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You have no basis for deciding how likely or unlikely it is for life to have appeared from non-living matter. For all you know, given the conditions of the early earth, it might have been absolutely inevitable. It is possible that life is abundant throughout the universe. No one knows. Your speculation on these matters is empty blather.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli
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Originally Posted by WyattGwyon
The "think of the odds against it" argument is used to discuss the improbablility any number of events. Two brothers die in separate plane crashes on the same day -- "Think of the odds". Of course, once an event has happened, the odds of it occuring are 1:1 -- 100%. From the point of view of examining only the Earth from a recent vantage point (say, 1000 years ago), what are the odds of any single event that happens happening? Zillions to one. However, out of the zillions of possibilities, we can clearly predict that ONE of them will occur -- we just don't know which one. From our current vantage point, we DO know which one has occured -- the only reason we are wondering about the two brothers dying in separate plane wrecks (or about life beginning on earth, from whatever cause) is that the odds of those things occuring were 100% -- in other words, they did occur.
Any event that happens was once ALMOST infinitely unlikely.
Your conclusion does not follow from anything you stated above.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
In any case, we are not talking about an event, as in some specific set of molecules in one particular pool of primordial ooze making a transition to self-replication or whatever. We are talking about the chances that it will occur once in several billion such pools over the period of a billion years. It is possible that such an event might be inevitable. So statistically speaking, this problem isn't like two specific brothers dying in separate plane crashes, it is like the chances that in the whole history of human civilization, two brothers will die in similar circumstances — that is to say, more or less inevitable.
Very well said, Wyatt. All of the theistic arguments that rely on probability only serve to show what an abysmal grasp most humans have on probability to begin with. EG, a lot of such arguments get specific into arguing the probability against humans being here--ie, against humans being "merely" the outcome of billions of years of evolution. First, this betrays a completely anthropomorphic bias (the entire idea that everything exists only so it can lead to us--is there any claim more self-centered than that?), but, secondly, you can pretty much do this with any singled-out event: the chance you'd walk outside and see any specific cloud formation, or the chance that everything that happens in a Vegas casino on any given night would've happened exactly has it did. The problem is that some perhaps incalculably low event HAD to have occurred, and the notion that because any one happened it had to have a reason/designer/creator whatever is just nonsense.
My conclusion follows perfectly from what I said. In addition, I was agreeing with your position, and arguing against Nick. In fact, you are merely restating my position in the above post. Morpheus is also restating my position (I'm not sure if I wrote unclearly, or my readers failed to read carefully).Quote:
Originally Posted by WyattGwyon
Ecurb, fwiw, I was not following this conversation closely, and I was only echoing Wyatt's statement by giving a few more examples; I wasn't intending to address/rebut anything you had said.
I disagree. It is certainly possible to calculate the probability of molecular reactions given enough information about the reactants and their environmental conditions. We know a lot about how atoms and molecules behave. What we need to know about the formation of living matter from non-living matter (abiogenesis) is how this occurred. Once a living entity i.e. some assembly of matter able to reproduce itself and interact as such with its environment) appeared, then natural selection provides a very satisfactory explanation of the subsequent evolution of all life forms.Quote:
Originally Posted by WyattGwyon
So far as I know no one has been able to come up with a compellingly probable mechanism for abiogenesis (and certainly not one that would make it "absolutely inevitable").
Of course we need to know the early conditions on Earth when abiogenesis occurred. Scientists have a pretty good general idea of these conditions and have even conducted experiments to create organic molecules under those conditions (going back to the 1950's). They have managed to synthesize simple organic compounds, including amino acids,. No one so far has been able to synthesize even the simplest life form. Or even to come up with a convincing physiochemical explanation for how it would be likely to occur... That doesn't mean it is (or was) impossible. Based on the fact that we still haven't come up with a compelling mechanism for abiogenesis does suggest that it was a rather improbable event.
