of physical mechanisms, but the product is not the parts, or the causes, or the stimuli."

I only see an assertion again, please provide detailed reasoning.

"We learn what the things are, and how they work with one another, but what they do is produce something else...consciousness, qualia or experience...... .........the product and the producer are still TOW DIFFERENT THINGS....and only one can be described empirically."

That's the same assertion as in your previous post. Sorry, but I still don't see anything other than an assertion. Please provide some reasoning to support it.

In the middle part of your post you mention ideas about going from brain states to behaviour, ignoring consciousness in the process, etc. I don't see where you want to go with that part. I don't think I ever said anything about ignoring or discarding consciousness, my approach is the very opposite i.e. building up from the understanding of brain states to understand consciousness. And the 'behaviour' bit was new in your post, I don't see what to do with that. I can't do much with the part from where you say 'I realise I'm becoming slightly unclear here" to 'and the physical explnation that we attempt to make fit.' I'm afraid.

Then comes what I think is the crucial bit. You say

"It can be "down" to merely physics. It could be CAUSED by physics. But that it is not THE SAME THING as the physics is implicit in the fact that you have to ask the question."

Do I do get your position right if I thought you're saying that consciousness comes (or can come) purely from physical phenomena, phenomena we might even be able to recreate at will some day, but that these phenomena give rise to something that is not part of the physical world and will therefore never be captured by a scientific explanation? If your answer to that is yes then that is the key issue where we go wide apart.

Your last points are about the correlation and how that is supposed to show that brain states and mental states are not the same. You say

"You argue that we may not know the exact correlation now....the fact that we have to look for a correlation already presupposes that there are two different things...the immediate data, for which we look for an explanation, and the physical explnation that we attempt to make fit."

and restate that in the form of

"If the two were the same you would be asking "Why can't we accept that A is A?"

As it is you're asking "why can't we accept that A is the cause of B.

But we can can accept that. However, the basis of that question makes us unable to accept that A is B. "

That seems purely like a work game to me. I'm not sure I understand you 100% correct, but I am indeed not closing off the possibility that 'A = A', that consciousness is the outcome of complex physcial interactions (which you seem to agree with, right?) and nothing more than that (which you seem to disagree with, right?).

I'm afraid we didn't get much closer to each other in this post, perhaps only to pinpoint where the key difference is, if I understood you correctly in the part what I labeled 'the crucial bit'.

greets,
Peter

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167. At 3:20pm on 01 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
A few points for the Pretender,

I didn't think that being able to feel like other species (like an echo-locating bat) was a condition for saying we understand consciousness. If we could at some point say we fully understood human consciousness, I would be thrilled. And sofar the discussion was all about human thinking. Bringing in the trans-species requirement feels like a slight moving of the goal posts.

"But you never *directly* observe or measure a mental state. Only the agent having the experience feels the pain or the ecstasy."

Let me phrase things in your way for now, ignoring that I'm not so sure mental states and brain states have a clear dividing line between them.
If a mental state is mapped to a brain state (e.g. experiencing pain in your little toe), then you can observe someones mental state from their brain state of course. And instruments might even be able to let you experience that state on demand. You may know the experiments on soldiers who've had limbs blown off, where the remaining part of the nerves that used to run all the way through those blown-off limbs are artificially stimulated, causing the soldier to feel pain or itching in a limb he no longer has. In the case of pain, it is not only well know how the brain state of pain comes about, but the personal experience of feeling the pain can be provided too, thanks to some instruments built on the scientific understanding of how pain works. Don't tell me science is out of it as far as personal experience is concerned, if it can make a person experience the pain in a body part that isn't even there.

"Describing your physical state is not the same as describing your feelings. So physical facts do not exhaust all the facts about a conscious being."

Ah, some more ERPing. Of course a representation on a computer screen or some meter readout is not the same as personal experience, but that doesn't mean that scientific methodology can't capture all that makes up that personal experience. See the physical pain example above. You can verify that your neurons firing etc do produce all of your mental state by first letting someone step on your toe and feeling the pain from it, then artificially triggering the right nerves and experiencing something similar.

So we have an explanation of the workings of it, we can control those workings, and we have the personal experience of it on demand. Aren't you just impossible to please, that that still isn't enough for you? :D

And last, but not least, what is keeping your arguments in favour of theism over physical explanation in explaining consciousness? Not that I don't have enough posts to answer, but that aspect of the discussion seems to be getting lost. You're doing your best to talk down the prospects of science, but not offering anything yourself sofar. Other than that repackaging of the tired old design argument in that initial post on your own blog. Yes despite that, you have the gall to accuse me of debating like a YEC (who excel in only trying to discredit science, not producing anything themselves, as they like to win by default). Duh! C'me on PERP, let's have some reasoned arguments for theism in explaining consciousness.

greets,
Peter

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168. At 4:00pm on 01 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

"petermorrow, your post with the 'Who is "I"' question has been on hold longest."

Peter, no problem. I appreciate your continued interest.

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169. At 1:22pm on 02 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
PK
I may repeat the points - but consciousness is not a postulate and it isn't empty. Our experience of our own consciousness is radically different than our experience of the physical world. If "two" things are in fact one it must be the case that they share all of their properties in common. The properties of neurons (for example) and the properties of a felt state like pain ("aargh!") seem totally different.

A)Two preliminary points.
(i)No, it's not enough to explain consciousness in humans, and this is a given in the field of consciousness studies.(ii) And as for ERPing, I haven't seen any reason to think that conscious states could be physical. Intuitively and conceptually they are radically different. Beyond possible correlations, what have you got?

B) Suppose we map consciousness on to physical brain states?

I've already pointed out what are at least practical problems with the idea that we will ever completely map conscious states to physical states. On the assumption that I am wrong, what follows?
Well, I'm more than happy to see that researchers are making progress in finding some of the neural correlates of consciousness - in fact some of the urls pointed to Koch's work on what is neccessary for visual awareness. Certain physical events cause certain mental events - we've always known that (people drink alcoholic beverages and get drunk). But suppose we find a physical cause for every mental event (although I don't see any evidence that this must be the case. Quite the opposite in fact.)
Suppose I find examine your brain in a certain state. What exactly is your experience from my point of view? I can infer what you are experiencing from matching the brain-state I observe to the brain states of others, and then reading what those individuals reported they experienced. I then have to imagine what it is like for you to have that brain state. But you know it directly.
More to the point where exactly is the experience from my point of view? Neurons are not thoughts. I can detect everything that is happening in your brain and nervous system, but not your thoughts. So where are they? Where is your consciousness? The unified "stream" of awareness? Identifying what is causing awareness one thing. But examining it's nature and explaining it's existence by observing physical events is another.

C)How does God help?

Theists explain everything by a purposive transcendent reality (transcendence rules out Spaghetti Monsters, I'm afraid).In Theism God is omnipotence with intentionality (or, as I explain the idea to my students, unlimited power and love). Theism represents one of the more developed, mature accounts of reality that gives a fundamental place to purposeful explanation, whereas materialism gives the most central role of explanation to nonpurposeful explanation.
The sensory feel of ecstacy can only be known from the first-person perspective. An external observer of a nervous system in a state correlated with ecstacy lacks this insight, recording observations from a third-person point of view. None of the features of the physical world as identified by the physical sciences (mass, size, weight, electric charge, physical structure and constitution) captures what it is to experience ecstacy (ask a poet). Lacking the experience yourself, observation of all the physical properties associated with the state will not give you knowledge of "what it is like" to be in ecstacy. Or in love, or intoxicated, or whatever.
Consciousness, unlike the physical world, does not seem to be made up out of various forces or smaller spatial processes. Consciousness seems simple. It comes to us all at once. We don't postulate this, we experience it directly. I don't infer my own consciousness.
If we think about the emergence of subjective experience in the form of the conscious feeling of pain, no amount of molecular theory will describe, let alone explain, the sensations or experiences themselves.
If we restrict ourselves to the explanatory framework of an ideal physics with mass and energy it is hard to see how any configuration of the physical world can constitute let alone explain the emergence of consciousness. Now maybe we could still find a correlation between every conscious state and a physical state. But what explains the correlation?
What you have is a mysterious, brute relationship where one is labeling the occurrence of a radical emergence rather than offering an explanation.
What is the theistic alternative? (Keep in mind though some theists would be on your side of this debate).
Acknowledge that experiences of pleasure and pain and choices are events that occur in subjects which refer to themselves by the first-person pronoun "I." Our "selves" seem to be simple in nature in the sense that they seem to lack substantive parts.
The theist should argue that we must not only account for the existence of mental events, but also for the existence of the substantial selves that are the subjects of those events. The existence of minds like ours is not a mystery in a theistic universe because theism takes the most fundamental fact of reality to be a conscious and purposive mind. So the existence of states radically different from the physical is not a brute unexplained on Theism. God can create both types of state and laws that correlate their interactions.
The Theistic worldview offers an explanatory framework in which the goodness of conscious life and libertarian free will provides the fundamental reason why conscious subjects exist. Materialism offers a nonpurposive nonintentional account of the cosmos. It posits at the most basic level of explanation processes that have no final goal in view. Materialists can simply posit that consciousness emerges when there is sufficient physical complexity - but this seems to be providing a description of "when and where" consciousness arises, as opposed to *why* consciousness exists *at all* given that the universe is ultimately physical.

