Evolution Vs Creation
Discussion
ChrisGB said:
A. It's not about things changing themselves. Any animal moves itself. It's about a change changing itself. This can't happen unless you want to argue some thing can come from absolute nothingness.
Of course a causal series could in theory be infinite, but this is not any old series - it is the per se or essentially ordered series of concurrent causes requiring a present first mover. This series could not even in theory be infinite, because only the first in the series has any real causal power.
If time doesn't hold, then how exactly does it affect 1-3 when properly understood? I don't know without a lot more detail.
You have made my point perfectly - we simply do not have enough information. I have been saying this all along.Of course a causal series could in theory be infinite, but this is not any old series - it is the per se or essentially ordered series of concurrent causes requiring a present first mover. This series could not even in theory be infinite, because only the first in the series has any real causal power.
If time doesn't hold, then how exactly does it affect 1-3 when properly understood? I don't know without a lot more detail.
ChrisGB said:
B. But to accept 2 and 3 only if they could be shown to be true under every possible circumstance is to require a higher burden of proof than you would set for maths, science, life. Why should that be so? And isn't it a category mistake to say that we can only really assert that Socrates is mortal because he is a man, rather than show it, unless we have studied every single man of history and all future?
At the very least, no counterexample to 2. should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample.
The category mistake here creates a double standard compared to the level of certainty a scientific hypothesis requires.
Spontaneous radioactive decay and virtual pair production could be seen as possible counterexamples - we dont know if these are truly spontaneous (i.e. uncaused) or simply random. Until we do know, your point 2 is still an assumption (albeit one that sounds fairly reasonable based on what we observe).At the very least, no counterexample to 2. should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample.
The category mistake here creates a double standard compared to the level of certainty a scientific hypothesis requires.
ChrisGB said:
The unmoved mover can move others without being itself moved through being the first cause of formal and final causes and by being the goal of all that is created. These will not bring about change in it. See link in my previous post on that.
This is mere assertion - and goes against your "category mistake" argument above. You have absolutely nothing to back this up - you are simply stating it must be true in order to make the prime mover argument appear valid.Everything we observe in the universe that can affect something else is in itself modified upon inducing that change. By your own argument - no counterexample to this "should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample"........no?
ChrisGB said:
C. Final cause is the goal or end of a thing, or its disposition to act in a certain way, or its being about or for something, or any other variation on "telos". Eg. The final cause of a thought is what that thought is about.
Doesnt this assume things have a goal or end point? I'd argue that they dont. Even a thought doesn't end with the thought - it has consequences that go beyond. At the very least - the heat generated by the brain, the chemical by products created by the neurons when that thought is formulated all carry on the causal chain - being dissipated or distributed into the wider universe as photons or chemical waste. The thought isn't an end point at all - its just an arbitrary line in the sand.ChrisGB said:
D. Yes of course thought has these material aspects, but no scan will give the content of the thought, or the inferences (further thoughts) based on the first, etc.
This is yet another example of an "of the gaps" argument. Just because we cant do it today, with the technology that exists today - doesn't mean we will never be able to do it. But your argument appears to rely on the fact that it will never be achievable.Going back to the lightning example - god was thought to be the cause of lightning (the wrath of god) - until we had instruments sensitive enough and scientific knowledge developed enough to show the true nature of lightning. Why assume the same won't be true of the human brain/thoughts?
ChrisGB said:
E. an example of causation without effect in the causer: if you are physically attracted to someone, they have affected you and of itself the attraction has changed you, not the attractive person. God as the origin and goal of all that is would have this ability as the ultimate final cause of everything. Whether or not you accept final causality, you accept this example of causation not affecting causer?
But the person who you are finding attractive has to have been observed (by you?) - so it could be argued that the person you find attractive is in fact changing all the time via interaction with their environment. It is this interaction/change that you pick up on (i.e. the photons of reflected light) that are the trigger point for you finding them attractive. Whether or not the person you find attractive is aware of the change they have induced is irrelevant - you cannot find them attractive without them having interacted with their environment (and been changed by it).ChrisGB said:
F. The claim was that bible and classical theism are irreconcilable, but this is completely groundless unless one is a naive literalist.
Some proponents of religion are.Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 12:26
There hasn't been much smoting on here, has there?
My story of returning from the other side of the great divide convinced there was no God drew an "I'm glad you recovered" from Chris.
I felt certain he would have wished me all eternity in the fires of hell.
A dirth of Fire and a marked insufficiency of Brimstone, I reckon.
