Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams debate religion this week
Discussion
Jinx said:
It was an analogy - given historically we judge the actions of our ancestors against our own set of morals and frequently find them wanting have our morals developed (as has science by testing and re-assessing) or merely random moral differences?
Explain the purpose of emotional weight? Given wolves are highly social animals and you attest they act amorally on what basis would emotional investment in decisions come to be? We are animals are we not? Is there some innate knowledge that we are somewhat less than we could be driving us to review our decisions or are we merely deluded animals scrambling to justify our pathetic little existence?
Emotional weight is evolutionary - as social interaction developed, we began to invest additional meaning in the pack, dominance and territory interactions our forebears (and most current animals) perform in order to ensure their continued survival, enabling us to co-exist in larger and larger groups without conflict. Without doing this, we would still be tribal packs competing for local resources (rather than tribal nations competing for global resources Explain the purpose of emotional weight? Given wolves are highly social animals and you attest they act amorally on what basis would emotional investment in decisions come to be? We are animals are we not? Is there some innate knowledge that we are somewhat less than we could be driving us to review our decisions or are we merely deluded animals scrambling to justify our pathetic little existence?
).As part of this, the ideas of treating others as you wish to be treated, of avoiding stealing and other actions against your own social group, have been invested with their own purpose above and beyond raw survival, to the point where we are able to show compassion to other species (something lower-order animals are unable to do).
Of course, evolving beyond raw survival has also allowed us to develop traits which are not moral, and actually compare badly with the 'noble' actions of some animals (predation on our own species for one).
In answer to your question, we are evidently animals, still display dominance and territory defence as our ancestors would have, but the lack of survival pressure has enabled us to develop a more complex and mutually beneficial set of standards to ensure we remain the primary life-form on this planet. Remove the 'safety' cushion that the human race has built for itself, and we would relatively quickly descend back into the lower-order behaviours (which is why post apocalypse movies so often focus on the moral challenge of survival).
None of this posits some 'gold standard' objective moral structure that we are developing towards, any more than the idea that we became bipedal because there is some 'gold standard' objective evolutionary structure that says bipedal is best.
mattmurdock said:
Emotional weight is evolutionary - as social interaction developed, we began to invest additional meaning in the pack, dominance and territory interactions our forebears (and most current animals) perform in order to ensure their continued survival, enabling us to co-exist in larger and larger groups without conflict. Without doing this, we would still be tribal packs competing for local resources (rather than tribal nations competing for global resources ).
I'm no anthropologist but I'm not sure I'm ready to accept your account of human cultural evolution without a little more citation and evidence. I suspect quite strongly you've missed a link, like how we got to be in seperate territory in the first place. Something must have driven us apart for us to evolve the skills and "emotional" intelligence to come back together.).mattnunn said:
No I think you may have missed the point. Any narrative fiction creates another world, a reality which we perceive, individually and colletively. Very good narrative fiction allows you to live in that world, in that false reality and when any two people share the experience of a narrative fiction (easier with film than books and players of Dungeons and Dragons and Online role players would also count) they together in that moment CAN exist in that immaterial world, in the same way they can exists in this material world. Because they share the same experience, perceptions and qualia in the narrative world.
It's not permanent, but neither is this "material" world.
You have to accept this as it's obviously the case, and in doing so you also have to accept that the world which you call material and real could also be a construct of imagination.
Follow the white rabbit.
Maybe we are debating at cross purposes, as to me it seems you have missed my point.It's not permanent, but neither is this "material" world.
You have to accept this as it's obviously the case, and in doing so you also have to accept that the world which you call material and real could also be a construct of imagination.
Follow the white rabbit.