Speculating on such things is not "blather." There are plenty of scientifically sophisticated folk who think the original appearance of life is worth serious discussion. Darwin himself certainly was troubled by the lack of a suitable scientific explanation. Darwin and Wallace came up with a brilliant theory to explain how living things evolve. This theory is almost certainly the correct explanation of the evolution of life, not only on Earth, but anywhere else life exists in the Universe. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it can even explain the evolution of non-living but otherwise "life-like" things like computer programs...
I've tried to be clear in my posts on this thread, but I guess from your response that I didn't succeed.
There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together) . However, that is a misunderstanding of probability. IF you roll two dice, and "box cars" come up, it would be silly to say "these must be loaded dice, because two 6s are unlikely." Yes, box cars are unlikely (1/36), but that doesn't mean the dice must be loaded.
WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other. It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis? Is there any evidence of other "creations"?
In addition, the notion of a conscious, volitional "creator" is anthropomorphic. Why is conscious volition the only thing that can explain an otherwise extremely improbable occurence? Couldn't life have originated through some other, non-consicious, non-volitional, but unique set of circumstances?
As I have said many times, it's a mystery. And you are correct: clues are not dues.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Sorry Ecurb — It was my mistake. It seems obvious now!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together).Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
There are a few (not dozens) of plausible hypotheses (none of which really rise to the level of theory) to explain abiogenesis. I've followed them closely over the years since I was a college and graduate/medical school student. You can find a good on-line summary of them by Googling "abiogenesis." The Wikipedia article is fairly good. The one I find most compelling is the "Clay" hypothesis.
WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other.
I'll rephrase your statement to "Life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did come into being, somehow or other," just to make it more grammatically sensible. Well, that's obviously true, since we know that life somehow appeared on the early Earth out of non-living matter. I never questioned that, nor did I ever question that once life forms came into being they evolved by means of natural selection. I hope that I have been able to make it clear that I am not an unscientific Yahoo who knows nothing about physics, chemistry, and biology.
It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis?
I never said any such things. You are creating a straw man argument. My argument is that so far there haven't been any really compelling physiochemical explanations for abiogenesis. I would certainly welcome a good scientific explanation. But given the fact that abiogenesis is still quite mysterious (as opposed to, say, the theory of evolution by natural selection (and all of the other stuff that we know about biology), I think that we should remain open to the possibility of a Creator, maybe along the lines of the God of Spinosa or the Deists... There have been quite a few bona fide scientists who have held such an idea. Darwin himself was apparently troubled by his inability to explain abiogenesis to the degree of certainty he felt with his theory of natural selection, and this was most likely to be the origin of whatever scientific "doubt" he may have had about the evolution of life on Earth.
I agree that we should remain open to any reasonable possibilities in our quest for the truth. However, I don't think that a Creator is a more reasonable possibility than hundreds (even thousands) of other theories (if we are discussing ONLY the origins of life). Of course if there is OTHER evidence for a powerful God, or a Biblical God (personal revelation, as one example), then a Creator becomes more probable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli
p.s. I know that I wasn't always speaking specifically to your points; I was making general comments on the issue.
We often neglect the truth that science has a handful of its limitations, especially when we tend to assume one thing and deny the other.
Since I may not have been clear, I want to make a further comment about your argument comparing the probability of abiogenesis to rolling dice and getting boxcars (or any other same face result), and why I said that you are raising a "straw man" argument. We know the probabilities of rolling dice outcomes. They are easy to calculate using statistics and our knowledge of how dice (6-faced cubes) behave when tossed. Atoms and molecules do not behave so simply as dice, but we have a pretty good understanding of how they do behave. This knowledge allows us to estimate the probability that that certain chemical reactions can occur, given the presence of certain atoms and molecules (or larger assemblages of matter) under specified environmental conditions (such as those on the early Earth). Environmental conditions on the early Earth were certainly different from those today, but we must assume that the laws of physics and chemistry were the same as they are today. We are not going way back to the time of the Big Bang, when one could argue that the laws might have been different...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
So the problem for folks who want to explain abiogenesis comes down to hypothesizing a physiochemical pathway for the assembly of living matter from non-living matter. We understand that because life exists now on Earth, abiogenesis in fact did occur at some point. I'll assume it occurred on Earth rather than somewhere else in the Universe to be imported to Earth, mainly because saying life originated elsewhere merely begs the question of abiogenesis.