............
The way I've read this thread, there are three of us who have been clinically dead and it convinced all of us there is no God, no after life, nothing.
That's 100% of those with first hand experience.
My story of returning from the other side of the great divide convinced there was no God drew an "I'm glad you recovered" from Chris.
I felt certain he would have wished me all eternity in the fires of hell.
A dirth of Fire and a marked insufficiency of Brimstone, I reckon.
............
The way I've read this thread, there are three of us who have been clinically dead and it convinced all of us there is no God, no after life, nothing.
That's 100% of those with first hand experience.
ChrisGB said:
Mmm. For the 23rd time on this thread alone:
(And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
But you drawing parallels between the prime mover and god - makes it about the origin of the universe. (And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
We are told by religious dogma that god is the creator of all things (including the universe) - by stating that the prime mover is in fact god (especially the Christian god) - then by definition, the prime mover must have created the universe.
Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 20:38
ChrisGB said:
What sort of proof do you need in order to accept premise 2 - no change changes itself?
Your premise is too absolute.One of the main tennets of science is that a theory must be disprovable in the light of new evidence - your premise takes no account of that because of the way it is worded.
To prove your premise as written, you would have to do so under all circumstances - but that is the fault of the premise you are making - not the fault of science, scientific method or the burden of proof.
Like I have said before - even if I accept the premise that no change can change itself and if I accept that a causal series cannot be infinite - that still doesn't prove there is a prime mover (at least not as you seem to define it) - and certainly doesn't prove there is a god.
I could certainly accept the premise that there is a kind of primordial ground state that has always existed and from which matter, dimensions, time, universes etc can spring forth randomly (analogous to the vacuum energy that gives rise to virtual pair production) - although I would question whether such a state really fits the definition of a prime mover since it would likely change in response to the universes, dimension etc it spawned. Of course - the existence of such a ground state is pure speculation on my part (much like your prime mover).
Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 20:39
Gaspode said:
ChrisGB said:
There are an infinite number of infinitely small steps between 1 and 2, we agree. How is that different from the conclusion of your example?
I am demonstrating that logical truth sometimes has got little or nothing to do with physical truth.The propositions presented were:
1. to move from one point to another takes a finite and measurable amount of time
2. there are an infinite number of pairs of such points that can be identified
and the conclusion that "to traverse an infinite number of pairs of points must take an infinite amount of time" is logically true, but can be demonstrated by reference to the material world, to be false. It is the material world that provides the final demonstration of truth, because the very definition of truth is correspondence between internal mental models and external observable reality.
The prime mover argument takes some assertions and claim them to be true. The conclusions follow if one accepts the validity of the assertions. The weakness is that there's an appeal to perception here. If one removes that appeal by making it explicit in the premises, the whole thing starts to look a great deal shakier:
1. "It appears to us that things change"
2. "It appears to us that no thing can change itself"
3. "It appears to us that it is impossible to have an infinite chain of causality"
We can only qualify the actual validity of the propositions by reference to objective exterior reality. And as we all agree, the proposition must be falsifiable - it must be possible to design a test to disprove them If we don't, we are left in the position of the subjectivist who claims that truth is what one believes to be true.
To traverse an infinite number of pairs of points between two fixed measurable points is the question, and that doesn't take an infinite time, it just takes the time it takes to go from A to B, whether we subdivide AB into 2 parts or an infinite number.
Premise 2 isn't quite right either - we can't identify an infinite number of pairs of points, we can only identify that there are an infinite number of them.
So no, the conclusion doesn't follow, so whether it says anything about reality doesn't matter, its not true logically anyway.
As to prime mover, your restatement of 2 and 3 are very off the mark. Any animal can change itself. No change changes itself. And no concurrent chain dependent on a first cause can be infinite, but a causal chain backwards in time from the currently observed effect could in theory be infinite.
Secondly, it doesn't just appear to us that things change, it is a feature of the world. Logic takes its cues from the senses. And you can't say it appears to us that no change changes itself - I am saying it is a logical contradiction, breaking principle of non-contradiction, to say otherwise. This can be refuted logically or not, but is not an empirical claim, it is de limiting what is empirically possible.
Thirdly, having an infinite chain of concurrent causes dependent on a first is not just empirically impossible, it is logically impossible - the logic tells you it can't happen "in reality".
And of course the argument is falsifiable empirically, if premise 1 is wrong and in fact there is no such thing as change, or logically, by showing that the principle of non-contradiction is wrong and couldn't apply in this particular case, or that a series of instrumental causes does not in fact need a cause with causal power.