In order for these shared narrative fictions to exist, one has to pre-suppose that there is a material world to underpin us as individuals first. Without this, it would not be possible to construct the narrative fiction, otherwise you fall foul of the last points I made - if the world I call material and real is a construct of imagination, then everything in all reality is a construct of my imagination and you do not exist, and we are not having this conversation, I am having this conversation with myself. If I accept you do exist, then by definition there must be something external to me, and if there is something external to me then there is a 'material' reality which we both share experience of, otherwise we would not be able to communicate the ideas you are so fond of.
And yes, maybe some external power is feeding us both the same constructed reality so that we can share it, but in order to do that both the external power, and us, have to materially exist, even if we are just a brain in a jar or artificial intelligences. If we and they don't exist, we are back to a reductionist argument of first cause (something eventually has to exist to form the basis for the simulations).
So I can either choose to believe nothing but me exists, an infinite regression of immaterial things exist or that what I perceive is an external material reality. Given all things equal, the last one is the only rational approach I can take given the evidence presented to me, as even if the other ones are true it doesn't actually affect my life at all.
mattmurdock said:
Emotional weight is evolutionary - as social interaction developed, we began to invest additional meaning in the pack, dominance and territory interactions our forebears (and most current animals) perform in order to ensure their continued survival, enabling us to co-exist in larger and larger groups without conflict. Without doing this, we would still be tribal packs competing for local resources (rather than tribal nations competing for global resources ).
As part of this, the ideas of treating others as you wish to be treated, of avoiding stealing and other actions against your own social group, have been invested with their own purpose above and beyond raw survival, to the point where we are able to show compassion to other species (something lower-order animals are unable to do).
Of course, evolving beyond raw survival has also allowed us to develop traits which are not moral, and actually compare badly with the 'noble' actions of some animals (predation on our own species for one).
In answer to your question, we are evidently animals, still display dominance and territory defence as our ancestors would have, but the lack of survival pressure has enabled us to develop a more complex and mutually beneficial set of standards to ensure we remain the primary life-form on this planet. Remove the 'safety' cushion that the human race has built for itself, and we would relatively quickly descend back into the lower-order behaviours (which is why post apocalypse movies so often focus on the moral challenge of survival).
None of this posits some 'gold standard' objective moral structure that we are developing towards, any more than the idea that we became bipedal because there is some 'gold standard' objective evolutionary structure that says bipedal is best.
Interesting take but for one thing, morals are frequently counter evolutionary and would put the organism at a distinct disadvantage. As such to ascribe the evolutionary development to them is out of sink with their actual development. To go back to the science analogy - evolutionary memes are more often than not a detriment to the advance of science (CO2 being the driver of climate change being a fine example) as such it is the escape from evolutionary drivers that allows for morals to develop.).As part of this, the ideas of treating others as you wish to be treated, of avoiding stealing and other actions against your own social group, have been invested with their own purpose above and beyond raw survival, to the point where we are able to show compassion to other species (something lower-order animals are unable to do).
Of course, evolving beyond raw survival has also allowed us to develop traits which are not moral, and actually compare badly with the 'noble' actions of some animals (predation on our own species for one).
In answer to your question, we are evidently animals, still display dominance and territory defence as our ancestors would have, but the lack of survival pressure has enabled us to develop a more complex and mutually beneficial set of standards to ensure we remain the primary life-form on this planet. Remove the 'safety' cushion that the human race has built for itself, and we would relatively quickly descend back into the lower-order behaviours (which is why post apocalypse movies so often focus on the moral challenge of survival).
None of this posits some 'gold standard' objective moral structure that we are developing towards, any more than the idea that we became bipedal because there is some 'gold standard' objective evolutionary structure that says bipedal is best.
Given our ability to extroplate and posit a future set of morals advanced from ours is it not within reason to assign these the gold standard?
I always question the post apocalypse scenarios - whilst true that if you remove the threat of societal sanctions some people would act in a barbaric fashion I suspect most would not - many people (and I include myself in this) don't steal, kill or pillage not because of the threat of the law but because I don't want to be that kind of person. Society is the sum of the people within it not some mob rule.
mattnunn said:
I'm no anthropologist but I'm not sure I'm ready to accept your account of human cultural evolution without a little more citation and evidence. I suspect quite strongly you've missed a link, like how we got to be in seperate territory in the first place. Something must have driven us apart for us to evolve the skills and "emotional" intelligence to come back together.