We also know that the assembly of non-living chemical assemblies into life forms was improbable. How improbable is not clear, but it was certainly more improbable than rolling boxcars, and probably more improbable than winning the Super Lotto. Granted we are talking about a very long time base (e.g. a couple of billion years since the Earth cooled from a molten fireball and the first Pre-Cambrian living things appeared). The main problem for us is to come up with a "plausible" physical mechanism that provides us with some sort of "scientific" explanation (hypothesis) for abiogenesis. We do have some hypotheses (the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis discusses them), but none of them seems compelling enough to command our absolute acceptance.
Furthermore, despite the extensive studies of modern scientists, so far no one has been able to create life from non-life "in the test tube," nor has anyone observed the spontaneous appearance of life from non-life in nature.
All of this is to say the great scientific mystery of life is abiogenesis. Neither the "Creationist" folks nor the "Evolutionists" seem to have focused on abiogenesis as the central mystery that needs either a theological or scientific explanation. They tend to argue about whether or not natural selection can explain the evolution of living things. It ought to be quite clear that the Darwin/Wallace theory of natural selection provides an intellectually compelling explanation for the evolution of living things. As far as scientific theories to explain the behavior of the universe, natural selection is about as certainly "correct" as Maxwell's thermodynamics. No other scientific theories, such as relativity and quantum mechanics, have the same degree of certainty as thermodynamic theory and the theory of evolution by natural selection, IMHO.
I just wanted to clarify what I think about this topic.
You can dig out any number of scientists who believe all kinds of wacky things. Every field has its eccentrics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli
As there is no absolute truth, then we should remain open to the possibility of all things, so you are right in saying we should remain open to the possibility of a creator God. But we should, then, also remain open to the possibility of the tooth fairy and the flying spaghetti monster. But there is no *evidence* for any of these things. So, in practice, sensible people, today, think believing in unseen things is just too silly.
Really what we should remain open to is the fact that not all propositions are equally likely to be true, and set about assigning probability rather than resorting to the binary labels of "true" "false." To think about things like God or tooth fairies is to think about things the human imagination is capable of producing without a stitch of valid external evidence, and, historically, we are batting a perfect 0 at confirming the existence of such entities. So I tend to think that anything we imagine existing before we have proof of their existence is extremely unlikely to actually exist... something like 0.00000000000001% or so. OTOH, I think I'm confident putting the sun's existence at 99.99999999999999999999%. So perhaps neither proposition is absolute truth, but they're about as close as we can get. The whole point is to be less wrong, not absolutely right.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Some seemingly, at first sight, intelligent & sane & serious people say that witches or gods exist, but none say tooth fairies or Santa Claus exist, so the existence of the former seems more likely than the latter. But I don't think you can assign probabilities to any of these claims, that's treating the claims too seriously! There is *no* reasonable evidence for gods or tooth fairies, so sensible people just get on with life ignoring any possibility of them existing, and don't bother seeking probabilities for their existence, as they have much better things to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
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Originally Posted by mal4mac
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< speak for yourself!
Only if you count belief as evidence, which would be very silly.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
I believe I'll have a beer.
Youtube or it didn't happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
I don't believe in the Christian God. But can't there be different levels of disbelief? Some clever people believe in the existence of God, but no one supports the existence of the tooth fairy. I think those "clever people" are wrong, but don't they deserve some respect?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
I can't see why there should be. Things are either supported by evidence or they are not.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Not for their views, no. Why would I respect the views of someone who, in my opinion, chooses to be self-deluded?Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
I reject the concept of intelligent people really and genuinely thinking there is any reason to think some mythical sky-fairy runs the universe. They choose to believe, then soothe their consciences with tract-explanations for the irrational. Faith is a choice, not a decision.