So I don't see any strength at all in your objection....
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Well done on surviving. Without belittling what you went through, from a purely philosophical point of view, do near death experiences prove anything one way or another? And how would I know you are telling the truth about your NDE?
How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
Except it wasn't a near death experience. He actually died.How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
I know what I mean by NDE but I was hoping one of the people in here who has died might like to explain the difference. I take NDE to mean clinically dead but capable of resuscitation, and death to mean dead in the Monty Python parrot sense. In which sense were our dead posters dead? I assume NDE, but that was the point of asking - to do better than assuming.
If we count NDE as telling us anything about the afterlife, we also need to weigh up other experiential arguments for belief and unbelief. Religious experience becomes an argument for God not just a phenomenon if an experience of no afterlife can become an argument for no God; experience being a possible ground of sure knowledge, it would now seem.
durbster said:
ChrisGB said:
Well done on surviving. Without belittling what you went through, from a purely philosophical point of view, do near death experiences prove anything one way or another? And how would I know you are telling the truth about your NDE?
How do you know he's telling the truth? Because if he died and had a fantastic religious experience in which he went to heaven, met God, jammed with Jimi Hendrix and was reunited with his childhood guinea pig, you might think he'd be on your side right about now 
ChrisGB said:
Mmm. For the 23rd time on this thread alone:
(And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
Sorry I forgot with this being a thread about creation and all.(And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
So as I understand it; your God didn't create the universe, has no effect on our lives, evidently doesn't show up when we die, wrote the Bible but didn't really mean what was in it, is obviously a Christian God despite not being anything like the Christian God, decided not to reveal himself to non-European cultures such as the Australian Aboriginals, and isn't detectable or proveable through any method other than imagination.
I think I'm starting to believe!
In any case, someone convinced either way because of an experience would do well to develop other ways of supporting their position when talking about it.
On prime mover argument, your amusing caricature is a clever misreading of what I wrote, but if you can't see the words in a single sentence, this doesn't bode well for getting a whole argument. The argument, that is argument, not the thing shown by the argument, has nothing to do with creation.
Moonhawk said:
ChrisGB said:
A. It's not about things changing themselves. Any animal moves itself. It's about a change changing itself. This can't happen unless you want to argue some thing can come from absolute nothingness.
Of course a causal series could in theory be infinite, but this is not any old series - it is the per se or essentially ordered series of concurrent causes requiring a present first mover. This series could not even in theory be infinite, because only the first in the series has any real causal power.
If time doesn't hold, then how exactly does it affect 1-3 when properly understood? I don't know without a lot more detail.
1. You have made my point perfectly - we simply do not have enough information. I have been saying this all along.Of course a causal series could in theory be infinite, but this is not any old series - it is the per se or essentially ordered series of concurrent causes requiring a present first mover. This series could not even in theory be infinite, because only the first in the series has any real causal power.
If time doesn't hold, then how exactly does it affect 1-3 when properly understood? I don't know without a lot more detail.
ChrisGB said:
B. But to accept 2 and 3 only if they could be shown to be true under every possible circumstance is to require a higher burden of proof than you would set for maths, science, life. Why should that be so? And isn't it a category mistake to say that we can only really assert that Socrates is mortal because he is a man, rather than show it, unless we have studied every single man of history and all future?
At the very least, no counterexample to 2. should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample.
The category mistake here creates a double standard compared to the level of certainty a scientific hypothesis requires.
2. Spontaneous radioactive decay and virtual pair production could be seen as possible counterexamples - we dont know if these are truly spontaneous (i.e. uncaused) or simply random. Until we do know, your point 2 is still an assumption (albeit one that sounds fairly reasonable based on what we observe).At the very least, no counterexample to 2. should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample.
The category mistake here creates a double standard compared to the level of certainty a scientific hypothesis requires.
ChrisGB said:
The unmoved mover can move others without being itself moved through being the first cause of formal and final causes and by being the goal of all that is created. These will not bring about change in it. See link in my previous post on that.
3. This is mere assertion - and goes against your "category mistake" argument above. You have absolutely nothing to back this up - you are simply stating it must be true in order to make the prime mover argument appear valid.Everything we observe in the universe that can affect something else is in itself modified upon inducing that change. By your own argument - no counterexample to this "should mean that the argument holds at least until there IS a counterexample"........no?