Plenty of links on human sociocultural evolution on wikipedia or google. We evolved from pack animals, and our packs just got bigger and travelled around more. It is not like human beings evolved suddenly in one place and just all banded together as they grew more populous. We still display dominance games, territory defence and all the other good, basic pack bonding traits our ancestors did, we have just evolved them to work in a more developed cultural setting, rather than to ensure the specific survival of our immediate pack.mattmurdock said:
mattnunn said:
No I think you may have missed the point. Any narrative fiction creates another world, a reality which we perceive, individually and colletively. Very good narrative fiction allows you to live in that world, in that false reality and when any two people share the experience of a narrative fiction (easier with film than books and players of Dungeons and Dragons and Online role players would also count) they together in that moment CAN exist in that immaterial world, in the same way they can exists in this material world. Because they share the same experience, perceptions and qualia in the narrative world.
It's not permanent, but neither is this "material" world.
You have to accept this as it's obviously the case, and in doing so you also have to accept that the world which you call material and real could also be a construct of imagination.
Follow the white rabbit.
Maybe we are debating at cross purposes, as to me it seems you have missed my point.It's not permanent, but neither is this "material" world.
You have to accept this as it's obviously the case, and in doing so you also have to accept that the world which you call material and real could also be a construct of imagination.
Follow the white rabbit.
In order for these shared narrative fictions to exist, one has to pre-suppose that there is a material world to underpin us as individuals first. Without this, it would not be possible to construct the narrative fiction, otherwise you fall foul of the last points I made - if the world I call material and real is a construct of imagination, then everything in all reality is a construct of my imagination and you do not exist, and we are not having this conversation, I am having this conversation with myself. If I accept you do exist, then by definition there must be something external to me, and if there is something external to me then there is a 'material' reality which we both share experience of, otherwise we would not be able to communicate the ideas you are so fond of.
And yes, maybe some external power is feeding us both the same constructed reality so that we can share it, but in order to do that both the external power, and us, have to materially exist, even if we are just a brain in a jar or artificial intelligences. If we and they don't exist, we are back to a reductionist argument of first cause (something eventually has to exist to form the basis for the simulations).
So I can either choose to believe nothing but me exists, an infinite regression of immaterial things exist or that what I perceive is an external material reality. Given all things equal, the last one is the only rational approach I can take given the evidence presented to me, as even if the other ones are true it doesn't actually affect my life at all.
What you're saying is not that universe and all perceived reality has to materially exist, you've sort of accepted that it's not implausable you may be a brain in a jar, but that YOU have to materially exist in order that you can experience whatever it is that you're experiencing. I tend to agree with you which is why I posit that when I die the universe will cease to exists, but people don't tend to buy into that idea either...
Jinx said:
Interesting take but for one thing, morals are frequently counter evolutionary and would put the organism at a distinct disadvantage. As such to ascribe the evolutionary development to them is out of sink with their actual development. To go back to the science analogy - evolutionary memes are more often than not a detriment to the advance of science (CO2 being the driver of climate change being a fine example) as such it is the escape from evolutionary drivers that allows for morals to develop.
Given our ability to extroplate and posit a future set of morals advanced from ours is it not within reason to assign these the gold standard?
I always question the post apocalypse scenarios - whilst true that if you remove the threat of societal sanctions some people would act in a barbaric fashion I suspect most would not - many people (and I include myself in this) don't steal, kill or pillage not because of the threat of the law but because I don't want to be that kind of person. Society is the sum of the people within it not some mob rule.
