Life after Death? The mechanics of it?
Discussion
Let me try.
The "God of the gaps" - is increasingly exposed as non-existent.
There is now a trend for religious types to throw in as many big scientific type words as possible into sentences - to try to recover as much ground as possible.
For instance....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09UmufmfSLc&sp...
The "God of the gaps" - is increasingly exposed as non-existent.
There is now a trend for religious types to throw in as many big scientific type words as possible into sentences - to try to recover as much ground as possible.
For instance....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09UmufmfSLc&sp...
Chris GB said:
Hi Pistom,
Consciousness is the so-called "hard problem" of philosophy because it is apparently unexplainable in terms of matter and yet through it comes the only knowledge of the world I can have, in a way everything for us depends on it.
However, on an Aristotelian / Scholastic reading, consciousness is material because matter is inherently teleological. When it takes on a substantial form as a human being with a mind, the mind has thoughts that are about something, a first-person experience, etc.
So consciousness is material, but not in the way a contemporary "materialist" would accept, which is why a popular option (Dennett, Churchland, Rosenberg) is to say there is no such thing. To me that sounds implausible.
It's not consciousness per se that means something of us survives death, it's the intellect, because that carries out processes that are immaterial, as per arguments for the immateriality of thought or for the impossibility of a physical system having inherent syntax or semantics, whereas minds capable of complex language do.
Alock, the argument by Ross about immaterial aspects of thought is not about things being definitive.
( slightly O/T of original post: I am happy to accept that the laws of physics are complete and unchanging, which is what I take definitive to mean. But what is a law? Does it have causal power or is it merely descriptive? Descriptive of what? The origin of law talk in eg. Newton is infused with theology - laws were God's way of structuring the universe; now the God talk is abandoned; what accounts for the laws now? Etc.)
Ross's argument is that no single case of a physical system can be with certainty of the form it appears to be - for example, for any apparent adding a computer does, it could be in fact running an algorithm for adding for all numbers in its first billion years of existence, then giving the answer 42 for every subsequent input. The point being that physical systems are always undetermined, and in this example, we could never know otherwise, the machine's lifespan being shorter than the algorithm that isn't in fact adding.
Formal thinking is never like this. When I square a number, I am really carrying out the algorithm n x n= n squared every time, running a pure form, you could say. If I wasn't, then truth and validity would not be available as tools of thinking or of science or maths. Denying thought can have this determinate content makes logic or maths unknowable.
Thus formal thinking is not a wholly physical process.
Is that any clearer?
I was with you as far as Hi Pistom.Consciousness is the so-called "hard problem" of philosophy because it is apparently unexplainable in terms of matter and yet through it comes the only knowledge of the world I can have, in a way everything for us depends on it.
However, on an Aristotelian / Scholastic reading, consciousness is material because matter is inherently teleological. When it takes on a substantial form as a human being with a mind, the mind has thoughts that are about something, a first-person experience, etc.
So consciousness is material, but not in the way a contemporary "materialist" would accept, which is why a popular option (Dennett, Churchland, Rosenberg) is to say there is no such thing. To me that sounds implausible.
It's not consciousness per se that means something of us survives death, it's the intellect, because that carries out processes that are immaterial, as per arguments for the immateriality of thought or for the impossibility of a physical system having inherent syntax or semantics, whereas minds capable of complex language do.
Alock, the argument by Ross about immaterial aspects of thought is not about things being definitive.
( slightly O/T of original post: I am happy to accept that the laws of physics are complete and unchanging, which is what I take definitive to mean. But what is a law? Does it have causal power or is it merely descriptive? Descriptive of what? The origin of law talk in eg. Newton is infused with theology - laws were God's way of structuring the universe; now the God talk is abandoned; what accounts for the laws now? Etc.)
Ross's argument is that no single case of a physical system can be with certainty of the form it appears to be - for example, for any apparent adding a computer does, it could be in fact running an algorithm for adding for all numbers in its first billion years of existence, then giving the answer 42 for every subsequent input. The point being that physical systems are always undetermined, and in this example, we could never know otherwise, the machine's lifespan being shorter than the algorithm that isn't in fact adding.
