I would have said that NDEs closely resemble oxygen deprivation, but are then tied to one's cultural/religious norms.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
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I would have said that NDEs closely resemble oxygen deprivation, but are then tied to one's cultural/religious norms.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Really what he's doing is showing why the common claim of people having "personal" metaphysics, ie, NOT wanting to share their metaphysics/evidence is suspicious in itself, because if you do maintain a metaphysics as he's describing (one in which there is causal entanglement), you wouldn't mind sharing it with others (me telling you my shoe is untied because of the whole photons/shoes/eyes/brain causal entanglement). If you want to call what he's describing as evidence to be "metaphysics," then that's fine, but it's also a metaphysics that we all innately share, and it's the same metaphysics that has allowed science to discovery everything we know about how reality functions; so it seems pretty foolhardy to try and dismiss that success as "just metaphysics" as if it's no better than any other system, as if the "metaphysics" of "causal entanglement" is on the same level of "metaphysics" as "witchcraft." My whole initial point was that some evidence, some metaphysical systems, are innately better/more reliable for producing true beliefs than others, and I feel the one Yudkowsky is describing has proven itself to be far and away the best and only consistently legitimate one.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Because scientists have no reason for ignoring good evidence. Einstein became famous by "debunking" his hero Newton and replacing Newtonian physics with Relativity. Scientists do not get ahead in the scientific community by blindly following what every scientist currently believes, they get ahead (and become famous) by establishing new paradigms that replace older ones. A scientist who could prove God would instantly become as famous as Einstein, so there's no reason for them to reject it from the get-go.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
True. To clarify, I'm referring to people's reports of seeing, eg, Jesus during their NDEs. Of course oxygen deprivation can produce such hallucinations, but what is hallucinated is influenced by cultural norms/beliefs.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
As I think about it, what you are saying may be what he was trying to say. Let's test how this might work. Instead of shoelaces, let's say I had a shared-death experience. Instead of keeping it to myself, I tell you and others about it. I share it. In the process of doing that my shared-death experience becomes evidence. Were it formally presented it would be a case study.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
OK, that makes sense to me.
What is "good" evidence?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Evidence is good if it fits the metaphysics of the scientist. It is bad evidence, or evidence that has to be modified or discredited if it doesn't fit the paradigm.
Here's something else that Yudkowsky wrote in the link you sited earlier: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl/what_is_evidence/
This is why rationalists put such a heavy premium on the paradoxical-seeming claim that a belief is only really worthwhile if you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise. If your retina ended up in the same state regardless of what light entered it, you would be blind. Some belief systems, in a rather obvious trick to reinforce themselves, say that certain beliefs are only really worthwhile if you believe them unconditionally— no matter what you see, no matter what you think. Your brain is supposed to end up in the same state regardless. Hence the phrase, "blind faith". If what you believe doesn't depend on what you see, you've been blinded as effectively as by poking out your eyeballs.
What I am claiming is that all beliefs, including those of "rationalists", are "blind". The "trick" is the one Yudkowsky is playing on himself. By criticizing those who insist on "unconditional" belief this gives him a sense of superiority that helps him forget to question his own beliefs.
I think the process works in this manner. We accept a metaphysics, paradigm or belief and then we busy ourselves trying to prove it is true. To use the Eldredge-Gould "punctuated equilibrium" model, this would be a period of equilibrium. At this point evidence is "good" if it fits our beliefs. It is "bad" otherwise. Bad evidence has to be sanitized before it is accepted.
Things change during a crisis when our beliefs crack. The equilibrium is "punctuated" and our metaphysics is modified. We then continue with a new metaphysics for which we look for "good" evidence to support it.
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On an earlier idea, I mentioned that I didn't see much difference between John Haught's dislike of "intelligent design" and yet his support for "purpose". In reading more of Rupert Sheldrake's The Science Delusion, I think I see how these two ideas differ. With intelligent design there is an implicit metaphysics that the universe is a deterministic machine that needs a God to crank it up or get it started. That's the problem with intelligent design, not the implied existence of a God of some sort, but the implication that the universe is a deterministic machine.