I'm not saying we should devote serious time and mental power to assigning accurate probabilities to propositions for which there's no good evidence to suggest they're true, however, in general, it's good, even if as a thought experiment, to think about what kind of evidence WOULD be good evidence and how well any evidence supports the proposition that it's true versus the proposition that it's not true.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
If you just push the probability to the pole of 0/false/untrue then that's basically tantamount to saying no evidence would ever convince you, even if God, Santa Claus, etc. showed up at your door and demonstrated their powers to you. Obviously such a thing would be darn good evidence for them existing. Yet, according to Bayes' Theorem, if your prior probability was set at 0 then no evidence could ever move it one fractional integer from 0. If that's not the case, then it's good to consider what the real prior probability actually is. As I said, I think the best prior I could give would be the one assigned to all things we imagined to exist before we confirmed their existence, which would place the probability extremely low as, clearly, the human brain is capable of imagining many things exist that do not.
Yes; in fact, I think all there are only levels of belief and disbelief, even though people tend to express their confidence levels in binary terms. That binary thinking isn't reflective of how things actually are because it presumes (among other things) that we know all there is to know. Our knowledge (and mental) limitations should dictate that every belief is merely a measure of our confidence levels given the evidence and how we've cognitively processed that evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
See above; first you'd have a dispute over exactly what constitutes evidence, a further dispute over what constitutes good evidence, and a dispute over how that evidence affects the likelihood of any given proposition. These are not simple matters.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Looks pretty simple to me - evidence that can be counted will conform to scientific investigation: physical, testable, measurable.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Anything supported by anecdotal evidence only can be safely ignored.
Don't people have to express their confidence levels in binary terms? If they stopped to evaluate their confidence level for things like 'the sun rising tomorrow' wouldn't they be paralysed? Wondering every night if the sun is going to rise tomorrow would be, surely, an example of extreme silliness, wouldn't it? Unless, perhaps, you were a philosopher specialising in these matters.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
That's scientism. There are all kinds of evidence we accept as evidence that doesn't follow the rigors of the scientific method, and there are things like history which require a completely different kind of investigation. What's more, such things don't help us in disputes like the one I'm having with YesNo in the Big Bang thread regarding various interpretations of quantum mechanics in which any number of ideas fit the evidence and there's really no scientific way (right now) of definitively choosing between them, and there may never be. So it's certainly not as simple as all that. How much reading into epistemology have you done? Read through here and get back to me on how simple it all is. I agree that, perhaps, it's simpler than many make it out to be, but probably not as simple as you're implying.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Hehe, this reminds me of the William Blake quote in Augeries of Innocence that "If the sun and moon should doubt, they'd immediately go out." The simple answer is that NO, people do not and SHOULD not think of their confidence levels in binary terms. The only way to accurately polarize such beliefs is if we knew everything, and we do not. It's our lack of omniscience that creates probability and prohibits absolute certainty. Hence the goal of being "less wrong" and learning to tune our biases accurately by what we experience, believe, and what we expect to experience based on that belief. However, we don't need absolute, ontological certainty to behave as if we're certain; but then we're talking about the difference between beliefs and actions based on beliefs. IE, the absolute consistency of the sun rising means we can act as if we're certain it will rise tomorrow without ruling out the remote possibility that will not. You don't need to worry over things that have a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Doesn't that "do away with" most of history? Did Henry VIII actually exist? There is no "physical" Henry VIII in existence to test or measure, all we have are anecdotes.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Surely you have to have a sliding scale for belief, not just a binary switch. Markers on that scale from "most confident of existence" to "least", for me, might be "me, keyboard, Henry VIII, || Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, Buddha | , God, tooth fairy"
I believe in everything to the left of "||", and nothing to the right of '|'. Between || and | are guys I tend to believe existed, but might pause to doubt their existence, now and again.