Graham Veale

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170. At 7:35pm on 02 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Damn! did put a post up awhile ago but it didn't take.

Apologies to PeterK for getting your area of study wrong-a big bowl of pasta in penance and an eye-patch for the FSM.

Graham I did reply to you as well but was lost-basically it was...your argument seems like a god of the gaps. Just say your argument is true but it turns out to be a different god?

Anyway shame you can't make it for dinner next weekend.

Regards

DD

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171. At 10:26am on 03 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
DD
I'm not convinced that there is one type of "God of the Gaps" argument. I suppose I'd like some historical analogy here.
I'd say I'm making an inference. If "God of the Gaps" means that i might be wrong - sure. But I don't see how that's significant.
Could another "God" be responsible? Yes, and there are alternatives to Theism. The original Freethinkers - Toland, Annett, Strauss - had religious views that could not even be called Theistic, but could accommodate consciousness better than crude materialism.
I've other reasons for being a theist, and for being a convinced *Christian* theist. But consciousness is evidence for a religious or metaphysical interpretation of reality and to that extent supports Theism.

G Veale

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172. At 10:27am on 03 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
Yep it's a shame about dinner. But Nicola makes a better offer.

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173. At 4:45pm on 03 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Graham,

It does seem that theists are always trying to squeeze in any little gap. God/s used to explain everything, now god/s have been squeezed so much out of the picture.

Zeus or Pacahamacha or indeed some Q type being(Star Trek) could have been involved or none and consciousness could just be a result of natural selection. Seems strange to me that a god/s who could invent consciousness could also be so wasteful, why are over 99% of species that have existed now extinct and what was all that about with dinosaurs...? More questions than answers...

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174. At 6:00pm on 03 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

DD

I'm sort of concerned, (not real concerned you understand!) that you mentioned the 'god of the gaps' argument. Now I could be wrong but it seems to suggest that Christians are applying the answer 'god!' to any instance where there is a lack of or limited knowledge, which is not how I come at understanding either God or Science.

If I've read your use of the 'gap' argument incorrectly, apologies, but if not, not only do I not wish to use the concept of the 'gap' as an argument for God but I'm also wondering why knowing stuff, i.e. having increased knowledge about the world and the universe, makes the concept of God redundant. What's you take on this?

Personally I think God meant us to discover the nuts and bolts of this world and everything in it.

If I could put it this way, God is for learning!!

Come on, knowing stuff doesn't do away with God, it just means we know stuff.

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175. At 10:33am on 04 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
DD
Modern science began by replacing Aristotleian explanations (which included an entities form and purpose) with mechanistic explanations and laws of nature. In fact the first modern scientists just moved the teleology from the entity itself to an external cause - God. We never really shifted from "the gods did it" to "material causes did it."
Theism still claims to be the ultimate explanation for everything BTW.

G Veale

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176. At 1:07pm on 05 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
PeterM

Well it does mean that we have to do away with the literal gods of the Bible/Koran etc as the more we know the more we know that these books are not literally true.

"Personally I think God meant us to discover the nuts and bolts of this world and everything in it."

Good for you Peter! but could you have a wee word with your Christian creationist comrades as they are making a hell of an effort to stop our children learning about the nuts and bolts of the world and instead feed them fundamentalist dogma as "science"-please say something to them!

Graham

And just look at the success that "materialistic" science has been! My consciousness may lead me to the explanation that the cosmic space goat created consciousness and the universe also. I could construct a whole theology around it-however this does not necessarily make it true and such an argument would turn out to be circular. I wonder when this god/s put consciousness into humans? did they do the same for dinosaurs? and why waste 100's of millions of years on them? then wipe them out? very wasteful if you ask me.

Anyway

DD

Have a good one.

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177. At 2:16pm on 05 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Just checking in here fellas, so I can't really follow the whole thread.

But, DD...

you really don't get it do you?

to postulate that a "space goat" created the universe is absolutely ridiculous, and to use it as an analogy with relgious belief is totally ignoring the point that many people have amde to you.

We say that, whatever is responsible for the universe must be totally OTHER than the universe.

The universe cannot be created by something within the universe....use your sense.

So, whatever lies beyond the universe is not a "space goat", nor is it a "spaghetti monster", nor is it an "invisible person in the sky".

All of those strawmen are merely things IN the universe, and can in now way be postulated as possibly accounting for the universe.

To say that whatever accounts for there being a universe must not itself be a part of the universe is common sense, but seems to be ignored in favour of anthropomorphic strawmen that you wish to postulate. As if showing the absurdity of your "one bit of the universe causing the entire universe" postulation has any reference to the postulation that the universe originated from something OTHER than itself.

Anyway, I must try to read back to see where our discussion of consciousness went.....have been ridiculously busy this last while

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178. At 3:18pm on 05 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
Deconstructing Spaghetti Monsters

God is transcendent by definition. So the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" objection but it won't work against theism.

It won't even work against ID - but as a rhetorical device it does force ID advocates to be more precise when they say that ID says nothing about the postulated intelligence.

What seems to have happened is that atheists have taken a piece of rhetoric formulated against ID, and aimed it at Theism in general.

GV

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179. At 4:37pm on 05 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:
Hi DD

The consciousness conversation has been interesting but this one about God and Science is important too, and is probably where the whole thing kicked off.

You say, "it does mean that we have to do away with the literal gods of the Bible/Koran etc as the more we know the more we know that these books are not literally true."

Now, that's a big statement and I'm not entirely sure where you are coming from and I'm not quite sure how to start my answer but as you have used the words 'not literally true' with regard to the bible, I'll begin there. I should also say that I've debated this before on WandT and I don't know if you've read anything of my position and I don't what to bore you by repeating myself so just shout STOP if I do. I'll also start with a brief response just to give you an indication of where I go with this.

'Literally true.' Well yes, you are right, and no, you are not! Obviously when the bible records, for example, that the sun stood still (story of Joshua) it doesn't mean that the sun orbits the earth. When it speaks in the Psalms of the foundations of the earth, obviously the earth doesn't have foundations, so 'literally true', no. But was there (story of Joshua), an historical Israel and a leader called Joshua, yes, so, 'literally true', yes.

Here's the thing, if we're reading the bible hoping to find modern scientific accounts about the world we life in, we're going to be disappointed(and probably confused), it's not a science book, it wasn't written as a science book, and it shouldn't be read as a science book. What we are, however dealing with, are a range of literary genre, songs, poems, historical reports, letters and so on, and the genre is crucial to our understanding of the message. Reading the bible as a science book would be like reading 'Crime and Punishment' as if it were a newspaper report. Sort out the genre, and we've sorted out a lot.

You see, it all depends what we mean by 'literally true'.

I hope this makes some sense. It also, BTW, explains why science and faith need not be enemies, and it's probably also worth saying that faith does not equal magic.