ChrisGB said:
C. Final cause is the goal or end of a thing, or its disposition to act in a certain way, or its being about or for something, or any other variation on "telos". Eg. The final cause of a thought is what that thought is about.
4. Doesnt this assume things have a goal or end point? I'd argue that they dont. Even a thought doesn't end with the thought - it has consequences that go beyond. At the very least - the heat generated by the brain, the chemical by products created by the neurons when that thought is formulated all carry on the causal chain - being dissipated or distributed into the wider universe as photons or chemical waste. The thought isn't an end point at all - its just an arbitrary line in the sand.ChrisGB said:
D. Yes of course thought has these material aspects, but no scan will give the content of the thought, or the inferences (further thoughts) based on the first, etc.
5. This is yet another example of an "of the gaps" argument. Just because we cant do it today, with the technology that exists today - doesn't mean we will never be able to do it. But your argument appears to rely on the fact that it will never be achievable.Going back to the lightning example - god was thought to be the cause of lightning (the wrath of god) - until we had instruments sensitive enough and scientific knowledge developed enough to show the true nature of lightning. Why assume the same won't be true of the human brain/thoughts?
ChrisGB said:
E. an example of causation without effect in the causer: if you are physically attracted to someone, they have affected you and of itself the attraction has changed you, not the attractive person. God as the origin and goal of all that is would have this ability as the ultimate final cause of everything. Whether or not you accept final causality, you accept this example of causation not affecting causer?
But the person who you are finding attractive has to have been observed (by you?) - so it could be argued that the person you find attractive is in fact changing all the time via interaction with their environment. It is this interaction/change that you pick up on (i.e. the photons of reflected light) that are the trigger point for you finding them attractive. Whether or not the person you find attractive is aware of the change they have induced is irrelevant - you cannot find them attractive without them having interacted with their environment (and been changed by it).ChrisGB said:
F. The claim was that bible and classical theism are irreconcilable, but this is completely groundless unless one is a naive literalist.
6. Some proponents of religion are.Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 12:26
2. Spontaneous does not mean uncaused! There is not absolute nothingness, ever, and then a spontaneous effect, there is always sufficient background condition to being about the spontaneous effect. And the principle of causality I am defending works for indeterminate and determinate causality. These are not in any way counterexamples.
3. Well moving finality and forms is immaterial, so there is clearly no need to explain why there is no physical change to the prime mover when effecting change in physical objects. And on how this can be no immaterial change, and I have to wonder if that is a contradiction, then I explained that with the example of attraction. That you countered with what the object of attraction is in my analogy (material, changing, finite etc) doesn't tell me anything about first mover, does it?
4. Yes agreed, which is why I tried to unpack telos as manifesting in many different ways, including just dispositions or aboutness.
5. Because some thinking is of a different kind not a different degree to sensation or imagination. Thinking has intrinsic intentionality, meaning it imparts meaning to things, whereas language symbols or sounds, the purely physical stuff conveying thought, can only have derived intentionality. If there were no intrinsic intentionality, there would be no aboutness to thought and no derived intentionality coming from the intrinsic, and this discussion would be either impossible or meaningless.
This is not of the gaps at all, it means either there is more than the material or we need to redefine the material to include the non-material. You would have to show that thought could be purely physical, and you can't do this. So the lightning analogy isn't appropriate. In any case it would be an example of what you are doing - a science of the gaps is your approach to the unknown, but whether a problem is even in principle capable of a scientific explanation is the whole point in question. You need to account for intentionality purely from derived intentionality if you say science can explain thought, and I think it can't be done without smuggling in the intrinsic intentionality somewhere without acknowledging it.
6. Agreed, and of scientism too. Unfortunately to be a naive literalist is fine up to the age of about 18 months, but not much after.
Moonhawk said:
ChrisGB said:
Mmm. For the 23rd time on this thread alone:
(And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
But you drawing parallels between the prime mover and god - makes it about the origin of the universe. (And please excuse the capitals)
PRIME MOVER ARGUMENT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE !!!!!!!!
We are told by religious dogma that god is the creator of all things (including the universe) - by stating that the prime mover is in fact god (especially the Christian god) - then by definition, the prime mover must have created the universe.
Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 20:38
But I am talking about the prime mover / first cause argument, which is usually confused with the deist divine clockmaker winding up universe at beginning of time then stepping back, which is in turn confused with cosmological argument or argument from contingency, etc.
Moonhawk said:
ChrisGB said:
What sort of proof do you need in order to accept premise 2 - no change changes itself?