Sharing the experience is evidence that a certain phenomena we call NDEs exist; of this I don't doubt as there have been enough reports to support that such a phenomena happens. However, there is a difference in reporting experiencing a phenomena and explaining the phenomena. EG, it's two different things to say "my shoelaces are untied" and to say "My shoelaces are untied... the witch did it." Similarly, when one says "My shoelaces are untied because photons are bouncing off my shoes, entering my eyes, and being processed by my visual cortex," we can actually test the various aspects of this process to see if it causally correlates together and changes depending on if you take any of these elements away. Guess what? They do correlate. You can change your sense experience by, eg, taking away the photons, tying your shoes, or turning off your visual cortex (ie, by sleeping).Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
That's precisely what that link explains. Yudkowsky dubs it "causal entanglement." He uses photons/shoelaces/eyes/visual cortex as one such string of causal entanglement. Now, if you have a problem with that metaphysical system, please explain what your problem is and then explain why another system is superior/equal to it. Until you respond to that, there's no reason for me to address your other points. All of your talk about "dismissing metaphysical systems outright" ignores the question/point I've been making all along regarding why the system Yudkowsky is describing has proven to be superior to all others.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Nonsense. The whole point of Yudkowsky's article is that the kind of evidence/metaphysical system he's describing forces one to change their mind if the evidence is pointing in another direction. There is nothing that's self-reinforcing about any given belief under the system Yudkowsky is describing. It's precisely this mutability that has allowed scientists' beliefs to change over time as new things are discovered. Without that system, nobody would've dumped Newtonian physics for Einstein's relativity. Einstein presented evidence in the form what Yudkowsky calls "causal entanglement" (in, eg, the eclipse experiment) that disproved Newton and proved relativity. This causal entanglement forced EVERY physicist to "change their minds." There's nothing "blind" about this. It would be blind if, after the experiment, physicists continued to insist Newton was right and Einstein was wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Criticizing an "unconditional belief system" IS NOT designed to give Yudkowsky (or anyone) a sense of superiority and enforce their own belief systems, it's pointing out a critical flaw in the belief system itself. If what you believe is not tied to any kind of causal entanglement, then it doesn't matter what evidence you encounter, you won't change your mind. This means you have walled your beliefs off from any kind of testing, from the possibility of being changed, from the possibility of being disproved. Do you seriously not see a problem with this? This system would allow anyone to cook up any beliefs, regardless of how stupid, harmful, or untrue, and allow the belief to perpetuate itself without the possibility of ever changing their mind. The system Yudkowsky is describing, and the one scientists adhere to, is antithetical to this, because it forces one's beliefs to change as the evidence changes. It's why science progresses and religion does not, because science follows a metaphysical system that allows/forces scientists to change their mind as the evidence changes; and by "evidence" I'm referring to "causal entanglement". If you make "causal entanglement" the basis for your metaphysics, you will never be "blind," since your sense experience can and will change as you alter the links in causal entanglement chains.
Would you care to justify such rubbish? You must have a remarkably manic and hysterical hatred towards Hitchens to be branding him a racist and antisemitic follower of Pol Pot. No wonder you like the rambling nonsense-spewer Curtis White.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Curtis White is a crackpot who manages to win a few ignorant people over by constructing disgracefully dishonest (or stupid) straw-man arguments and then knocking them down with vacuous rhetoric.
First review i came across:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/bo...anted=all&_r=0
He seems to think scientists claim to be capable of solving all problems, yet it is almost universally acknowledged amongst scientists that we know **** all about the functioning of the brain. The guy knows nothing about science, and yet is filled with the self-righteousness you seem to think is the cause of all evildoing among good people (by the way excessive self-righteousness is evidently a bad quality, and so makes a bad person: so your switching of religion with that term doesn't make the slightest bit of sense).
It is most often fear that drives good people to do wicked things, and religious leaders throughout history have been pretty good at drumming that one up and directing it at people they don't like. Do you think good people favoured burning 'witches' because they were self-righteous, or because they were afraid?
I suspect that many of those are memories discovered after the event. The numerous accounts I've heard feature a bright light, which is often interpreted as being the big J's halo; can't say Ive heard one claiming to have seen Jesus as a being.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Meanwhile, this speaks nicely to the biblical "evidence" question.
Two Jews, three opinions.