Some moral ethics philosophers would argue that the sole reason you can hold this moral standard is because of the 'safety cushion' that we have built up purely due to our intelligence allowing us to avoid most immediate survival pressures. In my opinion, those who say they would not like to be that kind of person will either change their minds if raw survival became a factor, or would simply not survive.Given our ability to extroplate and posit a future set of morals advanced from ours is it not within reason to assign these the gold standard?
I always question the post apocalypse scenarios - whilst true that if you remove the threat of societal sanctions some people would act in a barbaric fashion I suspect most would not - many people (and I include myself in this) don't steal, kill or pillage not because of the threat of the law but because I don't want to be that kind of person. Society is the sum of the people within it not some mob rule.
Of course, eventually one could assume that cultural evolution after the apocalypse would ensure the development of a new moral standard, as civilisation was rebuilt and the raw survival pressures decreased.
Nothing is ever 'counter-evolutionary' - either CO2 will cause immense change to the climate or it won't, irrespective of the science we will either adapt/evolve to deal with that or we will not. Evolution has no purpose or moral capability.
mattnunn said:
Yes I see your point, but Harry Potter doesn't materially exist does he? In the same way I may not materially exist, you accept this? And yet we can share his perception of reality and existence through our experience of his narrative.
What you're saying is not that universe and all perceived reality has to materially exist, you've sort of accepted that it's not implausable you may be a brain in a jar, but that YOU have to materially exist in order that you can experience whatever it is that you're experiencing. I tend to agree with you which is why I posit that when I die the universe will cease to exists, but people don't tend to buy into that idea either...
Of course Harry Potter doesn't materially exist as ideas are not material, but the framework for creating or communicating ideas IS material. If I can share the perception of his reality with you, we are either doing it via the medium of film (using material projections of material people communicating the idea) or we are doing it via the medium of a book (using material books to communicate the idea) or we are doing it via the medium of speech with the originator of the idea (who is material) or (to my mind the least plausible) we are doing it via the medium of a simulation which has been created using material machinery by material creators.What you're saying is not that universe and all perceived reality has to materially exist, you've sort of accepted that it's not implausable you may be a brain in a jar, but that YOU have to materially exist in order that you can experience whatever it is that you're experiencing. I tend to agree with you which is why I posit that when I die the universe will cease to exists, but people don't tend to buy into that idea either...
So if I am a brain in a jar, then my brain, the jar and the mechanism to pass the information to said jar/brain combo are material. Or we all exist in a material reality. The former is a nice thought experiment, the latter is what all the current evidence I can experience based on my perceptions indicates is 'true'.
mattmurdock said:
So if I am a brain in a jar, then my brain, the jar and the mechanism to pass the information to said jar/brain combo are material.
Not really, why do they have to be? You've assumed you exist materially and are working back from that point. You may be the product of somethings narrative fiction, so might your brain in the jar, so you say the something that created the fiction that is your brain in a jar must be material, but it's not so, it goes all the way down, like a hall of mirrors, once you accept the first level it's nonsequitor to reject the other levels, and you've accepted the first level, you accept it's not impossible you're a brain in a jar.Obviously this would make no sense if we knew the boundary of what you're calling the "material" reality, if we could see a top and bottom to the universe. but we can't. We don't know in truth where it starts and stops in any dimension.
mattnunn said:
Not really, why do they have to be? You've assumed you exist materially and are working back from that point. You may be the product of somethings narrative fiction, so might your brain in the jar, so you say the something that created the fiction that is your brain in a jar must be material, but it's not so, it goes all the way down, like a hall of mirrors, once you accept the first level it's nonsequitor to reject the other levels, and you've accepted the first level, you accept it's not impossible you're a brain in a jar.
Obviously this would make no sense if we knew the boundary of what you're calling the "material" reality, if we could see a top and bottom to the universe. but we can't. We don't know in truth where it starts and stops in any dimension.