I can't agree at all, historical evidence is still physical and verifiable, and mal has a good example:Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
No, we do not just have anecdotes. There are thousands of pieces of physical evidence that show Henry 8 existed and was King of England, and we even know where he was buried.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Obviously, some things go in the "not sure" category, and Morpheus' quantum mechanics are a good example. I don't have a problem with not knowing.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Yeah, some historical evidence is, but are you really suggesting we don't ever rely on anecdotal evidence in trying to piece together history? We don't always have access to such hard, physical evidence. However, even outside history, has there never been a time you've had a friend tell you a story and you believed it without asking for more evidence? You may say "well, yeah, but those stories weren't making extraordinary claims that required such evidence," but then I'd say that the entire notion of the "extraordinary claim" is rife with epistemological problems such as what exactly constitutes one and how we know one without appealing to personal experience, social norms, anecdotes, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Not rely on, no. Take Socrates as an ideal example; did he live, or was he a fictional character? We don't know and never will, but it doesn't actually matter, because what was said shaped the world, not who said it.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
That's not really compatible with the subject. If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.
I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.
I actually came back in to add this very good list of unanswered (mostly) scientific questions:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...ons-in-science
He lived! Boy did he live :)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
This is clear from other writings and historical artifacts.
Socrates was not simply a character, or an invention, of Plato. In studying "the philosophy of Socrates" we can't say, for certain, that any philosophical views that Plato attributes to Socrates are actually those of the historical Socrates. That said, some (most?) scholars attribute the views expressed by the character Socrates in the early dialogues as almost certainly closer to the views of the historical Socrates than those expressed in the Republic and other, later dialogues. I believe these scholars, but I don't believe them as strongly as those who say "Plato's dialogues were written by Plato". Again we see the sliding scale of belief.
What if he's using your money in the currency deal? If he's a good friend, you may accept the deal without evidence, you "believe in him". But your father is likely to insist that you get evidence!Quote:
If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.
What if he's renowned for telling the truth? He might be upset if you question his honour. Shouldn't you believe him without evidence?Quote:
On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.
What about claims that really matter? For instance, shouldn't you have extraordinary evidence, i.e., "beyond reasonable doubt", in a murder case?Quote:
I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.
Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness. Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is. Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.
Can it? Then why is everyone still arguing about most of them? Like the "hard problem of consciousness", the mind-body problem, and "ultimate origins".Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Not a handicap at all. No lack of vigilance at all. No one is born knowing. So one believes until one finds out from science, or never finds out. Nature cannot be blamed.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I don't doubt it, but I also could not accept the proposition that we have definitive proof that he lived.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Not me; I'd have the paperwork every time.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Apart from the fact that he's been dead for 30 years, he was far more likely to trust people on a handshake than me.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
This is fishing we're talking about, not the nature of the universe. Any fisherman worth salting his bait will know for a certainty that evidence must be provided.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Beyond reasonable doubt is a long way from extraordinary evidence, which is lucky, because juries being made of humans means they're highly susceptible to screwing up. I know of at least a couple of murder cases where the evidence for the prosecution has consisted of reliable scientific evidence that has been completely ignored by juries. On the other hand, there are numerous examples of innocent people being executed or locked up on no believable evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
I think we're just giving different meanings to the phrase, because that claim may require an extraordinary amount of evidence, but there's nothing extraordinary about the evidence itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I think you're also using probabilities incorrectly, because if something has a 1% likelihood, then it is 99% unlikely to be proven, no matter how much evidence exists. If the evidence exists but we just haven't found it yet, then it's not a question of lacking probability at all.
No, it really is just that it is so irrelevant I have no need to waste time checking. Whether it's true or not is immaterial to me - much like Socrates' life & death. I conditionally accept the propositions on the basis that it doesn't matter, but in no way would I base anything on the assumption that it is really true and verifiable.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Those things do not meet the standard of evidence.