Good. I think we agree that there is a difference between reporting that a phenomenon occurred and explaining it. For me the reporting is the evidence. The explaining it is fitting it into a metaphysics.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Based on other discussions we have had, Yudkowsky also supports the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. There is no causal "entanglement" with anything to justify that these other worlds exist since they cannot be experienced. So he maintains a "blind" belief in them.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I think the sense of superiority Yudkowsky feels over those who supposedly maintain an unconditional belief system is a psychological trick he is playing on himself to keep him from questioning his own positions. Actually, anyone who has to be told they must believe in whatever "unconditionally" is a sign that their belief is shaky and needs to be reinforced.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Oh, I do see something wrong with that. Yudkowsky's metaphysics of many worlds is one that cannot be disproved. He has walled his beliefs off from any kind of testing. And yet he promotes his untestable metaphysics. He would be a perfect example of a scientist who has told himself he operates with an open mind but who is working blindly.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Actually, I tried reading one of Curtis White's books, "The Middle Mind", and didn't like it. I do think, in general, his writing could be characterized as "rambling nonsense". So we agree on that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phocion
However, just because someone writes rambling nonsense doesn't mean they are wrong all the time. His criticism of Hitchens I thought was reasonable.
Yes, I do think self-righteousness and not religion is why good people do evil things. Fear might be involved as well. Religion can generate self-righteousness. The point that I want to emphasize is this: Atheism is just as good at generating self-righteousness as religion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phocion
If Hitchens wants to fault religion for inquisitions and witch-hunting he needs to look at the behavior of atheists as well. The Khmer Rouge provides a good example.
No, not at all. Experience of a phenomenon is proof (not "evidence," really) that some phenomenon is occurring. That we see the sun moving across the sky is proof that, for some reason, the sun doesn't seem to stay still in the sky. One doesn't need evidence that such things occur, they need evidence to explain why they occur. Actually, the belief we place in our senses in the first place is really the "metaphysical" part, not the "evidence" part. When I look to my right and see a wall there, it's really my metaphysical system that believes there's a wall there (ie, that I believe my senses are relaying accurate information about reality). Now, if I wanted to explain WHY the wall was there, and I proposed aliens built it, this explanation would be the part that would require some evidence, hopefully of the "causal entanglement" variety.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
This is wrong on several accounts:Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
1. Yudkowsky does not have a "blind belief" in many-worlds; he feels it is far away the most likely explanation (and has written tens-of-thousands of words explaining why in detail), and feeling one theory is more likely before any definitive proof is found--a causal entanglement test--is not a "blind belief." Every quantum physicist (and amateur enthusiasts like myself and Yudkowsky) would instantly change our preferred interpretation if tomorrow a test came along that provided a "causal entanglement" that favored any given interpretation over our own. You're unfairly trying to blur the distinction between favoring theories in areas of science that are yet to be definitively proved one way or the other and have "blind beliefs" and metaphysics that automatically rule out certain evidence from the get-go. It's not even remotely the same thing.
2. As for why he favors MW, the simplest explanation is that MW is, well, the simplest explanation. It proposes no hidden variables, no "split" between the quantum and macro worlds, it reconciles QM with locality, determinism, and General Relativity, and the only assumption it makes (every QM interpretation makes some assumptions) is that the wavefunction is real and always follows its probability distribution. Every other interpretation/assumption both adds complexity (a no-no according to Occam's Razor) and creates heretofore unresolved problems. The other, perhaps inexperienceable worlds themselves follow from the simplest assumption, not the other way around. Furthermore, one doesn't have to experience the other worlds to prove many worlds, one only as to prove the assumptions that MW is based on are true, and David Deutsch thinks this will be possible with the advent of quantum computing.
It seems like you're saying two contradictory things in these two sentences... What "position" does Yudkowsky maintain that needs questioning? As for the second system, this is precisely how religions operate in that they tell their adherents they must believe unconditionally.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
This is just blatantly false nonsense. I'd go so far to call it a libelous lie. The notion that Yudkowsky would ignore any testing that disproved many-worlds is just a bald assertion on your part based on nothing but your bias against Yudkowsky from the get-go. I'm starting to remember why I gave up talking to you in the MW thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I mean, do you say the same thing about every physicist who favors MW, despite the fact that it's actually the most popular current interpretation of QM? Do you think every physicist is similarly "walled off" from any causal entanglement tests that would disprove MW? That seems like a completely baseless and untenable claim.
In the case of near or shared death experiences you would need this basic evidence that something occurred. I agree with you that evidence is evidence for something, however it could be evidence for many different theories which then have to be decided by other evidence. For example, as evidence for my metaphysics, I would take SDEs and NDEs at face value. In your case, you would need to sanitize, that is, "explain", them first.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
The simplest explanation would be to look at the universe not from the metaphysics of a deterministic machine, but as an organism that hatched from its "cosmic egg" 13.7 billion years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I know you don't accept that explanation, but comparing the cosmic egg to many worlds, the cosmic egg model makes more sense. It allows for freedom and purpose which we can see around us (unless our metaphysics has blinded us from observing freedom and purpose). Even those wave-particle objects at the quantum level might be better described as processes or "organisms". They are certainly not the solid objects that materialists expected to find.