Sorry, I was trying to do short!

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180. At 09:47am on 06 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
DD

What is your hang up about dinosaurs? Do you just have a thing about T-Rex, or do you think we need to introduce Darwin's objection to Theism - that it is too "wasteful" to be a product of an omnipotent God.

That wouldn't count against the criticism of materialism from consciousness. It would count against Theism (assuming both arguments were valid). So we'd have evidence for and against both our worldviews.

Do you think dysteleology is worth introducing to our discussion?

BTW, this thread's been keeping me sane this last month. It's nice to have a rational discussion after a trip to purgatory and back with 11v1. So many thanks to PK, PM, DD and Bernard (have I missed anyone?)

G Veale

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181. At 5:21pm on 06 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello petermorrow,

Let me deal with your 'Who am I question now'. Unfortunately the answer is going to be disappointing. After I first read your question I briefly considered it and couldn't come up with a very good answer. I would have answered 'For the most of it, I don't know'. I've tried to come up with something a bit better now, but I can't say that has helped much. Self-identity is one of those parts not yet filled in, at least as far as I'm aware. The best I could give you now is the uninterestingly obvious, like I can see/touch/feel/(smell) myself, and I feel my self-consciousness. But that doesn't say anything interesting.

For the most of it, I would say that 'Who is I' is something I don't have a very good answer for at the moment. Details that need to be filled in guess, one of the interesting bits on the todo list of investigating consciousness.

Sorry if that kills the line of debate you had in mind for this. :(

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182. At 6:50pm on 06 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Peter, hi

Thanks for your reply. I shall say that I am not in the slightest bit disappointed, but also say that I am interested that your lack of an answer can be dismissed so easily. (Perhaps dismissed is too strong a word) But why do I say that? There are a number of reasons.

It seems impossible to me (!) that we can have any kind of discussion on consciousness at all without reference to me, the what I have called 'I'. If I am not involved, or if I am unexplained then not only do I find myself in the unenviable position of having to discuss my consciousness solely in terms of brian states, (things that the brain does) but I must overlook the assumption, and assumption it is, that 'I' am doing the observing. Indeed this is going to apply to any observational study I undertake. 'I' am observing a range of phenomena, a range of material activity, making judgments, reaching conclusions, acquiring knowledge, adding to 'my' ('I') experience while all the time not having a clue who I am. Does this not bother you, even in a tiny way? Surely you want to know who, you, the observer, is? Surely this is a huge, untested, assumption, and yet one upon which we base all kinds of certainties? Surely a problem here is that the concept of 'I' is no mere hypothesis but an accepted reality, and one upon which all my ('I') knowledge is dependent. If I do not know who I am then how, really, let's be honest, or consistent, how can I claim to know much anything. And when it comes to the bit, how, no matter how much study I undertake in the search for 'I', or no matter how many recordable observations I have made, will I know I have found 'I' (me) when 'I' observe me ('I')?

Anyway, have a nice weekend.

|:-)

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183. At 7:29pm on 06 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Bernard

I get what you say...bit like saying a man-made deity like YHWH or Zeus didit. I did postulate that it could be a Q type being(Star Trek) eg., beyond our comprehension, did try to cover all bases but what the heck.

Btw my money is still on the cosmic space goat-the thing is it may look like a goat to us but that is only what our primitive senses tell us-in fact it is something...beyond!!!

And I will try to use my sense in future Bernard(I am very bad:-( and stop all those naughty strawmen)

Hi PeterM

I actually agree with most of what you say. In fact when you say the Bible is not a science book is correct and must be read in context is correct-I have no problem with either position. The problem occurs when people do read more into it. You raise Joshua and the sun-that story gave rise to geo-centrism. that was point about some members of your faith-not you Peter!

Regards

DD

Hi Graham

Och Graham dinosaurs are great! having a go at me because I have a passing interest in these magnificent beasts!and T-Rex is kinda cute!

I just find it a bit odd that a god or gods or whatever would go to all the bother of giving us a consciousness-making such special case of humans when they wasted so much time with dinosaurs, gave us 5 major extinctions, 99% of all species that ever existed now extinct but we are special. When did this special consciousness enter us? was it the cro-magnon? homo-erectus? or the first ape like creatures? Or was it always there?

Anyway have a good weekend chaps! I'm away to batter some sense into me!

DD

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184. At 1:03pm on 07 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Pretty ineffective response there

Well done on completely ignoring the poit about transcendence , and carrying on with your star trek fantasies.

As for your odd point on "wastefulness" or whatever you call it, i take it that you're working with some comparative notion of "value" are you.

I mean, bllions of years without consciousness....what exactly is wasteful about that?

I don't think dinosaurs are a waste of time. they were great big things.

And yes, we are special. Isn't it great!

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185. At 1:07pm on 07 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
And Peter K....so you're now admitting that you "feel" your self-consciousness.
Tell me, is that an emprical "feeling", or have you scientifically felt it?

Ths faryour point is that, well, we hope to maybe understand it scientifically.

We might well find a scientific "explanation" for consciousness, but whatever explanation you lok for is already based on the brute fact of "felt" consciousness.

I'm not denying that science may be able to "explain" that, but it can't reduce it to brain events.

That "felt" consciousness is already the fact that we're trying to explain, but explanation is not reduction

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186. At 1:48pm on 07 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Hi Bernard

I have knocked some sense into me you will be glad to know!

However it was a pretty ineffective response from you. Unfortunately you ignored my work on Q and the transcendental nature of the Cosmic Space Goat.

I am dreadfully sorry you feel that my post was "ineffective"-may have been something to do with not immediately agreeing with you or something.

Well Bernard you did accuse me of not positing an example of a being that is beyond our measure and comprehension but I did, you may not have liked it but there you go! We could talk about your being which is beyond the universe and the fifth dimension(or what not) which has of course no evidence to back it up(same as my cosmic space goat) which is of course jolly handy!

The point that I was trying to make Bernard is if this great transcendental being(which is very handily outside of our experience and indeed the universe and as such has no evidence) gave us consciousness...when did it happen?I never said it was wasteful to have billions of years without consciousness...that would only be on your terms.

Never said dinosaurs were a waste of time...I did say I thought they were great!

Saying we are special but that would mean using the comparative notion of "value" wouldn't it?

DD

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187. At 5:36pm on 07 Feb 2009, portwyne wrote:

The one point of agreement here seems to be that we don't understand consciousness. I would add 'yet' to that statement. I am sure we shall, eventually, and I strongly suspect that that understanding will derive from advances in knowledge of our brains, their chemistry, and the perspectives brought from the study of artificial intelligence. Consciousness is surely only an operationally functional product of the extreme complexity in the organisation of brain energy.

There is no "I", no fixed objective constant independent of the organic brain. What we consider "I" is a perspective and memory based organisation of sensations and perceptions. It is temporary, dissolving at death or before when affected by disease or injury. There is no guarantee that either "I" or "anyone" I might conceive of myself as loving will retain "essential" individual characteristics throughout life.

Some might see this as a counsel of or to despair - but far from it. Whatever the nature of our existence we can rejoice in the sensations we experience and be alive to and concerned for the experience of those around us.

None of this, by the way, has anything to do with the reality of God. I don't think the great song of life is about "us".

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188. At 6:06pm on 07 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Portwyne

Quick point, gotta run, nipping into town.

Point of agreement, "I don't think the great song of life is about 'us'."

Agreed, John 1.

Problem point.

"There is no 'I'..."

Then you say, "... we can rejoice in the sensations we (I) experience."

mmm... Portwyne, you just said there was no 'I' (we).

Off to rent a DVD, can anyone recommend a good movie?

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189. At 7:20pm on 07 Feb 2009, portwyne wrote:

Peter

Enjoy your DVD - I'm off to a party myself.

I meant that the "I" is neither fixed nor constant. "I" is a relatively stable but impermanent construct like a fulcrum, necessary for the brain to leverage the processing of information, something against which stimuli can be ordered. I see the function of what we see as the self as being a tool to order chaos.