Formal thinking is never like this. When I square a number, I am really carrying out the algorithm n x n= n squared every time, running a pure form, you could say. If I wasn't, then truth and validity would not be available as tools of thinking or of science or maths. Denying thought can have this determinate content makes logic or maths unknowable.
Thus formal thinking is not a wholly physical process.
Is that any clearer?
Chris GB said:
Alock, the argument by Ross about immaterial aspects of thought is not about things being definitive.
Got it, so his argument is not about being definitive.Chris GB said:
Ross's argument is that no single case of a physical system can be with certainty of the form it appears to be
How is 'certainty' different in concept from 'definitive'? How can it be about one and not the other?Chris GB said:
The point being that physical systems are always undetermined
So it's about things being 'undetermined' and 'certainty' but not 'definitive'. This isn't making much sense. Can you give a one or two sentence description of what you think each of these words mean because I'm struggling to piece together all your different statements?Lets go back to this point.
Chris GB said:
Ross's argument is that no single case of a physical system can be with certainty of the form it appears to be
Lets take Boyles Law as an example. PV = k. The equation states that product of pressure and volume is a constant for a given mass of confined gas as long as the temperature is constant.How is this not certain? Can you just explain this simple GCSE level physics example? If you can do this it will transform the entire science community and all education syllabuses in the world. You will get a nobel prize for this.
Assuming you cannot, it is this certainty that enables science (and the applied science of engineering) to get stuff done. Without the certainty of these laws of nature you would have very little of your real world comforts. How on earth do you think the words you are typing on your computer get transported half way around the world with 100% accuracy at nearly the speed of light. It is our understanding of the certainty of the physical world that enables us to predict how the electrons will flow down a wire.
Your entire argument is based on a couple of assumptions that are written in such a confusing way that people gloss over them. You then write a few thousand words in the most confusing way possible in the hope that no one really attempts to understand what you are writing. Instead you hope they just accept your conclusion. I can simplify your argument but you won't like it because everyone will see it for what it is.
1) Because I believe in god, there must be more to this world than we know about.
2) Since there is more to this world, it proves that god exists.
cahami said:
so let me get this right, there are 40 virgins that have been around a bit, some pandas, stardust, a big f
k off bang
and aunty ethel that smells of piss. mansions, security gates,peter the night watchman,
You are almost there.... k off bangand aunty ethel that smells of piss. mansions, security gates,peter the night watchman,
Big Bang. - Yes. It has been measured that the galaxies came from a single point of origin. Even the Catholic church admit this one.
Stardust. - Yes. We now know that at least one star has been exploding every second since the dawn of time. And that the elements are the result of that explosion.
Everything else is complete "Woowoo" made up by a bunch of men in caves.
Edited by Troubleatmill on Saturday 16th May 12:50
Alock, thanks for pointing out my mistake - for undetermined, I meant to write underdetermined. Sorry!
Let me try again:
1. All physical processes are underdetermined as to their real form or as to the actual function they are carrying out or exhibiting. For example, a calculator that appears to add could in fact, and there is no way to know from looking inside, checking electric current, or looking at outputs, that it is adding or in fact running an algorithm that adds for the first billion years of its life, then gives the answer 13 to any input after that.
This feature of physical processes is established by Quine, Kripke et al.
2. No formal thinking is underdetermined. Formal thinking is thinking that conforms to patterns such as those of maths or logic. If I times n by n, I am carrying out a pure function, squaring. If we don't think in a determinate way, ie. really use the pure form of maths or logic we intend to, then there is no real truth or validity available to us, our maths would be at best possibly correct, and this is not the case, as you rightly say - our maths, such as when we think using a form such as
Boyle's law, is indeed correct, and this is telling us about our thinking, our use of a pure form, our application of, in this case, an equation, PV=k
Hence a difference in kind - certain types of thinking are not a physical process.