Just offering a different way of looking at things.
I know I broke that mid-sentence, but I want to answer just that part with "yes". We all are, myself included, and not just physicists. We all pick and choose and modify what evidence we become conscious of to fit our current metaphysics. What we are most blind to, we are not even conscious of.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Of course our metaphysical eggs can crack.
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To bring this back to Hitchens, his critics have to deal with him on an intellectual level, but how does one deal with someone who is primarily polemical? It has been a couple years since I read the text, but I don't think Hitchens was interested in an intellectual debate or pursing an advancement of knowledge. His metaphysics was set and it didn't look like it was ready to crack during his lifetime.
A couple of (relatively minor) points:
1) Dawkins talks about “purpose” constantly in “The Selfish Gene” (if memory serves, it’s been a couple of decades since I read it). I assume Dawkins was sophisticated enough to be speaking metaphorically – genes don’t “want” or “try” to do anything. Nonetheless, I think his choice of language was a mistake (from a literary perspective) on his part.
2) I like Haught’s “layered explanations” of causation. The ‘scientific explanation” (“one answer is to say it’s boiling because H2O molecules are moving around excitedly, making a transition from the liquid state to the gaseous state.”) is incomplete and trivial. The water isn’t boiling “because” molecules are moving around: we call molecules moving around, “boiling”. It’s merely a coincidence of a state of molecular motion and the word we have chosen to describe it. “Because” (in normal English) generally means something else – for example, the “cause” of something can be the intentional act of a conscious agent (the wife putting the kettle on the stove). Of course it is correct that by definition H2O molecules moving around constitutes “boiling” – but I think the word “constitutes better describes that relationship than the word “cause”. (I’ll grant that there are gray areas here, and “cause” is used in a number of ways.) We say germs “cause” disease because germs are a handle we can manipulate (we can treat diseases with antibiotics or prevent them by refrigerating food and pasteurizing milk), just as turning on the stove is a handle we can manipulate. Obviously, however, germs don’t ALWAYS cause disease – some people are infested with germs and get sick, others are infested and don’t get sick. On the other hand, water molecules moving in a certain way always constitute “boiling”, but that is not a handle we can manipulate.
3) Morpheus says,The problem with this is that the “historical efficacy of science for understanding reality” is shaky. A great many scientific notions, once believed to be correct (Newton’s physics or Aristotle’s biology, for example) have been discredited; some are now considered naive and silly. Our most reasonable inference is that much (or at least some) of what we believe has been scientifically “proven” will also be shown to be incorrect, some day. In addition, I can’t quite agree that religion’s notions about reality are ‘completely impoverished’. “All rivers floweth unto the sea, and yet the sea is not full. For unto that place whence the rivers came, thither they return again.” Didn’t Ecclesiastes get it right, sort of?Quote:
“His (Haught’s) talking about scientific dogma also ignores the historical efficacy of science for understanding reality VS the completely impoverished history of religion (not to mention science’s history of debunking religious claims about reality). So the reason certain atheists share this “materialistic/scientific dogma” is because science’s record for achieving what it set out to accomplish is, thus far, impeccable. We’re betting on a winner, and ditching the loser. This is not “faith,” this is called inferential reasoning. It requires no more “faith” to assume this scientific, materialistic stance than it takes to have “faith” the sun will rise tomorrow. Absolute consistency of experience is awfully darn good evidence. There’s no “proof” that materialism is all there is, or that science can know everything, but it’s the best bet at this point given history since the scientific revolution.”
What constitutes “understanding reality”? Since this is a literary board, couldn’t one argue that poetry (for example) offers modes of “understanding” that differ from scientific modes? Which helps us “understand” more effectively how people think, or are motivated, or behave: Psychology (i.e. “science”) or literature? I don’t know the answer – I’m simply suggesting that we can’t automatically infer from history that the scientific approach is the best possible approach to understanding things.
