Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

[_spotlight]

Here's the original paper.
http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Ko ... usness.pdf

[_spotlight]

The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins, 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons & Rensink, 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack, 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries, 2009; Engel and Singer, 2001).

The fact that we are unconscious "philosophical zombies" to a much greater extent than we are conscious beings ought to be a problem for idealism rather than an argument in its favor. Consciousness cannot comprehend all of the detail available in reality. It is a simplification to make mental modeling of an external reality tractable.

[_Gadianton]

the "brain in vat" argument has been around forever. To me it's not that interesting beyond showing one set of theoretical limits to physical measurement. I certainly wouldn't ever take the argument seriously on its face: what if you can't tell the difference between the real world and the Matrix?

Most of the "simulation" stuff going around is nonsense.

However, this argument is compelling, it's really thought-provoking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

It's one thing "how do you know you're not really dreaming when you think you're awake" and another an apriori argument that you're dreaming.

In this argument (which someone from this board introduced us to, smart guy, can't remember his name, but totally deluded with sim stuff) if you believe in strong A.I., then the lifeforms that can be spun up in a controlled environment on a VM surely outnumber the small number that successfully evolve. So if artificial life comprises 99% of lifeforms, all life forms believing they are real and living in a physical world, then why are you so special? Chances are you are artificial too. OK, reject Strong A.I. as an easy way out, but non-theists who are really into the wonders of science have trouble with that.

by the way, in this world, minimal physicalism is still true because it doesn't matter how many VMs you have within VM, it's lights out for everyone when someone trips over the power cable.

[_mikwut]

For the time being, the claim that universal consciousness gives rise to human consciousness is no more informative or useful than the relgionist's claim that goddidit.

First, just so you know, that is alone (god did it) pretty useful information to a vast amount of the population if in fact God did do it. Your disdain for theistic worldviews is not equivalent to evidence in this discussion. I have already several times stated the usefulness is found in value, morality, our sense of self being grounded and fundamental, the sacred and transcendent, free will, a more beautiful worldview and all the other factors I listed above. Our zeitgeist effects culture, economies, media, goverment and our own personal happiness so it is indeed useful. I'm also sorry to tell you functional, instrumental and technological science is wonderful and tells us a great deal about the workings of the reality represented to us, but it isn't the only game in town toward a building closer to truth in thriving and flourishing in a total human life.

Second, if functionally useful is your criteria in this discussion your simply demonstrating your incapability to have the discussion by ignoring the many rationale I have listed for it that physicalism does not account for and even erodes our coming to a real understanding of who we are. Truth is the criteria not functionality. Building a better cellphone is useful and great but it doesn't do much for most of us in telling us how should I therefore live my life.

Third, your simply using rhetoric that you have absorbed but not thinking deeper about, pragmatic considerations like medical advances are not evidence for physicalism or idealism, this is a rather basic point. Your usefulness argument is just pragmatic and the same as a Mormon saying the Book of Mormon is true because it makes me happy and a better person and then repeating the same slogan over and over every time it is shown to be irrelevant.

Fourth, the claim that unconscious matter gives rise to human consciousness is no more informative or useful than the claim that matter did it. Something either did it, or it is primary and fundamental. I thought we agreed in response to steelhead above your not entitled to a default and neither am I.

Fifth, you constantly chastise (most of which I agree with) believing Mormons for promoting nonsensical, but to them, supportive evidence of Mormon beliefs that have real effects on others well being. Take your thread about your Mother for example. I completely agree with you respecting the things you said, i.e. the harm of the financial constraints the church puts on members, particularly elderly members. It is right for you to challenge those that cannot support and justify a metaphysical anchoring of those real effects. You should be held to the same standard when it comes to metaphysical truths and real human flourishing. Saying practical, operative, instrumental and functional technological examples of the scientific enterprise that no one disagrees with or finds any less interesting and fascinating doesn't address our inner human condition.

You requested that I clarify my position and I did so, stating that I do not consider myself a physicalist, but one who tries to follow the evidence.