Your premise is too absolute.One of the main tennets of science is that a theory must be disprovable in the light of new evidence - your premise takes no account of that because of the way it is worded.
To prove your premise as written, you would have to do so under all circumstances - but that is the fault of the premise you are making - not the fault of science, scientific method or the burden of proof.
Like I have said before - even if I accept the premise that no change can change itself and if I accept that a causal series cannot be infinite - that still doesn't prove there is a prime mover (at least not as you seem to define it) - and certainly doesn't prove there is a god.
I could certainly accept the premise that there is a kind of primordial ground state that has always existed and from which matter, dimensions, time, universes etc can spring forth randomly (analogous to the vacuum energy that gives rise to virtual pair production) - although I would question whether such a state really fits the definition of a prime mover since it would likely change in response to the universes, dimension etc it spawned. Of course - the existence of such a ground state is pure speculation on my part (much like your prime mover).
Edited by Moonhawk on Friday 25th April 20:39
This premise is falsifiable logically, and that is enough. If there are no empirical counterexamples, this can't be used as a reason for doubting the argument, that would be irrational. No counterexample would be at the least a prima facie reason for accepting an argument?
The premise, worth going back to, is saying that something non-existent but possible can't make itself happen. Without time travel, this could never happen. And
with time travel, this could also never happen! I think the premise can be argued back to the principle of non-contradiction, and then either it holds, or nothing we can say or think can be true. The more I think, albeit superficially, about this argument, the more it seems it can only be refuted by abandoning PNC and/or realism about change, and that would make us and the world completely unintelligible, wouldn't it?I think you are correct not to identify a "primordial eternal ground state" with prime mover!
ChrisGB said:
This is a fun post, but I don't think you've demonstrated what you want to.
To traverse an infinite number of pairs of points between two fixed measurable points is the question, and that doesn't take an infinite time, it just takes the time it takes to go from A to B, whether we subdivide AB into 2 parts or an infinite number.
Premise 2 isn't quite right either - we can't identify an infinite number of pairs of points, we can only identify that there are an infinite number of them.
So no, the conclusion doesn't follow, so whether it says anything about reality doesn't matter, its not true logically anyway.
As to prime mover, your restatement of 2 and 3 are very off the mark. Any animal can change itself. No change changes itself. And no concurrent chain dependent on a first cause can be infinite, but a causal chain backwards in time from the currently observed effect could in theory be infinite.
Secondly, it doesn't just appear to us that things change, it is a feature of the world. Logic takes its cues from the senses. And you can't say it appears to us that no change changes itself - I am saying it is a logical contradiction, breaking principle of non-contradiction, to say otherwise. This can be refuted logically or not, but is not an empirical claim, it is de limiting what is empirically possible.
Thirdly, having an infinite chain of concurrent causes dependent on a first is not just empirically impossible, it is logically impossible - the logic tells you it can't happen "in reality".
And of course the argument is falsifiable empirically, if premise 1 is wrong and in fact there is no such thing as change, or logically, by showing that the principle of non-contradiction is wrong and couldn't apply in this particular case, or that a series of instrumental causes does not in fact need a cause with causal power.
So I don't see any strength at all in your objection....
Actually, there's nothing wrong at all with premise 2. This example is (as I would have hoped you should have spotted) a re-working of Zeno's paradox, as refuted by by Aristotle and Aquinas, and I used it to establish the following proposition. I propose we accept as axiomatic than an objective external reality exists, with characteristics independent of our conscious interpretation of those characteristics.To traverse an infinite number of pairs of points between two fixed measurable points is the question, and that doesn't take an infinite time, it just takes the time it takes to go from A to B, whether we subdivide AB into 2 parts or an infinite number.
Premise 2 isn't quite right either - we can't identify an infinite number of pairs of points, we can only identify that there are an infinite number of them.
So no, the conclusion doesn't follow, so whether it says anything about reality doesn't matter, its not true logically anyway.
As to prime mover, your restatement of 2 and 3 are very off the mark. Any animal can change itself. No change changes itself. And no concurrent chain dependent on a first cause can be infinite, but a causal chain backwards in time from the currently observed effect could in theory be infinite.
Secondly, it doesn't just appear to us that things change, it is a feature of the world. Logic takes its cues from the senses. And you can't say it appears to us that no change changes itself - I am saying it is a logical contradiction, breaking principle of non-contradiction, to say otherwise. This can be refuted logically or not, but is not an empirical claim, it is de limiting what is empirically possible.