No it is a non-sequitur to assume that you are a non-material narrative fiction of an infinite number of other non-material narrative fictions. Boundaries of the universe has nothing to do with how material a given entity is. I am typing this on a computer, a computer other people around me can see and operate, typing a message on an internet message board that other people can see, read and interpret. Either all of that is complete fiction, in which case I have no framework to judge this shared experience and any discussion around it is meaningless, or there is a material framework which allows all of us to experience the same computer and internet.Obviously this would make no sense if we knew the boundary of what you're calling the "material" reality, if we could see a top and bottom to the universe. but we can't. We don't know in truth where it starts and stops in any dimension.
Either way it makes no difference to my life, as even if this is all a fiction I have no real control over reality or the actions of the other participants in my reality, and I get hurt, hungry and sleepy regardless. So to all intents and purposes I am experiencing a material world even if it isn't actually a material world. So, again, the most rational response to that (and the response you are actually taking to it even though you enjoy arguing the contrary position) is to assume it actually is a material reality and make decisions based on my interaction with that reality (i.e. don't stand in fire, remember to eat and drink, don't assume I can walk around bare ass naked without comment).
Edit: Of course, should I one day have an epiphany and discover I can warp reality with my mind a la the Matrix, then I'll take it all back. Unfortunately, despite wishing to be able conjure an F40 or Veyron out of thin air, so far all my attempts have failed spectacularly...
Edited by mattmurdock on Wednesday 20th February 13:39
mattmurdock said:
This and that
Of course you're not wrong, but you may also not be right.Have you tried cosmic ordering? It worked for Noel Edmunds...
http://thecosmicorderingsite.com/
mattnunn said:
Of course you're not wrong, but you may also not be right.
Have you tried cosmic ordering? It worked for Noel Edmunds...
http://thecosmicorderingsite.com/
And you accused me of non sequiturs?Have you tried cosmic ordering? It worked for Noel Edmunds...
http://thecosmicorderingsite.com/
Of course I am right, you are just too proud to admit you are wrong
.
mattmurdock said:
pork911 said:
there is no assumption at all in saying all i have to go on is my experience
there is a great assumption in believing perceptions are of something else and further assumptions in how accurate those perceptions may be
since you are a big fan of definitions please define the material world and explain the link between that and your perception of it without relying on any assumption
Thing is pork, by taking that stance, you render any debate on the subject meaningless. Without an agreed common framework, interactions between entities in your world have no commonality or meaningful shared experience.there is a great assumption in believing perceptions are of something else and further assumptions in how accurate those perceptions may be
since you are a big fan of definitions please define the material world and explain the link between that and your perception of it without relying on any assumption
You are essentially saying that without assumption nothing other than what you directly experience is relevant or can be proved to exist independent of your perception, and that perception itself is not trustworthy. If everyone believed that to be 'true', then it would be impossible to have meaningful interactions with your perceptions and formulate any predictable outcomes for your perceptions. You may as well sit in one room all day, rocking gently and muttering to yourself.
As we clearly can formulate predictable outcomes for shared perceptions, the only rational explanation is that there is a shared reality that we all inhabit, and then it becomes a matter of formulating the best tools to describe that shared reality based on our shared perceptions. So far those tools have served us well, and have also shown no evidence that this shared reality contains any need for a immaterial 'mind' outside of the physical brain.
Thought experiments are all well and good, but the fact we are having this conversation, on technological devices that function according to shared perceptions that obey externally 'provable' physical phenomena, renders the idea that there is no material world a moot point.