I really don't know what you mean by your first two sentences. Unless we're going to say everyone who has reported NDEs are liars, then their experiences are "proof" that something happened when they were near death, it's not "evidence" that something happened. I equally don't know what you mean by taking NDEs at "face value." If you think taking them at "face value" means "An NDE is somewhat actually seeing into heaven/the afterlife" then that is NOT taking them at "face value," that's attempting to "explain them" the same way you would accuse me of trying to "explain" them. One problem humans have of explaining anything is that they often don't even recognize their "face value" assumptions as explanations. As a good example, for a long time we assumed the sun was, itself, moving across the sky and we were standing still. We assumed this because of how we detect movement of objects/beings on Earth when we stand still. It took a long while to dawn on someone that the Earth could be moving around the sun and we wouldn't feel it. So what makes you think your "face value" NDEs are any different than the "face value" assumption that the sun was actually moving in the sky?Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
You're making the classic mistake of thinking linguistic simplicity ("the universe hatched from a cosmic egg") equals ontological simplicity. This gets humans into trouble a lot. We tend to think of things like probabilistic wavefunctions as incredibly complex merely because we don't intuitively experience life on that level, when the truth is that how particles function is infinitely simpler than how we and the rest of the macro-world functions. Just because something like a cosmic egg sounds simple linguistically, that doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY simple. One way to distinguish between them is to try and actually write them out as an abstract mathematical formula (and how you'd begin to do that with a "cosmic egg," I have no idea.)Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
It makes more sense that the sun moves across the sky given our experience on Earth of us standing still and objects moving. The last several hundred years of scientific inquiry is a tome of discovering that what makes "more sense" on an intuitive level has little to no bearing on how reality actually works. Newtonian physics makes more sense to us than General Relativity; it doesn't meant the former is right. Similarly, how would you distinguish actual, ontological "freedom and purpose" from an illusion of "freedom and purpose" produced by the finite, fallible, biological processes of our brains?Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Sure. So did Adolf Hitler and Charlie Manson and Johann Becker; it doesn't mean any of them were right.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
This just strikes me as hopeless, theistic perspective. The kind of metaphysics Yudkowsky describes necessarily forces us to change our beliefs as the evidence changes. I keep going back to the point that if science was really as you suggest/describe it here, then scientific beliefs would never change. Things like Evolution, the age of the universe, General Relativity, combustion, heliocentrism, etc. never would've been accepted if scientists just "pick and chose and modified what evidence they became conscious of to fit their current metaphysics." That sentence just doesn't even make sense in the light of science history.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Why? It’s hopelessly wrong-headed. Your elaboration isn’t much better. This whole situation requires reductionism and shows the bankruptcy both of “arguing by definition” and the whole “layered explanation” idea of causation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
1. Yes, water molecules moving around is, technically, the same thing as boiling. However, remove the words and realize that we don’t SEE water molecules moving around. If one asks “why am I seeing what I’m seeing when that liquid substance is bubbling and hot?” then “water molecules are moving around excitedly” WOULD be the correct answer; it explains why we see what we see. One would have to explain the whole process, though, to explain why it’s happening (ie, explain what happens when heat contacts liquid).
2. Arguing over the multiple definitions of “because” is entirely pointless. It all depends on what question is being asked and what intuitive answer is expected (subverting these expectations is the basic stuff sit-coms and jokes are made of).
3. The “cause” of water boiling is never JUST the conscious act itself. A conscious act does nothing if all of the other physical elements aren’t in place. One can’t boil water on intention alone, they actually need, you know, a heat source, water, and the whole interaction that happens when water heats up. That’s why I said in my post responding to the Haught article that the intentional act explanation is either incomplete (in that it doesn’t actually explain why the water is acting how it is), or it’s an answer to a different question altogether (“why are you boiling water?”).
I love when people point out the “shaky history of science” because it highlights all the more how scientific knowledge PROGRESSES. It gets better in actual, measurable ways. You mention Newton; Newton’s physics was a superb approximation of how reality operates on a macro level. It gave us one of our first and, until that time, most accurate ways in which to model and predict how reality functioned. There were only some things that it didn’t account for, like the orbit of Mercury. Along comes Einstein and proposes an elaboration on Newton’s theories that CAN account for Mercury and is even MORE accurate in modeling/predicting how reality functions. Then, contemporary with Einstein, we discover quantum physics, which is even more accurate than Einstein’s General Relativity. One can do this same exercise with evolution and Darwin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
The fact that science can get things wrong, can admit its mistakes, and moves on to new theories when better ones (along with evidence/tests) present themselves is an argument FOR science, not against it. You can’t sit there and argue against the historical efficacy of science when you’re typing on a binary computer powered by electricity and connected to an internet by copper wiring and protected inside a house that required a certain amount of engineering. Most every second of our entire modern lives is a testament to science’s historical efficacy, and lamenting about its past failures on a machine that’s one of its greatest successes is like lamenting that our earliest ancestors were asexual beings in the middle of an orgasm.