Thirdly, having an infinite chain of concurrent causes dependent on a first is not just empirically impossible, it is logically impossible - the logic tells you it can't happen "in reality".
And of course the argument is falsifiable empirically, if premise 1 is wrong and in fact there is no such thing as change, or logically, by showing that the principle of non-contradiction is wrong and couldn't apply in this particular case, or that a series of instrumental causes does not in fact need a cause with causal power.
So I don't see any strength at all in your objection....
1. A formally correct argument in Logic (a) can be demonstrated to correspond with reality, or (b) it cannot be demonstrated to correspond with reality. The correspondence does not affect the logical truth (LT) of the argument.
2. Given 1, We must conclude that logical truth may not correspond with or match objective reality - let's call this 'physical truth' (PT).
3. We accept that 1(a) is not in any way problematic. This is one of the tools of the scientific method and is uncontroversial
4. By 'Logic', we mean an analytical tool that is a purely human construction, used to help humans interpret and understand reality. We know this to be true because different types of Logic have been developed (propositional vs predicate, for example) to assist in the understanding of different aspects.
5. If we do not accept 1(b), then we are effectively materialists, because we are saying that every logical argument is true if and only if it can be demonstrated to correspond with physical truth
6. If we do accept it, we are saying that it is possible to use a human constructed technique to demonstrate that propositions have a logical truth although they have no correspondence with PT
7. The conclusion therefore, is that one can build models which reflect reality (science) or which do not reflect reality (imagination).
Oh yes, Prime Mover? I still believe that IF one accepts the prime mover principle, the 4 fundamental forces of nature are sufficient to explain this. If not, why not? If the response is 'but what causes the forces?' then my response would be that one is falling into the trap of trying to add another step to a finite causal chain - i.e., trying to make it infinite. It's like asking 'What's further south than the South Pole?'
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Well done on surviving. Without belittling what you went through, from a purely philosophical point of view, do near death experiences prove anything one way or another? And how would I know you are telling the truth about your NDE?
How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
Except it wasn't a near death experience. He actually died.How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
I know what I mean by NDE but I was hoping one of the people in here who has died might like to explain the difference. I take NDE to mean clinically dead but capable of resuscitation, and death to mean dead in the Monty Python parrot sense. In which sense were our dead posters dead? I assume NDE, but that was the point of asking - to do better than assuming.
If we count NDE as telling us anything about the afterlife, we also need to weigh up other experiential arguments for belief and unbelief. Religious experience becomes an argument for God not just a phenomenon if an experience of no afterlife can become an argument for no God; experience being a possible ground of sure knowledge, it would now seem.
WinstonWolf said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Well done on surviving. Without belittling what you went through, from a purely philosophical point of view, do near death experiences prove anything one way or another? And how would I know you are telling the truth about your NDE?
How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
Except it wasn't a near death experience. He actually died.How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
I know what I mean by NDE but I was hoping one of the people in here who has died might like to explain the difference. I take NDE to mean clinically dead but capable of resuscitation, and death to mean dead in the Monty Python parrot sense.In which sense were our dead posters dead? I assume NDE, but that was the point of asking - to do better than assuming.
If we count NDE as telling us anything about the afterlife, we also need to weigh up other experiential arguments for belief and unbelief. Religious experience becomes an argument for God not just a phenomenon if an experience of no afterlife can become an argument for no God; experience being a possible ground of sure knowledge, it would now seem.
How would you know which category people were in? Dead is dead. Maybe NDE is the wrong term . Non Permanent Death might be closer to the reality of the situation. When people are revived is the soul somehow put back into the body?
ofcorsa said:
WinstonWolf said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Timsta said:
ChrisGB said:
Well done on surviving. Without belittling what you went through, from a purely philosophical point of view, do near death experiences prove anything one way or another? And how would I know you are telling the truth about your NDE?
How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
Except it wasn't a near death experience. He actually died.How would you know if the next 1,000 NDE's all said they met the FSM in a vision that they were right or wrong?
I know what I mean by NDE but I was hoping one of the people in here who has died might like to explain the difference. I take NDE to mean clinically dead but capable of resuscitation, and death to mean dead in the Monty Python parrot sense.In which sense were our dead posters dead? I assume NDE, but that was the point of asking - to do better than assuming.
If we count NDE as telling us anything about the afterlife, we also need to weigh up other experiential arguments for belief and unbelief. Religious experience becomes an argument for God not just a phenomenon if an experience of no afterlife can become an argument for no God; experience being a possible ground of sure knowledge, it would now seem.