the existence of others is just another assumption based on perception
we also can't be sure our own memories are true
i can of course accept the common framework as long as its accepted its based on assumption
something the heretic simply won't concede - yet wants to liken the immaterial mind to fairies and the like
so he assumes there is a material world of which he perceives but then shouts down the sugestion there is an immaterial mind - because .......? never really clear why he can assume a greater step from perception to the material and then call foul for anyone 'inoking' (?) a route back to the immaterial
even a staunch materialist can't validly contend (as seems to be suggested by some on this thread) that there is nothing immaterial in the world - the experience of perception itself (even if caused by material things on a material brain) is immaterial
Edited by pork911 on Wednesday 20th February 20:06
pork911 said:
something the heretic simply won't concede - yet wants to liken the immaterial mind to fairies and the like
so he assumes there is a material world of which he perceives but then shouts down the sugestion there is an immaterial mind - because .......? never really clear why he can assume a greater step from perception to the material and then call foul for anyone 'inoking' (?) a route back to the immaterial
even a staunch materialist can't validly contend (as seems to be suggested by some on this thread) that there is nothing immaterial in the world - the experience of perception itself (even if caused by material things on a material brain) is immaterial
Well, as you spoke my name. I think you have taken what I said completely wrong and utterly out of context, but whatever convinces you that you are some immaterial thing and everything is pretend. The fairies thing was a simp,e analogy. If you can't understand it, then maybe you should ask politely. so he assumes there is a material world of which he perceives but then shouts down the sugestion there is an immaterial mind - because .......? never really clear why he can assume a greater step from perception to the material and then call foul for anyone 'inoking' (?) a route back to the immaterial
even a staunch materialist can't validly contend (as seems to be suggested by some on this thread) that there is nothing immaterial in the world - the experience of perception itself (even if caused by material things on a material brain) is immaterial
Edited by pork911 on Wednesday 20th February 20:06
I love how you say staunch materialist!
As though you have any proof of you immaterial existence! Can you exist immaterially? pork911 said:
even a staunch materialist can't validly contend (as seems to be suggested by some on this thread) that there is nothing immaterial in the world - the experience of perception itself (even if caused by material things on a material brain) is immaterial
Provided one accepts the external material Universe as axiomatic:
Information states, such as experience, meaning or perception have no existence independent of the substrate(s) onto which they are encoded. This is not to say that the information (and context) cannot be copied to alternative substrates...
Reproducing sufficient context to make the experience effectively identical may well require an embarrassingly large data-set but there's no fundamental (additional!) problem.
The selves played the experience will not experience it identically obviously...
Ozzie Osmond said:
pork911 said:
the existence of others is just another assumption based on perception
By the time you get to that sort of nonsense you can make up anything you like and claim it's true. Doesn't take the discussion anywhere.TheHeretic said:
I'm not sure what that leaves you with after dismissing what essentially makes you 'you'. (I never did get a definition of what 'I' am).
Agreed. If you don't accept or trust anything you experience, how can you be sure you even exist? "I think, therefore I am". Well, that's very interesting but doesn't actually take you very far. Not least because there is a considerable body of opinion which suspects consciousness, most particularly self-awareness, exists on a grey-scale. In other words a human may be more conscious than an ape which is more conscious than a dog which is more conscious than a mole etc etc.
This line of thinking leads to an unfortunate difficulty - namely the possibility (probability?) that the scale continues upwards ABOVE the human level. Tricky one.
TheHeretic said:
Well, as you spoke my name. I think you have taken what I said completely wrong and utterly out of context, but whatever convinces you that you are some immaterial thing and everything is pretend. The fairies thing was a simp,e analogy. If you can't understand it, then maybe you should ask politely.
I love how you say staunch materialist! As though you have any proof of you immaterial existence! Can you exist immaterially?
never suggested everything was pretend, merely that the material world is an assumptionI love how you say staunch materialist!
As though you have any proof of you immaterial existence! Can you exist immaterially? you appear unwilling to concede that, then criticse the idea of the immaterial - intellectually hypocritical
asking politely, please answer -
what is consciousness without the immaterial?
is a live human only material?
is a live human's ability to see merely a complex camera or is there something qualitatively different about it?
how do the material processes of being able to see, hear, taste, touch, smell and think fully encapsulate and with as much technology as you wish explain the experience of see-ing, hear-ing, tast-ing, smell-ing and thin-ing only on material terms?
is the material world an assumption?
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