Well then you need to apply a description of your position because, no offense, everyone of your postings are replete with and ooze materialism/physicalism. We had an exchange way back where you posted Tononi's brain research and split brain research as proof for materialism. It is possible your not as comfortable in a philosophical discussion but the person who thinks he isn't doing philosophy or has no need of philosophy is the same person that doesn't understand and recognize his own philosophical assumptions and presuppositions. Your positions are so philosophically physicalist (as most scientists) the burden is clearly on you to demonstrate otherwise. We both are self described as folks who try to follow the evidence but that isn't a counter description of our ontological positions, it quite frankly is a dodge of it.

First of all, you didn't ask for evidence, you asked for my opinion.

I was providing a response to your challenge that you see no convincing or incontrovertible evidence for idealism. I was simply furthering our discussion and I provided a beginning of evidence for convincing idealism evidence. Also the video was supportive of idealism I think it obvious I subsume the evidence presented in it into my own.

Secondly, the same could be said about your contributions to the thread so far. The only real evidence provided on this thread has been that presented in the video linked in the OP.

This is not true. I have presented our conscious experience as the most real fundamental reality. I have provided the scientific reality of representation of our sensations and strongly implying that mind creates reality. I have introductorily provided quotes from qualified authority demonstrating that idealism is consistent with quantum physics, to which you seemingly agree when you confessed that there are plural interpretations of the quantum enigma we find.

Your quote from Feldman is far from positive evidence for your position. It simply describes an phenomenological observation that cannot be adequately explained by our present understanding of brain function

Um, it is an example of the very definition of evidence, I hope your not misunderstanding evidence for proof. Let's look at what my quote provided:

"There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high- resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al., 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins, 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry."

The last sentence can clearly be understood that our mental/subjective experience (what i claim is fundamental) is inconsistent with the physical/material substrate or the neural circuitry. It is also made clear that the entire visual system of the brain has been mapped in detail. This is clear support of the interpretation of idealism because it addresses the missing explanation (that has been mapped empirically and completely so we aren't missing that) and supports the hypothesis that the brain alone is not producing our subjective experience or the mind. That is evidence of idealism. Your response is ironically a feeble physicalism/materialism of the gaps or promissory note. The article and quote I gave stated clearly that progress in some problems can be seen but others seem completely intractable. So what your saying is no different than God did it your just giving a matter did it and in the future we will understand why. Why would you have such faith in science giving us an answer in a physical manner to what seems to be a completely unsolvable problem from physicalist perspective if your not even a physicalist?

And off we go. What is "mental force"?

Uh, your will, intent, mindful attention etc...

For example, Jeffrey Schwartz has demonstrated through published studies that brain scans showed abnormal activity in his ocd patients who would then go through mental focus therapy and their brain scans showed realignment of the abnormal brain activity. Without external stimuli OCD patients were able to change brain patterns by modifying their thoughts through mindful attention and intent. This is evidence again of top down mind to brain rather than merely a physicalist brain creates mind. http://westallen.typepad.com/files/schw ... -brain.pdf

Again you gotta stop thinking zohar and bending spoons everytime you engage a conversation that isn't just neo-atheistic slogans. Your quick trigger to those slogans in thought crunching.

What you call mental force would seem to me and my colleagues to be the neurological sequelae of sensory input from external stimuli. These colleagues and I have studied neurological and neuro-endocrine sequelae of sensory input. We have published a number of papers on the subject, including a paper in Nature (which paper, unlike the essay you linked to, contained original experimental data).

I would be interested to read them you should be credited highly for your scientific achievements.

Unless you can come up with a mathematical description of the mental force field, along with its associated particle, you should put the term in quotes, because it is just a construct.

[/quote]

Of course it is. Just like physicalism is. All we can do is through our primary experience weigh all of our experience and determine the best explanation. Have you offered something that physicalism is not just a construct?

If physicalism is true then classical realism is true. I think realism is your real objection anyway so why don't you just meet the standards of the Quantum Randi Challenge and show that realism or even naïve realism is true. That would end our discussion forthright. http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5294

mikwut

[_mikwut]

Hello Spotlight,

mikwut wrote:
The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins, 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons & Rensink, 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack, 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries, 2009; Engel and Singer, 2001).