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190. At 8:25pm on 07 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Portwyne

The DVD journey was fruitless, all is 'gratuitous violence' these days and I can't be bothered.

Anyway, I'm not being awkward, honestly, but, 'I' is a construct. (?)

Who constructed it?

'I' (you) we (!) see the self as a tool to order the chaos. So, does that mean 'I' is the self or something other than the self? I feel I'm back to the question I asked Peter Klaver, "Who are you Portwyne?" An organisation of chaos? Which brings me to...

It is a tool to order the chaos. Who is using the tool?

It (I) is necessary for the brain to leverage the processing of information. But you said it was brain information, or an organisation of such.

Sorry for being a pain.

A point of agreement, do 'I' change, yes.

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191. At 00:58am on 08 Feb 2009, portwyne wrote:

I don't Know if this is a phenomenon other contributors have noted, but it seems to me that if you have had a long chat about the Presbyterian Mutual at a party your chances of coming home really blocked seem markedly lower that normal.

Thus it is, Peter, that I am able to attempt an answer to your points.

The collection of tissue which houses the complex arrangement of energy which authors this posting appears to exist as a discrete biological unit: a striving entity in competition with other entities for the means of survival and reproduction. The evolutionary journey of its progenitors has found advantage in sophisticated processing of stimuli, the ordering of sense perceptions into patterns. It is difficult to perceive pattern without perspective.

The notion of self or "I" originated as a tool, made by the brain, to give perspective, to facilitate the organisation of data into useful patterns. It allowed the guiding principle of such organisation to be the organism and the interests of the organism as opposed to the not-organism. The self is our mental immune system. In religious terms it is like a creed - it defines against what is outside.

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192. At 2:46pm on 08 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
PeterM

talking about DVD's...did you ever get the chance to watch Sophie Scholl? I think I recommended it to you awhile ago? Anyway if you still haven't seen it yet-I would heartily recommend it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl

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193. At 5:05pm on 08 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

DD

Thank you for reminding me. I haven't yet seen Sophie Scholl, and yes indeed you did recommend it a while back. The last war movie I watched was Female Agents, also worth a try.

I am currently writing a reply to portwyne, and have come to the conclusion that writing it would be easier if I was, to use his eloquent term, blocked!

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194. At 9:01pm on 08 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Portwyne

I note a couple of things by way of preamble.

(1) In spite of the conversation about the PMS you were still partly blocked when you wrote reply 191!

(2) Even if you were completely sober, a conversation about the PMS will have impaired your judgement anyway!

However I do appreciate your response.

I'm afraid though that you seem to be saying that I am/you are nothing more than, nothing other than, a chaotic, yet sometimes ordered collection of brain activity and if so we are then we are no further on. Perhaps, however, I could say that my recent brain activity has not sufficiently organised the stimuli of your answer.

There are a number of problems:

If the 'I' is a tool made by the brain and is not independent of the brain then it must be the brain which is using the tool. If this is the case then either the brain is merely responding and adapting to its surroundings (I suspect this might be your view) or the brain is in some kind of control. (If the latter, then what is the brain's relation to 'I'?) Is the lesser giving rise to a greater, or the other way around, or is it just a function of the brain?

Second, this construct 'I' appears to have awareness of itself. It is self-referencing, reflective, pro-active, thoughtful and so on, even in terms of pure materialism then, something must be 'running the script', to use a computing analogy. The 'I', of course, also learns, adding to the complexity, and in my understanding of artificial intelligence, however sophisticated, someone else had to set up the learning parameters in the first place. We, it appears, have not done this with ourselves, yet we appear to control ourselves and our learning.

At this point my difficulty is that the 'I' which is constructed is the same 'I' which is constructing, in short I need the 'I' to know the 'I'; I need the 'I' to have any concept of the 'I'.

Order out of chaos. If this world and everything in it truly is chaotic, purposeless, then one is going to have a difficult time explaining why any part of that chaos should seek to bring about any kind of order, however limited, within itself. The reality however is that we (whoever we are) cannot, and do not, live on the basis of chaos and irrationality with any kind of consistency. Why should the chaos organize itself if it is chaos? I suggest that as soon as one introduces the idea of order then the view that everything is chaotic falls. We have to have the concept of order to introduce order and the process of ordering.

Next, the collection of tissues, the biology, which produces the 'I'. The problem here is similar to the one outlined above, but is more concerned with what is produced, rather than why it should seek order at all, and it is this. If, and again this seems to be the position being taken, if 'we' are a complex product of brain function, we have to explain why the material, the purely material should give rise to the personal. In my view there are really only two responses to this, either there isn't actually any personal at all (at best an illusion), or there is, and if there is then we are back to the material/personal problem again.

This is now too long, and I haven't touched on any of the implications of what I have been saying, that will have to wait, but I will finish with this; bear in mind that all of this conversation has, as I have said before, assumed the concept of 'I'; we are assuming, we have to assume, the concept to explain the concept, therefore all my questions still stand, and second no one lives, no one lives, thinking of themselves as brain activity and nothing more, we have aspirations, hopes, fears, dreams, worries and the rest; in saying that the 'I' is the brain seeking to order the world around, is it not odd, that I seek to control 'I' and to know it?

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195. At 10:48am on 09 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Dylan Dog;

"Well Bernard you did accuse me of not positing an example of a being that is beyond our measure and comprehension but I did..."

No you didn't!

In what way is a "space goat" totally beyond our comprehension?

If you're saying that your "space goat" is neither a goat, nor in space, then we're talking about the same thing. For reasons of blasphemy, you want to call it a "goat" even though, being totally beyond our measure and comprehension, it is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF THE SORT.

Most other people call it God though.

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196. At 1:35pm on 09 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
DD
I think your argument from dinosaurs is relatively easily answered. (God needed the planet for other things but they were cool to have around for a while).
Wastefulness is a more serious objection. (My apologies to T-Rex lovers. If my son Ben ever hears about this, I'm a dead man). If human beings were the goal, why not create them 8000 years ago? Why a 14 billion year old universe?
Relatively easy to answer - humans were not and are not the only reason for the universe. Christians often confuse the magintude of God's love for us with the magnitude of our original cosmic significance. A great and beautiful universe would be a good thing for an agent to bring about.
But that still leaves an objection to Theism. The creation of living things seems extremely wasteful. That is to say, it seems devoid of meaning. Surely an omnipotent designer could do better? Surely the process looks too odd to be designed? Or at least that's how the objection would run.
Part of the problem is picturing God as an engineer who needs to maximise efficiency. We need to maximise efficiency as our resources are limited. So attempts to maximise efficiency are a mark of human artefacts. God's goals as a designer may not include maximal efficiency.

Leave aside the engineering analogy, and turn to poetry. "'Twas Sprillig and the slivy troves did gyre and wamble in the wabe" *seems* meaningless, but it obviously has a purpose behind it- even when read out of context.
Or from Elliot's "Wasteland"

"The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
This may seem devoid of all meaning and purpose - but Elliot clearly had one. It *seems* a waste of words to many an A-level student, but clearly isn't so.
Can we think of reasons that God could have for allowing "wastefulness"? Keep in mind we are not talking about the problem of suffering. It is the inefficiency that is the basis of the objection.
Perhaps indeterminancy in nature leads to some wastefulness, and indeterminacy is necessary for human free-will. Evolution (if true, don't want to be censored) is an amazing and complex process, not at all what Darwin envisioned. Perhaps the "wastefulness" of disappearing species is compensated by the staggering diversity of living things that this process produces and by the beauty of the process itself. A sort of trade-off.

When inferring design I don't think we need to know the puported designers goals and intentions. However I do think that we need to offer some possibilities, to show that the inference is reasonable.
So I think wastefulness provides some evidence against theism, but hardly decisive evidence. And I think that it is massively outweighed by the evidence for design.
The problem of evil/suffering is another matter. To my mind it provides the only substantial evidence against Theism.

G Veale

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197. At 4:15pm on 09 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
Portwyne

"we don't understand consciousness."

We all know exactly what it is to be conscious.

"Consciousness is surely only an operationally functional product of the extreme complexity in the organisation of brain energy."