Laws of nature are not physical processes - I'd say they are abstractions from observed regularities. (Applying them in our heads is a mental act like any other form of maths algorithm or like thinking according to rules of logic).
I wondered before what you would say a law is, given the theological origin of law talk in the 17th century? Is my working definition ok?
Because there are general and "mathematisable" regularities, an object behaving according to a "law" can alternatively be behaving according to some mutually exclusive possible law while of course exhibiting exactly the same properties / behavior as always. And there will be an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive equations to explain the output we observe.
So any single application of Boyle's law could theoretically be running an alternative algorithm to the effect that say PV=k for all values of V greater than or equal to that of the the smallest particle, otherwise not PV=k, and we would never see the difference, because we would never be measuring pressure and volume in non-existent quantities. (I assume here for the sake of argument that we can't by definition have something smaller than the smallest particle).
But if we add 2 and 2 in our heads, we know what pure form we are using - that of adding, and there is no underdetermination here.
I hope the difference between our thinking according to a mathematical function and the behavior of a physical process apparently exemplifying that function is clear, because this is the whole point of Ross's argument. I am an amateur, so apologies again if this is not getting clearer. I think I understand Ross, but if I can't explain him then I need to think more about his paper.
It's available online if you want to go to the horse's mouth.
To troubleatmill, it's inaccurate to say the church "admits" the Big Bang - it was a catholic priest who came up with the idea and for a while steady state was clung to in the community partly because of the obvious appeal of a Big Bang to theists!
Let me try again:
1. All physical processes are underdetermined as to their real form or as to the actual function they are carrying out or exhibiting. For example, a calculator that appears to add could in fact, and there is no way to know from looking inside, checking electric current, or looking at outputs, that it is adding or in fact running an algorithm that adds for the first billion years of its life, then gives the answer 13 to any input after that.
This feature of physical processes is established by Quine, Kripke et al.
2. No formal thinking is underdetermined. Formal thinking is thinking that conforms to patterns such as those of maths or logic. If I times n by n, I am carrying out a pure function, squaring. If we don't think in a determinate way, ie. really use the pure form of maths or logic we intend to, then there is no real truth or validity available to us, our maths would be at best possibly correct, and this is not the case, as you rightly say - our maths, such as when we think using a form such as
Boyle's law, is indeed correct, and this is telling us about our thinking, our use of a pure form, our application of, in this case, an equation, PV=k
Hence a difference in kind - certain types of thinking are not a physical process.
Laws of nature are not physical processes - I'd say they are abstractions from observed regularities. (Applying them in our heads is a mental act like any other form of maths algorithm or like thinking according to rules of logic).
I wondered before what you would say a law is, given the theological origin of law talk in the 17th century? Is my working definition ok?
Because there are general and "mathematisable" regularities, an object behaving according to a "law" can alternatively be behaving according to some mutually exclusive possible law while of course exhibiting exactly the same properties / behavior as always. And there will be an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive equations to explain the output we observe.
So any single application of Boyle's law could theoretically be running an alternative algorithm to the effect that say PV=k for all values of V greater than or equal to that of the the smallest particle, otherwise not PV=k, and we would never see the difference, because we would never be measuring pressure and volume in non-existent quantities. (I assume here for the sake of argument that we can't by definition have something smaller than the smallest particle).
But if we add 2 and 2 in our heads, we know what pure form we are using - that of adding, and there is no underdetermination here.
I hope the difference between our thinking according to a mathematical function and the behavior of a physical process apparently exemplifying that function is clear, because this is the whole point of Ross's argument. I am an amateur, so apologies again if this is not getting clearer. I think I understand Ross, but if I can't explain him then I need to think more about his paper.
It's available online if you want to go to the horse's mouth.
To troubleatmill, it's inaccurate to say the church "admits" the Big Bang - it was a catholic priest who came up with the idea and for a while steady state was clung to in the community partly because of the obvious appeal of a Big Bang to theists!