Spotlight responded:
The fact that we are unconscious "philosophical zombies" to a much greater extent than we are conscious beings ought to be a problem for idealism rather than an argument in its favor. Consciousness cannot comprehend all of the detail available in reality. It is a simplification to make mental modeling of an external reality tractable.

The binding problem I presented has nothing to do with unconscious states, it has to do a visual scene you see and we all see in a normal conscious state. All the empirical data to support a correlative physicalism is present but no placement for our subjective experience. There is no problem presenting this a evidence for idealism, none at all. Just read the paper I linked.

mikwut

[_spotlight]

The binding problem I presented has nothing to do with unconscious states, it has to do a visual scene you see and we all see in a normal conscious state. All the empirical data to support a correlative physicalism is present but no placement for our subjective experience. There is no problem presenting this a evidence for idealism, none at all. Just read the paper I linked.

What is this then?

[_mikwut]

Those appear to be images of brain scans while dreaming?!?!

Can you be a little more upfront with your contention.

mikwut

[_Maksutov]

Those appear to be images of brain scans while dreaming?!?!

Can you be a little more upfront with your contention.

mikwut

The mind is a product of the brain and nervous system. The end.

[_spotlight]

The binding problem I presented has nothing to do with unconscious states, it has to do a visual scene you see and we all see in a normal conscious state.

I did not post anything to do with the binding problem. I posted a question about idealism and how it could be supported by the fact that the vast majority of what happens in the brain is unconscious. If consciousness rules the day and the material is non existent why does the conscious part of the brain make up the minority of the brain? Why is it the tip of the iceberg? If consciousness causes the "so called" material why the need to make up the circuitry to decipher it? That doesn't seem to be a consistent view.

All the empirical data to support a correlative physicalism is present but no placement for our subjective experience.

I am not buying this. That was the reason for the link to dreaming. If there is no part of brain activity that corresponds to the subjective experience then what is going on when we sleep and the brain activity is entirely the subjective experience of the dream state?

There is no problem presenting this a evidence for idealism, none at all. Just read the paper I linked.

That is the reason the scientific method is useful, by employing falsification to eliminate possible interpretations. If we lack sufficient data to distinguish between possible models then there really is nothing to be said as yet.

How do you account for the conscious mind being switched off? The ability to do so seems to be sufficient evidence to eliminate mind over matter type hypotheses.

[_Maksutov]

The binding problem I presented has nothing to do with unconscious states, it has to do a visual scene you see and we all see in a normal conscious state.

I did not post anything to do with the binding problem. I posted a question about idealism and how it could be supported by the fact that the vast majority of what happens in the brain is unconscious. If consciousness rules the day and the material is non existent why does the conscious part of the brain make up the minority of the brain? Why is it the tip of the iceberg? If consciousness causes the "so called" material why the need to make up the circuitry to decipher it? That doesn't seem to be a consistent view.

All the empirical data to support a correlative physicalism is present but no placement for our subjective experience.

I am not buying this. That was the reason for the link to dreaming. If there is no part of brain activity that corresponds to the subjective experience then what is going on when we sleep and the brain activity is entirely the subjective experience of the dream state?

There is no problem presenting this a evidence for idealism, none at all. Just read the paper I linked.

That is the reason the scientific method is useful, by employing falsification to eliminate possible interpretations. If we lack sufficient data to distinguish between possible models then there really is nothing to be said as yet.

How do you account for the conscious mind being switched off? The ability to do so seems to be sufficient evidence to eliminate mind over matter type hypotheses.

I'm sorry, Spotlight, after so much pretentious parsing about physicalism and materialism, I thought I had stumbled into a convention of the "Society for Psychical Research" circa 1895.

There is no need to dream up all sorts of universal consciousness and other woo-isms when there is no demand for it in the problems to be solved, no evidence for it, and no explanation for how it possibly might work. Appeals to woo share more with mysticism than with science and should be classed with theological speculations and conspiracy theories. If you want to be spiritual, pray for the universities and Congress to improve their budgetary priorities in favor of benign and productive empirical science.

If we were to set up mikwut as an example to follow, we should give Franktalk a department chair and publish on the university websites a list of the spirit guides in the faculty and include their channeled texts in every syllabus.