Which is exactly why the rules of evidence must be constant. Like mathematics, evidence isn't a flexible concept. 2+2 will always equal 5.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Here, I agree with you. Lots of the most fervent battles I've had have been against self-proclaimed skeptics who believe things for which no evidence exists. Love is probably top of the list.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
But isn't love a feeling? To deny it would be like denying tiredness.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
It isn't the existence of love, but what it actually is that causes the argument.
I know of many, many mostly skeptical and rational people that think love is something more than the sum of its parts.
Because a lot of time we invent unanswerable questions based on ill-defined terms with no singular referents. It would be like asking "Is a blorkendorker green?" and then complaining that science can't answer it. Just because we have a word like "consciousness" and create a "mind-body duality" doesn't mean they're actually coherent questions. See here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
No one is "born knowing," but we are born with innate cognitive biases that lead us to believe we know all kinds of things that aren't true. If one becomes aware of those biases they can learn to be more vigilant about not picking up false beliefs, or, more accurately, any beliefs based on bad reasoning.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
No, it's not just about the amount. I agree we may disagree over what constitutes extraordinary, but I simply think of "extraordinary" as meaning "something that almost certainly wouldn't happen if the proposition was untrue," and the more unlikely something is to be true, the more unlikely that its confirming evidence would be encountered.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
I'm not quite sure why you think what you write here contradicts what I said. You're right that if something has a 1% chance of being true then it's 99% unlikely to be proven, hence how "extraordinary" it would be if we actually found evidence to prove it. I'm not sure what you mean by your second sentence; probability is always predicated on our combination of knowledge and ignorance of the world. As I explained to Callidore in the Big Bang thread, a coin-flip being 50/50 is only 50/50 because we know about the two sides of the coin and can't calculate the physics involved in the flip. If we could apply General Relativity to the flip immediately as the flip happened, the probability of the coin landing on the side it does would be 100/0, not 50/50. So probability is always an expression of our combined ignorance and knowledge.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Again, I'm not sure where you think we're disagreeing. You think its truthfulness is irrelevant so you accept anecdotal evidence on the basis that "it doesn't matter." The basis you accept it on is really immaterial to my initial point. As for the last bit, would you not be willing to accept a bet on the basis that it was true? Let's say I offered a wager of $100 that your friend does what he does for a living. Would you accept that wager? If so, then you must admit that you have assumed the truthfulness of the proposition to at least more than a 50/50 degree based solely on anecdotal evidence. What would be the limits of that bet? Would you lay your $100 to my $50? Your $100 to my $10? How sure are you? All of a sudden, I'm giving you a good reason to care about the truthfulness of your assumptions and the evidence they're based on, which goes to show they were based on something, even though you never bothered to pursue it farther because it was "irrelevant."Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
One problem with the "irrelevant" argument, though, is that so many relevant beliefs can flow from the same place that irrelevant ones do. Yes, maybe your specific case is irrelevant, but can you really say you've never accepted any relevant propositions as being true on no better evidence? I can't say for sure I haven't. Human brains are not good at keeping up with their beliefs and what assumptions/bases they rest on.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "rules of evidence" being constant. What are the "rules for eye witness evidence?" Also, math isn't really "evidence" per say but a model of reality for which we can often construct tests that we consider to be evidence. But Godel had a little something to say about the completeness and consistency of mathematical models.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Well, I'd say we have evidence that we feel something for other people that we call "love." As to what that feeling actually is and what causes it, that's another matter. This is what I've been arguing about with YesNo in the Big Bang thread, that feeling/experiences are evidence only for feelings and experiences, not the ontological assumptions we make based on them (IE, there's an inferential leap from saying "I feel love" to saying "love is X".)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
How does that apply to the "hard problem of consciousness"? What's wrong with asking "What is Consciousness?"?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
"It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." - David Chalmers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_p..._consciousness