Chris GB said:
To troubleatmill, it's inaccurate to say the church "admits" the Big Bang - it was a catholic priest who came up with the idea and for a while steady state was clung to in the community partly because of the obvious appeal of a Big Bang to theists!
You are kind of correct -although it was Friedmann who did the donkey work. ( Standing on the shoulders of giants...yada yada )But.. to the rest of your prose... it is still Woowoo of the utmost order.
Chris GB, as far as I could tell, all your most recent post says is that the laws humans have formulated to describe the universe might be incomplete, slightly inaccurate, or completely incorrect?
So how again does that lead to we have a soul? The calculator might give wrong answers too, while attempting to apply laws to quantities. Does that mean it too has a soul?
So how again does that lead to we have a soul? The calculator might give wrong answers too, while attempting to apply laws to quantities. Does that mean it too has a soul?
Chris GB said:
Hi Pistom,
More stuff to explain the previous stuff with lots of detail that some people object to reading as they either have zero attention span or otherwise they have a life to lead outside of PH.
Is that any clearer?
Yes it is and thank you for taking the time to explain in such detail however I don't agree. More stuff to explain the previous stuff with lots of detail that some people object to reading as they either have zero attention span or otherwise they have a life to lead outside of PH.
Is that any clearer?
Our consciousness didn't exist when we were just egg and sperm but started once the sparky bits started in our brains. It is all physy-biological. When the sparky bits stop sparking, we are gone for good.
Kiseca, it's not that laws are incomplete - they are necessarily incomplete because they are abstractions / idealization a of regularities, so don't capture any qualitative features of what they describe (this is based on Bertrand Russell, by the way, atheist philosopher).
But here it's not about that - it's that whatever expression / formula / abstraction we apply to a phenomenon like a calculator "adding" or a gas expanding, there are an infinite number of other possible functions that equally well describe the process's outcome, such as the examples I've given.
On the level of maths, there is nothing incomplete about our formulas or programs, the point is that the processes they describe are underdetermined. This too is a conclusion of atheist philosophers like Quine and Kripke.
Pistom, WE didn't exist when "we" were just egg and sperm. But yes, to study consciousness we might pick a fully developed member of a species. To study the behavior of any animal, we are not going to look at it in the womb and draw all important conclusions from that, are we?
In any case, as I said, in traditional catholic philosophy, consciousness is entirely material, it's just that on this view, nature has goals.
But if teleology is rejected, as it is explicitly by most philosophy from Descartes onwards, though the concept is still needed of course in any talk of information or fittingness or adaptation or regularities or laws, then there is no way to explain consciousness materially, which is why leading atheist philosophers like Dennett, Churchland and Rosenberg will say there is no such thing because it can't be explained materially. Of course they can't be right - we have no access to any truth at all except via our consciousness.
The argument I'm trying to explain by Ross is however not about consciousness at all, it's about thinking according to patterns of maths or logic.
But here it's not about that - it's that whatever expression / formula / abstraction we apply to a phenomenon like a calculator "adding" or a gas expanding, there are an infinite number of other possible functions that equally well describe the process's outcome, such as the examples I've given.
On the level of maths, there is nothing incomplete about our formulas or programs, the point is that the processes they describe are underdetermined. This too is a conclusion of atheist philosophers like Quine and Kripke.
Pistom, WE didn't exist when "we" were just egg and sperm. But yes, to study consciousness we might pick a fully developed member of a species. To study the behavior of any animal, we are not going to look at it in the womb and draw all important conclusions from that, are we?
In any case, as I said, in traditional catholic philosophy, consciousness is entirely material, it's just that on this view, nature has goals.
But if teleology is rejected, as it is explicitly by most philosophy from Descartes onwards, though the concept is still needed of course in any talk of information or fittingness or adaptation or regularities or laws, then there is no way to explain consciousness materially, which is why leading atheist philosophers like Dennett, Churchland and Rosenberg will say there is no such thing because it can't be explained materially. Of course they can't be right - we have no access to any truth at all except via our consciousness.