How exactly does physical complexity produce an entirely different kind of property?
"To be precise, we need to recognise that there can be no hope of scientific progress so long as we continue to write down the identity in such a way that the mind terms and the brain terms are patently incommensurable. The problem will be especially obvious if the dimensions do not match up...I use the word "dimensions" here advisedly. When we do physics at school we are taught that the "physical dimensions" of each side of an equation must be the same." -N Humphries, a physicalist writing in the journal of consciousness studies.
The problem that Humphries and his ilk struggle with is that "redness" and "sweetness" and "beliefs" and "attitudes" need to be experienced to be understood, are nearly impossible to describe (let alone define) exactly, and can't be described in terms of dimensions etc. Physical states are entirely different. I can't see how complexity helps the materialist at all. Complexity is necessary for computation, sure. But that's a far cry from consciousness.

"What we consider "I" is a perspective and memory based organisation of sensations and perceptions. It is temporary, dissolving at death or before when affected by disease or injury."

How on earth could you know that? And I am rather more than sensations and perceptions. If all I came across in introspection was sensations/perceptions then I wouldn't know *I* was introspecting. There would just be a stream of thoughts connected to nothing in particular. But that's not what we experience, and you know it.

And we don't just sense things, we have attitudes about them. We believe, we hope, we fear, we value.There's far more than "sensing" going on here. We have beliefs that guide our judgments, and we reach conclusions on less than determinate evidence. (If we don't, why are you arguing?)

"The evolutionary journey of its progenitors has found advantage in sophisticated processing of stimuli, the ordering of sense perceptions into patterns."

But why sensations? How? How does the non-material emerge from the material?

"The notion of self or "I" originated as a tool, made by the brain, to give perspective, to facilitate the organisation of data into useful patterns. It allowed the guiding principle of such organisation to be the organism and the interests of the organism as opposed to the not-organism."

What practical difference does the conscious "I" make? Does it decide on aything, or is it a side effect of the brain intergrating streams of information? Does it have a causal role? If you say no, it is superfluous. If you say yes, you agree with Peter, Bernard and me that mind is separate from the brain, and that it can affect the brain. You can't have it both ways. If the "I" is a physical property the conscious awareness we are discussing here has no functional value.

Are you just a "useful fiction" Portwyne? Am I? Is my child? You get very upset about human suffering - and rightly so. But on your definition, evil and suffering provide no evidence against God. No-one suffers, factually speaking.

G Veale

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198. At 5:31pm on 09 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Bernard!

You really don't get it!(note to self copy Bernard and adopt a supercilious, slightly aloof nay snobbish manner when dealing with people when presenting them with stuff that you cannot back up with any evidence).

Btw Bernard are you or were you a theology student?

I did indeed posit an example...Q and the Cosmic Space Goat. The Cosmic Space Goat is beyond our universe-not of.The appearance of a goat only occurs because of our limited senses and comprehension(well-obviously!), but it is not actually of goatness-that is to do with the fifth dimension ectoplasm(obviously! sniff). This is just the form that his holiness of the outer universe chooses to reveal to true initiates. You are correct in one regard...what you say could be considered as blasphemy-we are usually peaceful but a Jihad may be coming-do not tug the beard of the Goat! IT IS ABSOLUTELY OF THE SORT(resort to Argumentum ad capslock-put in capitals and hey must be true!bloody great stuff this!).

Your "argument"(even if one may be so bold to call it that) is just a straw-man.

"Most other people call it God though."

Those in the know call it the Cosmic Space Goat.

DD

ps. I must say it is tremendous fun writing this-because you can write the biggest load of guff-if of course you can't actually provide evidence to back up what you are saying!

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199. At 6:06pm on 09 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
On second thoughts Bernard-apologies if my last post is/comes across as a bit rude.

Regards

DD

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200. At 6:13pm on 09 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

DD, hi .

I need to be careful here or I'll end up debating 2 or 3 points at once after having ignored this thread for a long time! Anyway.

Post 185. You say you agree with most of what I said (about the bible). Does this mean that you would acknowledge that we need not necessarily do away with the gods of the Bible/Koran just because the bible isn't always literal?

Also, in that it is connected, I'm wondering what kind of evidence you would accept for the notion of God? What would you go looking for? Not being awkward, just thinking that if we're going to say there is no evidence for God we would need to know what might constitute evidence in the first place.

Sorry for butting into the conversation between you and Bernard.

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201. At 6:31pm on 09 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
DD;

That's no problem, on reading back I think I may have been rude to you first.

the problem with the argument you have presented is that you are immediately faced with positing

"The appearance of a goat only occurs because of our limited senses and comprehension"

And, as we're now talking about the realm of perception (which you need to do in order to defend your naming the transcendent a "goat") then there is no problem with perceptual evidence....except that you can't offer any.

As I'm not claiming that the Transcendent "appears" in goat form, in fact I'm specifically claiming that, being transcendent, it cannot "appear" as a "goat", your argument has one substantial weakess that mine doesn't!

I hope you spot the problems that I've raised with my position there, but if not, at least recognise that they are wholly different problems from those faced by your position.

:)

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202. At 7:31pm on 09 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Oh for FSMs sake, visiting Belfast meant no time to post this weekend. Seems my backlog on this thread won't go away any time soon.

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203. At 7:46pm on 09 Feb 2009, petermorrow wrote:

Peter

Now, now. No need to curse the bisgetti monster.

BTW, is it just me, or has this been one of the best threads in a while?

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204. At 8:06pm on 09 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Bernard

I am just making it up as I go along!I have no evidence to back up the CSG(bless his beard), bit like you and your position.

However the cosmic space goat sees and hear all-so watch out Bernard!

DD

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205. At 8:33pm on 09 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Hi PeterM

No problem for butting in! However my replies will have to be short as I am just too busy at the moment.

I am saying that you believe what you want. I have no problem with theists generally, some are lovely especially with a bit of mint sauce...the problem I have is with the damn literalists/fundamentalists eg., they do take their respective holy books as being literal.

OT on the veggie questions thread makes some quite delightful fallacious points with you namely because Jesus mentions Noah therefore Noah is true and therefore by extension the great flood happened. The problem with that is, is that there is absolutely NO evidence that such a flood occurred. Such an event would (obviously) leave behind billions of tonnes worth of evidence and could be tested in a myriad of different ways. However no evidence exists-if you are a literalist you just ignore, go into extreme cognitive dissonance mode, scream about conspiracies, the entire world scientific/mineral companies being stupid and/or corrupt whilst filling your car up with 100's of millions years of fossil fuels.

The wonderful thing that literalists like OT and Ken Ham etc do is give people like me actual testable/empirical evidence. I can test their evidence and if their gods rest on the evidence that they present then their gods do not exist ipso facto.

I actually am an atheist and an agnostic Peter. I believe that what we most commonly constitute as gods are man-made however I am also agnostic-a philosophical agnostic. I do not believe that there is any evidence for a direct, interventionist god but the evidence does not rule out a very laissez-faire god/creator maybe someone who kicked it off but then left us alone(so do have some sympathy with Bernard-but please don't tell him that!)so laissez-faire in fact that they are not worried about anyone worshipping them.

So much for short and I still haven't got around to Graham's post! hope that is a bit clearer however this post was battered out quickly so apologies for spelling/grammatical errors!

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206. At 8:47pm on 09 Feb 2009, Dylan_Dog wrote:
Graham,

Damn have to be quick...

My point was when did consciousness enter humans? was there a specific point?

Bernard seems to saying that humans are special you are saying they are not so(indeed you both seem to know about the mind of god)so why wait with the consciousness thing? there does seem to be a lot of waste(I know you think you have addressed this point). To me every thing is much simpler-or more easily explained if everything is a result of natural resources. If you bring in third parties it raises far more questions.

You are right about Darwin, in that he probably would not recognise a modern course in evolution-what with all the advances in DNA and genetics. Which would indicate that evolution by natural selection is not pseudo-science.

I have a poem too Graham

There was a young girl from Carmarnock,
Who...

Maybe I better not go there...