How would you know which category people were in? Dead is dead. Maybe NDE is the wrong term . Non Permanent Death might be closer to the reality of the situation. When people are revived is the soul somehow put back into the body?
Gaspode said:
ChrisGB said:
This is a fun post, but I don't think you've demonstrated what you want to.
To traverse an infinite number of pairs of points between two fixed measurable points is the question, and that doesn't take an infinite time, it just takes the time it takes to go from A to B, whether we subdivide AB into 2 parts or an infinite number.
Premise 2 isn't quite right either - we can't identify an infinite number of pairs of points, we can only identify that there are an infinite number of them.
So no, the conclusion doesn't follow, so whether it says anything about reality doesn't matter, its not true logically anyway.
As to prime mover, your restatement of 2 and 3 are very off the mark. Any animal can change itself. No change changes itself. And no concurrent chain dependent on a first cause can be infinite, but a causal chain backwards in time from the currently observed effect could in theory be infinite.
Secondly, it doesn't just appear to us that things change, it is a feature of the world. Logic takes its cues from the senses. And you can't say it appears to us that no change changes itself - I am saying it is a logical contradiction, breaking principle of non-contradiction, to say otherwise. This can be refuted logically or not, but is not an empirical claim, it is de limiting what is empirically possible.
Thirdly, having an infinite chain of concurrent causes dependent on a first is not just empirically impossible, it is logically impossible - the logic tells you it can't happen "in reality".
And of course the argument is falsifiable empirically, if premise 1 is wrong and in fact there is no such thing as change, or logically, by showing that the principle of non-contradiction is wrong and couldn't apply in this particular case, or that a series of instrumental causes does not in fact need a cause with causal power.
So I don't see any strength at all in your objection....
Actually, there's nothing wrong at all with premise 2. This example is (as I would have hoped you should have spotted) a re-working of Zeno's paradox, as refuted by by Aristotle and Aquinas, and I used it to establish the following proposition. I propose we accept as axiomatic than an objective external reality exists, with characteristics independent of our conscious interpretation of those characteristics.To traverse an infinite number of pairs of points between two fixed measurable points is the question, and that doesn't take an infinite time, it just takes the time it takes to go from A to B, whether we subdivide AB into 2 parts or an infinite number.
Premise 2 isn't quite right either - we can't identify an infinite number of pairs of points, we can only identify that there are an infinite number of them.
So no, the conclusion doesn't follow, so whether it says anything about reality doesn't matter, its not true logically anyway.
As to prime mover, your restatement of 2 and 3 are very off the mark. Any animal can change itself. No change changes itself. And no concurrent chain dependent on a first cause can be infinite, but a causal chain backwards in time from the currently observed effect could in theory be infinite.
Secondly, it doesn't just appear to us that things change, it is a feature of the world. Logic takes its cues from the senses. And you can't say it appears to us that no change changes itself - I am saying it is a logical contradiction, breaking principle of non-contradiction, to say otherwise. This can be refuted logically or not, but is not an empirical claim, it is de limiting what is empirically possible.
Thirdly, having an infinite chain of concurrent causes dependent on a first is not just empirically impossible, it is logically impossible - the logic tells you it can't happen "in reality".
And of course the argument is falsifiable empirically, if premise 1 is wrong and in fact there is no such thing as change, or logically, by showing that the principle of non-contradiction is wrong and couldn't apply in this particular case, or that a series of instrumental causes does not in fact need a cause with causal power.
So I don't see any strength at all in your objection....
1. A formally correct argument in Logic (a) can be demonstrated to correspond with reality, or (b) it cannot be demonstrated to correspond with reality. The correspondence does not affect the logical truth (LT) of the argument.
2. Given 1, We must conclude that logical truth may not correspond with or match objective reality - let's call this 'physical truth' (PT).
3. We accept that 1(a) is not in any way problematic. This is one of the tools of the scientific method and is uncontroversial
4. By 'Logic', we mean an analytical tool that is a purely human construction, used to help humans interpret and understand reality. We know this to be true because different types of Logic have been developed (propositional vs predicate, for example) to assist in the understanding of different aspects.
5. If we do not accept 1(b), then we are effectively materialists, because we are saying that every logical argument is true if and only if it can be demonstrated to correspond with physical truth
6. If we do accept it, we are saying that it is possible to use a human constructed technique to demonstrate that propositions have a logical truth although they have no correspondence with PT
7. The conclusion therefore, is that one can build models which reflect reality (science) or which do not reflect reality (imagination).