The argument I'm trying to explain by Ross is however not about consciousness at all, it's about thinking according to patterns of maths or logic.
Chris GB said:
Alock, thanks for pointing out my mistake - for undetermined, I meant to write underdetermined. Sorry!
Let me try again:
1. All physical processes are underdetermined as to their real form or as to the actual function they are carrying out or exhibiting. For example, a calculator that appears to add could in fact, and there is no way to know from looking inside, checking electric current, or looking at outputs, that it is adding or in fact running an algorithm that adds for the first billion years of its life, then gives the answer 13 to any input after that.
This feature of physical processes is established by Quine, Kripke et al.
2. No formal thinking is underdetermined. Formal thinking is thinking that conforms to patterns such as those of maths or logic. If I times n by n, I am carrying out a pure function, squaring. If we don't think in a determinate way, ie. really use the pure form of maths or logic we intend to, then there is no real truth or validity available to us, our maths would be at best possibly correct, and this is not the case, as you rightly say - our maths, such as when we think using a form such as
Boyle's law, is indeed correct, and this is telling us about our thinking, our use of a pure form, our application of, in this case, an equation, PV=k
Hence a difference in kind - certain types of thinking are not a physical process.
Laws of nature are not physical processes - I'd say they are abstractions from observed regularities. (Applying them in our heads is a mental act like any other form of maths algorithm or like thinking according to rules of logic).
I wondered before what you would say a law is, given the theological origin of law talk in the 17th century? Is my working definition ok?
Because there are general and "mathematisable" regularities, an object behaving according to a "law" can alternatively be behaving according to some mutually exclusive possible law while of course exhibiting exactly the same properties / behavior as always. And there will be an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive equations to explain the output we observe.
So any single application of Boyle's law could theoretically be running an alternative algorithm to the effect that say PV=k for all values of V greater than or equal to that of the the smallest particle, otherwise not PV=k, and we would never see the difference, because we would never be measuring pressure and volume in non-existent quantities. (I assume here for the sake of argument that we can't by definition have something smaller than the smallest particle).
But if we add 2 and 2 in our heads, we know what pure form we are using - that of adding, and there is no underdetermination here.
I hope the difference between our thinking according to a mathematical function and the behavior of a physical process apparently exemplifying that function is clear, because this is the whole point of Ross's argument. I am an amateur, so apologies again if this is not getting clearer. I think I understand Ross, but if I can't explain him then I need to think more about his paper.
It's available online if you want to go to the horse's mouth.
To troubleatmill, it's inaccurate to say the church "admits" the Big Bang - it was a catholic priest who came up with the idea and for a while steady state was clung to in the community partly because of the obvious appeal of a Big Bang to theists!
So your soul/consciousness has essentially created the universe you see as well as those who're disagreeing with you on the internet.Let me try again:
1. All physical processes are underdetermined as to their real form or as to the actual function they are carrying out or exhibiting. For example, a calculator that appears to add could in fact, and there is no way to know from looking inside, checking electric current, or looking at outputs, that it is adding or in fact running an algorithm that adds for the first billion years of its life, then gives the answer 13 to any input after that.
This feature of physical processes is established by Quine, Kripke et al.
2. No formal thinking is underdetermined. Formal thinking is thinking that conforms to patterns such as those of maths or logic. If I times n by n, I am carrying out a pure function, squaring. If we don't think in a determinate way, ie. really use the pure form of maths or logic we intend to, then there is no real truth or validity available to us, our maths would be at best possibly correct, and this is not the case, as you rightly say - our maths, such as when we think using a form such as
Boyle's law, is indeed correct, and this is telling us about our thinking, our use of a pure form, our application of, in this case, an equation, PV=k
Hence a difference in kind - certain types of thinking are not a physical process.