Right same apologies to you as I gave to PeterM re:rushed posts

Regards

DD

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207. At 12:21pm on 10 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
DD
Let's take Theism as an hypothesis. (Not how we come to believe in God, but we can use this method to check if our belief makes sense). Theism holds that there is a entity that has four properties. (i) Maximal Power (ii)Maximal Knowledge (iii) Freedom (iv) Intentionality. "Maximal" simply means that there are no limits, other than what is logically possible. This is what Theists take to be the "most perfect being we can conceive". God's goodness follows from (ii), (iii) and (iv). So God is worthy of worship/contemplation. And I'm afraid that the "limitless" qualities rule out beings limited by time, space or material parts. So "the Big Space Goat is Dead!" (That hasn't quite the Nietzschean resonance that I was after... how about "there probably isn't a Space Goat - so stop stalling and give me a real objection!")
Anyway, all this makes Theism a simple hypothesis - very few properties are proposed. (Note Dawkin's mistake here - he confuses what a mind knows and creates with the mind itself.) It is also coherent, and a priori no less probable than materialism which involves innumerable fundamental particles behaving in exactly the same
way.
But what about evidence? Does the hypothesis lead us to expect important observations? If Barry George murdered Jill Dando we might expect certain observations. Same goes for Darwin's ideas etc. The "God hypothesis" raises the probability of an ordered universe with complex and purposeful entities and observers.
Furthermore, materialism cannot explain non-material facts like conscious events, moral facts and personhood. And I think materialists typically hold an incoherent set of beliefs, as a materialist can give no reason for trusting their own cognitive faculties. This suggests that the main alternative to Theism should be pragmatism or postmodernism, rather than the New Atheism.
Have I an unfalsifiable hypothesis? No - as I've said Darwins argument from Cosmic "wastefulness" provides some counter-evidence. The problem of evil/suffering provides significant counterevidence. So evidence counts for and against the God hypothesis.
I think that more or less deals with the charge that I'm not considering the evidence when I assert that God exists. And it also should deal with the charge that "God" is a meaningless term. It is a clear, simple and coherent idea, that also has explanatory power and scope. Unlike a physically infinite universe it does not automatically cohere with just any observation.

G Veale

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208. At 1:04pm on 10 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:

I certainly expect science to discover many causal correlations between kinds of brain events (narrowly described) and kinds of mental events (narrowly described). But the discovery of innumerable causal correlations of this kind is not the discovery of a scientific theory. For a scientific theory we need more general laws indicating why certain brain events give rise to certain experiences and thoughts. But physical events (including brain events) vary from each other only in respect of a few measurable parameters - location, velocity, mass, spin etc. Mental events however vary from each other in innumerable non-quantifiable ways. There isn't a quantifiable
difference between "experiencing" red and "experiencing" orange. There are quantifiable differences on the visible light spectrum. You need "quantifiables" on both sides of the equation to get a scientific law,
determining how a certain sort of variation will give rise to another sort of variation. But our experiences are typically ineffable - you have to have them to know what they are.

So consciousness remains a brute unexplained on Materialism. And two-way interaction between consciousness and physical states in the brain if we are to retain any meaningful sense of free-will and rationality. Some third-thing is needed to explain the regular interactions of the mental world and the physical world. A cause of both.

As for Adam and consciousness...
I've no idea at all how Adam and Eve fit into all this. Which is a bit lame, as I think my comments on Adam kicked off the whole discussion about consiousness. So I think materialism cannot explain why consciousness *at all, anywhere*. Theism can. But that doesn't help me defend my belief in an historical couple who are at the top of our family tree.

G Veale

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209. At 10:51pm on 10 Feb 2009, portwyne wrote:

Peter and Graham - my answers will follow shortly - this is an area I have been thinking around for a long time and I have quite firm opinions.

This week I added to the demands an onerous workload makes on my time by going to hear David Wilkinson deliver the annual QUB Theological Lectures - Dawkins, Hawking and the Accelerating Universe: Science and Theology in Contemporary Dialogue. Far too conservative for my tastes but well-delivered and with some quite though-provoking points. Spare time gone though for two days on the trot!

In the mean time just a quickie for Graham - I believe evolution theory covers consciousness quite nicely: if, given time, physical complexity can produce life from a few ions and carbon compounds (thus adding "an entirely different sort of property") then physical complexity, given time, can also add consciousness.

I agree with you on one thing though: Post-modernism is a much more appropriate alternative to Theism than the New-Atheism!

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210. At 1:36pm on 11 Feb 2009, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

DD, Graham

ref empirical evidence for God,

If we say that there is no scientific evidence for God is that not a bit like saying that you can't prove that man exists using a microscope?

Microscopes were never designed to prove that man exists so it should not be surprising they fail in this task.

By the same token the Christian faith had a major part in inspiring the creation of modern science in order to study better the creation of God.

Kepler: "Science is thinking God's thoughts after him".

Kelvin based TSLOT on the bible.

This was very typical of the groundbreakers in the scientific revolution.

As we know, before people became professional scientistsin Britain, science was done by clergymen.

Therefore, to say that a tool designed by man to study God's creation does not prove God is not as valid as it might appear.

Some argue that many people hold to this argument with religious zeal because they do not want to consider any other answer to be possible.

sincerely
OT

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211. At 1:45pm on 11 Feb 2009, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

...I think the challenge to prove God using the scientific method is therefore a category error/mistake.

After all, Bacon started the scientific method and he never for a second saw any conflict with his devout faith.

He said: "There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.”

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212. At 1:53pm on 11 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
OT;

Good points, well made.

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213. At 3:10pm on 11 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hiya PERP,

I see you've taken ERPing to new heights, becoming the ueberPERP. Or should that be taken it to new lows, becoming the unterPERP? Your ERPing reaches its zenith in your argument in favour theism for explaining consciousness. Let me deal with that in my next post. For now I'll just deal with your continuing feeble attempts to argue why science could never explain consciousness.

"I may repeat the points - but consciousness is not a postulate and it isn't empty."

Did I say it was? Did I say consciousness was postulated?! Please either point out where I said that or stop attributing statements to me I never made.

"If "two" things are in fact one it must be the case that they share all of their properties in common."

They (personal experience and the description of it) may turn out to have the same physical basis. Your assertion that they can't remains mere ERPing sofar.

"The properties of neurons (for example) and the properties of a felt state like pain ("aargh!") seem totally different. "

This shows how ridiculous it is of you to claim I don't read your arguments. Will you read my post 167 already before attributing more nonsense to me when I never said anything of the sort?! In 167 I clearly stated that I am well aware of the difference between conscious experience and a description of it (duh, so bleeding obvious). But while what I've discussed sofar mainly touched on the description of consciousness, science is by no means unable to deal with the personal experience part. You've failed to address anything I said about that in post 167. Forgetting or avoiding?

"And as for ERPing, I haven't seen any reason to think that conscious states could be physical."

I see you're trying to run away again from your position that started this lengthy discussion. It wasn't about lack of a scientific explanation or evidence for it today. You said it would never work. That was what I called you out over. The burden of proof is almost all yours. I'm happy to maintain my modest position that you have repeatedly voiced some frustration over.

"Intuitively and conceptually they are radically different."

Intuition is proof now? And while consciousness and physics may appear conceptually different to you, that doesn't prove they are either. Thank FSM that physical reality is not limited to your comprehension of it!

And then finally for this post, you go into circular reasoning in point B. You put forward the argument that we couldn't feel how personal experience feels to another person, even if we knew their brain state and we could artificially induce that brain state in ourselves (see the example in my post 167 about inducing the feeling of pain in a limb that isn't even there anymore). But that again already assumes the mental state to be more than a very complicated purely physical brain state. Surely someone who very immodestly trumps his philosophical superiority as you do, should have spotted the invalid reasoning in that argument. But since you didn't, let me explain in simple steps.
- the brain states are physical
- since you have not offered anything convincing yet, we hold open the possibility that what you call mental states are fully explicable as physical phenomena
- the laws of physics that describe our brains are not personally dependent
- therefore there is no proof that mental states like pain are felt differently by different persons.
You assume mental states to be different from physical brain states. If they were, I might have a problem. But that is the very thing that started the whole discussion. You can't slip in that assumption in any argument you put forward, since you haven't proven it yet. The moment you do slip in the assumption, as you did in your post, your reasoning becomes just the unfounded assumption again. Try to at least understand that, PERP.