Oh yes, Prime Mover? I still believe that IF one accepts the prime mover principle, the 4 fundamental forces of nature are sufficient to explain this. If not, why not? If the response is 'but what causes the forces?' then my response would be that one is falling into the trap of trying to add another step to a finite causal chain - i.e., trying to make it infinite. It's like asking 'What's further south than the South Pole?'
6. Is unwarranted - logical truth could hold just because we don't have enough information empirically to go on- in other words there will be cases that every piece of physical info supports the logic but correspondence might be claimed to need every possible example to correspond, and we can't know every possible...
7. There is no reason given at all to call those that aren't SHOWN to correspond to the provisional state of scientific knowledge "imagination". The logic is fixed, the science isn't. Who is to know which is the truth?
All of which is a category mistake. You simply can't judge logic on whether it seems to match current provisional empirical knowledge. Your previous example is of a flawed logical argument that doesn't reflect reality, so it in no way supports your argument here.
Proof of what I am saying is that it is logically certain that nothing, and not something, comes from absolute nothingness. No-one can say that we don't know this for sure yet but maybe one day science will tell us without rendering all thinking meaningless by claiming that nothing does not mean nothing, in fact. So it is logic that delimited what the empirical can be, not the other way round.
Are we correct to say that Socrates is mortal because we have verified that every human that will ever exist and that has ever existed is mortal, or have we arrived at a certain conclusion by premises based on argument and a conclusion following the premises?
What are the 4 fundamental forces? What is a fundamental force? What is it made of?
They could be prime mover? Well without preempting your answers, how are physical "forces" totally actual? - eternal, unchanging, only one, immaterial, etc.
So your argument, stylish to be sure, is just a riff on the "given that naturalism is true, how do we explain X..." question-begging, no offense to you intended.
Oh, and how does a materialist arrive at this axiom?
And I don't get what part of 4. the word "this" refers to.
Going back, your original logic concluded:
"6. This means the object must pass through an infinite number of points in a finite time, which is impossible"
But this conclusion is false, so your further work on reality is flawed.
Every time you move an inch, you move in a finite time through an infinite number of infinitely small gaps, if we want to insist in using "infinite" here.
You then said:
"2. there are an infinite number of pairs of such points that can be identified
and the conclusion that "to traverse an infinite number of pairs of points must take an infinite amount of time" is logically true."
So go on - identify that infinite series of points and when you've done that, is the conclusion in fact a premise? How does it follow from what came before? Isn't it a separate claim that infinite number of gaps takes infinite time to cross? On what is this premise based? I think it is refutable by argument alone, because it relies on us picturing a gap, then adding another gap, and so on for ever, whereas the dilemma concerns an in fact small finite gap, so whatever infinite list of subdivisions we make, the gap to be crossed is still the same finite gap. So equivocation about gap / gaps means the argument / third premise / conclusion, whatever it is, is falsifiable by argument alone. We have not needed to measure each infinitely small gap or for that matter identify each pair of points to show it is false.
There's more I think is wrong with the first four premises of your latest argument, but that's probably enough for now!
And I don't get what part of 4. the word "this" refers to.
Going back, your original logic concluded:
"6. This means the object must pass through an infinite number of points in a finite time, which is impossible"
But this conclusion is false, so your further work on reality is flawed.
Every time you move an inch, you move in a finite time through an infinite number of infinitely small gaps, if we want to insist in using "infinite" here.
You then said:
"2. there are an infinite number of pairs of such points that can be identified
and the conclusion that "to traverse an infinite number of pairs of points must take an infinite amount of time" is logically true."
So go on - identify that infinite series of points
and when you've done that, is the conclusion in fact a premise? How does it follow from what came before? Isn't it a separate claim that infinite number of gaps takes infinite time to cross? On what is this premise based? I think it is refutable by argument alone, because it relies on us picturing a gap, then adding another gap, and so on for ever, whereas the dilemma concerns an in fact small finite gap, so whatever infinite list of subdivisions we make, the gap to be crossed is still the same finite gap. So equivocation about gap / gaps means the argument / third premise / conclusion, whatever it is, is falsifiable by argument alone. We have not needed to measure each infinitely small gap or for that matter identify each pair of points to show it is false.There's more I think is wrong with the first four premises of your latest argument, but that's probably enough for now!
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