Laws of nature are not physical processes - I'd say they are abstractions from observed regularities. (Applying them in our heads is a mental act like any other form of maths algorithm or like thinking according to rules of logic).
I wondered before what you would say a law is, given the theological origin of law talk in the 17th century? Is my working definition ok?
Because there are general and "mathematisable" regularities, an object behaving according to a "law" can alternatively be behaving according to some mutually exclusive possible law while of course exhibiting exactly the same properties / behavior as always. And there will be an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive equations to explain the output we observe.
So any single application of Boyle's law could theoretically be running an alternative algorithm to the effect that say PV=k for all values of V greater than or equal to that of the the smallest particle, otherwise not PV=k, and we would never see the difference, because we would never be measuring pressure and volume in non-existent quantities. (I assume here for the sake of argument that we can't by definition have something smaller than the smallest particle).
But if we add 2 and 2 in our heads, we know what pure form we are using - that of adding, and there is no underdetermination here.
I hope the difference between our thinking according to a mathematical function and the behavior of a physical process apparently exemplifying that function is clear, because this is the whole point of Ross's argument. I am an amateur, so apologies again if this is not getting clearer. I think I understand Ross, but if I can't explain him then I need to think more about his paper.
It's available online if you want to go to the horse's mouth.
To troubleatmill, it's inaccurate to say the church "admits" the Big Bang - it was a catholic priest who came up with the idea and for a while steady state was clung to in the community partly because of the obvious appeal of a Big Bang to theists!
I'm still not getting it, Chris. Instead of elaborating yet further why don't you try to summarise the view into a single concise paragraph.
We used to have a saying back home. If you can't beat them with knowledge, baffle them with bull. And I have to say that as your explanations get longer, they are looking more and more like the latter as the point gets buried deeper and deeper under a pile of abstract concepts, obscure references and words from the dusty end of Webster's archives.
The path you're taking me down has the most complex web of reasoning I've heard since a double glazing salesman tried to explain to me why I really needed his windows. I have to be honest, it's all way over my head and while some on pistonheads may disagree, I know for sure that I am not stupid. There must be an easier explanation than this. Whenever an explanation gets this complicated, it's nearly always because it's wrong and it's dodging around some fundamental logical flaw. So I'm skeptical, to say the least, and this is coming from someone who is agnostic to a fault.
We used to have a saying back home. If you can't beat them with knowledge, baffle them with bull. And I have to say that as your explanations get longer, they are looking more and more like the latter as the point gets buried deeper and deeper under a pile of abstract concepts, obscure references and words from the dusty end of Webster's archives.
The path you're taking me down has the most complex web of reasoning I've heard since a double glazing salesman tried to explain to me why I really needed his windows. I have to be honest, it's all way over my head and while some on pistonheads may disagree, I know for sure that I am not stupid. There must be an easier explanation than this. Whenever an explanation gets this complicated, it's nearly always because it's wrong and it's dodging around some fundamental logical flaw. So I'm skeptical, to say the least, and this is coming from someone who is agnostic to a fault.
kiseca said:
I'm still not getting it, Chris. Instead of elaborating yet further why don't you try to summarise the view into a single concise paragraph.
Chris. Try small sentences. With words used in everyday conversation. Avoid scientific words.To quote Galaxy Quest - "Explain is as you would to a small child."
Troubleatmill said:
"Explain is as you would to a small child."
God is some unknown and unseen all powerful creator.He got a woman pregnant without her permission - we call that rape these days.
She had a little boy called Jesus who, we are told, was able to do magic and talk to people.
The boy became a man and was the ring-leader of some gang of twelve - apparently one of them got the hump with Jesus and grassed him up for being a muppet.
Jesus got nailed to a big stick, had a big sword stuck into his gut and bled to death.
A few days later the world was in need of Milla Jovovich as that fella Jesus had bought shares in The Umbrella Corporation and got his grubby mitts on "The T Virus".
A couple of thousand years later millions of people still think that this sh!t is all above board and tickety-boo.
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