And then you do a little more ERPing when you say

"I can detect everything that is happening in your brain and nervous system, but not your thoughts. So where are they?"

Just the blind, negative assertion again that no matter what we discover about the brain, we could not read someones thoughts. Not offering any argument in favour of it, merely asserting. Even contradicting your own statements where you accept correlation between what you consider to be separate brain and mental states.

A rather poor post I think, and I haven't even dealt with the worst bit of it. I'll do that in my next post.

greets,
Peter

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214. At 3:49pm on 11 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Then there was the part where you presented your arguments in favour of theism explaining consciousness. Completely hollow if you ask me. Also noteworthy that the middle part of that section of your post didn't argue in favour of theism at all. In slightly YEC style, you dedicated almost as many words on negativity to talk down the prospect for a scientific explanation as you did on presenting arguments in favour of arguments for theism.

So what were your arguments for theism? At the beginning of section C you mention purpose. In the last half of your post you bring that up again when you say things like

"The existence of minds like ours is not a mystery in a theistic universe because theism takes the most fundamental fact of reality to be a conscious and purposive mind."

Most fundamental fact of reality eh? Just a minor inconvenience I suppose that this most fundamental fact is not observable unless you turn into a believer first and are willing to take it on faith. Prrfft!
And there is some more ERPing

"So the existence of states radically different from the physical is not a brute unexplained on Theism. "

Just the unreasoned assumption again that they are radically different, no argument presented. Same with the unelaborated

"The Theistic worldview offers an explanatory framework in which the goodness of conscious life and libertarian free will provides the fundamental reason why conscious subjects exist."

Pffffrrtt! You don't explain anything with that, you don't argue anything. And if you watch the news or a wildlife documentary, the "goodness of conscious life" part is very much in contradiction to lots of observations! Consciousness leads to a survival arms race of selfish genes in all species but our own. And mankind adds a whole news dimension to how consciousness does not necessarily imply goodness.

The reason why you are now elevated to UberPERP is that you manage to stick two empty postulates into one argument. First the purpose bit. Materialism does indeed not give any purpose. So well done materialism as no generally accepted purpose to our existence has been demonstrated (purpose referring to something higher than gene replication, or the purpose we simply decide to attach to ourselves). In YOUR world view there may be such a higher purpose, but then it's slipping in the assumption again of being right in the first place if you advance that as an argument. So it's ERPing. You should learn to try to present arguments without slipping in the assumption of being correct somewhere along the line.
And then to explain the ERPed purpose, you ERP theism into it. If I said 'Purpose just happens to come about spontaneously when physical processes reach a certain level of complexity' that statement would have as much explanatory power as theism. Both would be useless if that is all they could say.
But instead, you declare that theism offers a "more developed, mature accounts of reality". Graham, you are den UeberPERP!

Peter

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215. At 4:01pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
More sound and fury signifying nothing...

A post for each mistake

"You've failed to address anything I said about that in post 167. Forgetting or avoiding?"

No, thats been addressed many, many times.

"...physical events (including brain events) vary from each other only in respect of a few measurable parameters - location, velocity, mass, spin etc. Mental events however vary from each other in innumerable non-quantifiable ways. There isn't a quantifiable difference between "experiencing" red and "experiencing" orange. There are quantifiable differences on the visible light spectrum. You need "quantifiables" on both sides of the equation to get a scientific law,
determining how a certain sort of variation will give rise to another sort of variation. But our experiences are typically ineffable - you have to have them to know what they are."

"Neurons are not thoughts. I can detect everything that is happening in your brain and nervous system, but not your thoughts. So where are they? Where is your consciousness? The unified "stream" of awareness? Identifying what is causing awareness one thing. But examining it's nature and explaining it's existence by observing physical events is another."

"Conscious experiences are experiences had "from the inside" by a conscious subject. They are not like objective features of the world equally available for observation by anyone in a position to observe them. Other people may know that I am in pain, and can infer that from my brain states if they're so inclined, but only I *feel* my pain."

"Conscious experiences have features or qualities that go beyond the physical features that seem to cause them: the look of colours, the feel of pain, and so on. These features are what Bernard is calling "qualia". For example there seems to be nothing about wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, or physical brain processes caused by visually encountering them that captures or explains the actual look of a blue sky."

And so on, and so on. So there are properties *unique* to mental events, and properties *unique* to physical events. So they are not the same thing.

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216. At 4:07pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
"It wasn't about lack of a scientific explanation or evidence for it today. You said it would never work. That was what I called you out over. The burden of proof is almost all yours. I'm happy to maintain my modest position that you have repeatedly voiced some frustration over."

(a)Saying - "I see the difficulties with my position, but you know, you could be wrong!" - isn't an argument.

(b) I'm saying *everything we know* leads me to *infer* that we cannot have a materialistic explanation of consciousness. If there is evidence I've missed I'm all ears. So far, all I have seen is detail about physical states, and correlations with very narrowly defined mental states. That's not enough to deal with the clear, widely acknowledged conceptual differences between the physical and the mental.

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217. At 4:14pm on 11 Feb 2009, Bernards_Insight wrote:
Peter, I see you're getting fairly ad hominem again...

I've just skimmed your post, but a few quick points.

"They (personal experience and the description of it) may turn out to have the same physical basis."

So you're already assuming that personal experience and despription are two different thing, am i reading you right?

I think it's been said many times before that the argument is not whether they have the same "physical basis", but whether, even if they do, the two can be reduced to the one thing. Your sentence above shows quite clearly why they cant.

"I am well aware of the difference between conscious experience and a description of it.... But while what I've discussed sofar mainly touched on the description of consciousness, science is by no means unable to deal with the personal experience part."

Well, you've yet to show how it can, without inexorably moving on to a description, thus implying that they're the same thing, even though you accept that they are not.

"Just the blind, negative assertion again that no matter what we discover about the brain, we could not read someones thoughts. Not offering any argument in favour of it, merely asserting."

Although, in many places, the burden of proof may lie on graham, here it squarely lies on you.

I would say the burden of proof is on you to proof that it is possible to "read someone's thoughts", given that it's nothing more than science fiction.

"Even contradicting your own statements where you accept correlation between what you consider to be separate brain and mental states."

That is not at all a contradiction, given that correlation is by no means identity.

In fact, correlation presupposes difference. One thing cannot be correlated with itself.

"Then there was the part where you presented your arguments in favour of theism explaining consciousness... didn't argue in favour of theism at all."

Arguing that theism can explain consciousness is not the same as arguing for theism.

I think that, in this regard, Graham was arguing that, IF theism is accepted, it presents an explanation. I don;t think that, here and now, he has been trying to argue "in favour of theism"

"So what were your arguments for theism?"

Again, I don't think Graham was trying to offer any, not here.

"the most fundamental fact of reality to be a conscious and purposive mind"

"Most fundamental fact of reality eh?"

Yes, that is the theist position, which, IF accepted, has an explanatory power with regard to consciousness. IF accepted

"Just a minor inconvenience I suppose that this most fundamental fact is not observable"

Surely the whole thrust of this debate is that this most fundamental fact of reality is not observable, yet we all intutively grasp it.

That's what we're arguing about!

"The Theistic worldview offers an explanatory framework in which the goodness of conscious life and libertarian free will provides the fundamental reason why conscious subjects exist."

Pffffrrtt! You don't explain anything with that, you don't argue anything. "

Actually, that does explain quite a lot. If the immediate data of consciousness is the fundamental reality, and not the material data, it explains a lot about how we can understand things. after all, unorder, meaningless "physical data" if there were such a thing, could be neither comprehended, nor even perceived.

"First the purpose bit. Materialism does indeed not give any purpose. So well done materialism as no generally accepted purpose to our existence has been demonstrated"

Tell me, what would constitute a demonstration of "purpose".....bearing in mind that you're commited to only using "physical explanations" (I actually think it's an oxymoron to talk about a "physical explanation", but that's another matter)

"Purpose just happens to come about spontaneously when physical processes reach a certain level of complexity"

But that doesn't explain purpose at all!!!

A spontaneous arising of complex processes?
That's not purpose!!! It's almost the exact opposite!

"that statement would have as much explanatory power as theism"

It has absolutely no explanatory power, as it completely negates that which it attempts to explain.

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218. At 4:17pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
"Intuition is proof now?"
No, but you've got to start somewhere. Call it evidence. The conceptual differences are much more important.

There is a significant disanalogy between solidity and the like on the one hand and consciousness and other mental phenomena on the other. For example, solidity, like all uncontroversially physical properties, is an entirely objective or "public" phenomenon, equally accessible in principle to every observer. The same is true of the water molecules which, when frozen, collectively manifest solidity. There is thus no mystery about how solidity can be a higher-order physical property of a system of water molecules.

"And while consciousness and physics may appear conceptually different to you..."
Oh, not just me. Many a materialist scientist and philosopher as well. But I'm not allowed to show that with quotes or urls. If anyone else is interested they can let me know.

"..that doesn't prove they are either."
Proof, in the sense of absolute, apodictic certainty? No. But then I don't have proof that we're not part of an elaborate illusion. And neither do you. I've got good arguments and good reasons to doubt that idea. What's your point here?

"Thank FSM that physical reality is not limited to your comprehension of it!" You stop making any sense at all at this point.

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219. At 4:20pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
"You put forward the argument that we couldn't feel how personal experience feels to another person, even if we knew their brain state and we could artificially induce that brain state in ourselves."

Er - PK? That just means that they'd feel their pain (or whatever) and I'd feel mine.
But let's take that seriously for a moment. Obviously the two brains are not identical in your scenario - but (heaven knows why you think this) the mental experiences are. So you would just have shown that mind/brain identity *isn't* true.

Time to go back to the drawing board.

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220. At 4:41pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
"someone who very immodestly trumps his philosophical superiority as you do"

Just superiority to you, which isn't a boast as you say you are not a fan. I'm certainly not on Brian or Bernard's
level, or anything approximating it.

"-the brain states are physical" Yep
- "since you have not offered anything convincing yet, we hold open the possibility that what you call mental states are fully explicable as physical phenomena" No. You haven't been paying attention.
- "the laws of physics that describe our brains are not personally dependent" So what?
- "therefore there is no proof that mental states like pain are felt differently by different persons." Did you consult for Dawkin's on "The God Delusion?" I *never* said that we might experience pain differently. I said an experience is not physical. It's not a physical object you can push around, or weigh, or that can be measured on a dial.

"You assume mental states to be different from physical brain states." No, I have noted the difference in their properties. Such differences are at *the very least* strong evidence that they are different.

"the blind, negative assertion again that no matter what we discover about the brain, we could not read someones thoughts. Not offering any argument in favour of it, merely asserting."

I can make reliable inferences about your thoughts from your brain states. Thats not "mind-reading". And I assume that something happens in our brain every time we experience something. So lets say that I watch that happen. How on earth am I watching your first person experience? Any more than I am seeing your happiness by watching you smile? If that's your definition of "mind reading", who needs the technology? I can infer what your experience is, imagine what it would be like - and if it is an experience of burning your finger on a cigarette, I can burn mine in a similar way to see what that would feel like for me. (Or "set off" the appropriate neurons in my brain - whichever gets the biggest research grant.) At no stage does my first person experience become your first person experience. At no stage does your subjective first person experience enter the world described in objective third person language. You can't quantify it or measure it, not because that sort of thing is a bit tricky, but because *all the evidence tells us that mental events/personal experience is not the sort of thing that can be quantified*.

Anyway, nice to spar again.

PERP

(Which makes it sound as if Harry Callaghan is going to ask me if I "feel lucky, Punk".)

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221. At 4:57pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
Bernard

Pretty much, you summed my argument up correctly. It's an Inference to a Best Explanation, not a deductive proof like the cosmological argument.
So Theism provides a better explanation of consciousness than materialism as materialism cannot provide one at all.
But there's lots of other evidence to consider - so the party isn't over.

Post 207 shows how Theism can be explicated as an explanatory hypothesis. I don't know if you've read Swinburne, but I think his position is pretty solid.

Odd that PK thinks that only observables can function as explanations. He's getting empiricism mixed up with scientific realism again. He's good at that. Bit like Mach calling atoms "supernatural" and "occult" entities. "I've never seen one, have you?" he insisted.

Of course, we can only infer to the universes' first state and it's fundamental physical properties. We don't observe them directly. So materialism doesn't count as an explanation either on PKs view.

Don't let him in on the secret. He seems pretty pleased with himself. Anyway, I'm off for a few days. So I'll rejoin the regulated chaos on Monday. Cheers to you, PK, DD, PM and Portwyne. This is a great thread!

GV/PERP

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222. At 5:00pm on 11 Feb 2009, gveale wrote:
In the meantime, can anyone tell me what the "prfft" establishes?

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223. At 6:56pm on 11 Feb 2009, Orthodox-tradition wrote:

Bernard - thanks for the vote of support.

As I recall, we had agreed that we firmly agree on all the B-I-G questions and answers.

:-)

and Graham...more power to yer elbow (I'm exhausated even SCANNING your posts above).

;-)

TTFN

OT

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224. At 7:40pm on 11 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hello people,

Boy you guys are fast! I'm on a more or less weekly or bi-weekly schedule for post that are more than a drive-by quick blurb. I make two posts and within hours, a dozen more are stacked up for me. AARRGH!!
I'll take things in order of previous posts, unless otherwise indicated. Petermorrows post 174 is up first now

"If I've read your use of the 'gap' argument incorrectly, apologies, but if not, not only do I not wish to use the concept of the 'gap' as an argument for God but I'm also wondering why knowing stuff, i.e. having increased knowledge about the world and the universe, makes the concept of God redundant. What's you take on this?"

and

"Come on, knowing stuff doesn't do away with God, it just means we know stuff."

It depends a bit on what your god is to you. You say that for you scientific discovery doesn't diminish god. But to others it certainly would. To e.g. the vikings, our ability to create lightning at any time in any place with a powerful enough electricity supply at hand, would have taken away the divine nature of the work of one of their gods. The one whose job description had him sitting on a cloud with a bunch of lightning bolts, ready to crash them down during bad weather. If we can do or even exceed the things that gods are supposed to do, how can it not diminish their divine status? Heal the sick, those on the brink of death? Sure, in some cases we can. No need for a trouble-making hippie with a streak of megalomania ('I am the son of god'). Bring people back from the dead? Amazingly, sometimes we can yes. So what was so special about them god thingies again?

To plenty of believers, our ability to equal or outdo god diminishes god. If I were still a believer I'd probably think that way too.

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225. At 8:03pm on 11 Feb 2009, PeterKlaver wrote:
Hail to the king,

I understand the effort it takes to keep track of what you've answered and what not and keep track of why certain questions are being debated and how they relate to the origin of the discussion. Believe me I understand.

I think my post 166 was in response to what you had posted to me earlier. The crucial bit in that post (I think) was the point I'll quote below.

And of course, as a loyal subject, I will instantly desist from making ad hominem posts to Graham. Although I don't see why you would have me do so. The traitorous PERP kept proclaiming himself king after you had ascended to the throne. I was actually hoping to score some browny points by verbally guillotining the sh(BEEP) one of these days. Just say the words 'Who will rid me of that traitorous PERP!' and all will be taken care of. You may have to let monks flog you after that to get back into the publics favour, but that would be well worth seeing his head roll, wouldn't it?

Your most loyal subject,
Peter
-----------------------------
Then comes what I think is the crucial bit. You say

"It can be "down" to merely physics. It could be CAUSED by physics. But that it is not THE SAME THING as the physics is implicit in the fact that you have to ask the question."

Do I do get your position right if I thought you're saying tha