Make enough random claims about reality and a few are bound to be right; a broken watch, and all those old cliches.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
See here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Yes, but I think we’d be talking about a very different kind of understanding. I wrote in my reply to YesNo that the past few hundred years of science is a tome to discovering that how reality feels intuitively to us means nil in regards to how it actually works. We can’t hope to understand quantum physics intuitively, but that doesn’t mean quantum physics isn’t real. However, in the sense that our subjective experiences and how they make us feel, what they make us think, etc. are real themselves, then I definitely believe in the power of art (poetry, film, music, painting, etc.) to reflect that, comment on that, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
I mean, I adore William Blake, but one area of his philosophy that I disagree with is that he couldn’t separate the truths that science could discover and the truths about our subjective experiences. Blake exalted man’s psychology/subjectivity and made that the basis of his allegorical mythology, and I think he predates Jung in his intuitive insights into the human mind. However, I still think it’s important to separate those intuitive, experiential insights into ourselves from how reality actually functions. We know enough about neuroscience now to know the myriad ways in which our brain’s biased distort and contort reality. it’s lead to such phrases as the map is not the territory and the mind projection fallacy. Historically, making that distinction has been one of our biggest roadblocks to actually understanding reality since, eg, we didn’t know our brains were making the erroneous assumption that the sun itslef, rather than the earth, was moving.
To simplify and summarize: Yes, I think art is uniquely qualified to give us insights into how we experience reality subjectively, but we shouldn't confuse our experiential subjectivity with reality.
Taking an NDE at face value means that I accept it as what those experiencing it claimed it was. I don't have to explain it by saying it was some oxygen deprivation or whatever because it causes no problem on face value for my metaphysics.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
For others the very existence of these experiences is evidence their metaphysics is wrong. They must sanitize the evidence or else change their metaphysics. Since, as I've argued, people (including scientists) don't like changing their metaphysics, they come up with explanations so they can hang onto their metaphysics longer.
To handle this mathematically, I would do the same thing that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics has done. I would accept all of the evidence, and mathematics, that the standard Copenhagen interpretation has already provided for me and then I would add on to that the additional interpretation.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
What the cosmic egg metaphor emphasizes is that the universe is not a deterministic machine, but contains purpose. This is different from "intelligent design" which assumes the universe is a machine that needs to be designed. Another way of looking at the difference is to consider Aristotle's four causes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes. The deterministic machine view of the universe only uses the first two of Aristotle's causes. The cosmic egg concept allows all four to operate.
Are you saying that you exercised no freedom, whatsoever, when you made your post? Are you saying that you engaged in no goal-oriented activity (purpose) whatsoever as you wrote your words? Were these all illusions?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Someone who thinks freedom and purpose are illusions has a metaphysics of deterministic materialism. I would claim that this is an example of a metaphysics blinding a true believer from seeing evidence contrary to it.
We need to be careful about what we accept as "illusions". We can say the sun moving across the sky is an illusion only because we have "good" evidence that it is the earth that is moving. The claim that our freedom can be reduced to random chance and chemistry, that our freedom is an "illusion", needs evidence before I, for one, will accept it. Why? Because the claim that someone is having an "illusion" may itself be a wish-fulfilling illusion supported only by that person's metaphysics, not by evidence.
Furthermore, the general reliance on chance to explain change leads to a probabilistic explosion. If it were up to chance and chemistry, I don't see how anyone would post anything.
I am a panentheist, but what we are discussing has little to do with theism directly.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I am also an atheist when it comes to some popular conceptions of a deity. I would go so far as to claim, based on quantum physics, that I can prove that any God who claims to operate on the universe as if it were a deterministic machine does not exist. Why? Because the universe is not a deterministic machine. QED
This kicks out the "God of the gaps", or the God implied by "intelligent design", or the Deism of some scientists. More traditional Gods, like the kind that Hitchens dislikes, however, are not affected by this argument.
Regarding how a metaphysics changes for an individual, I've already mentioned the crisis model used by Eldredge-Gould called "punctuated equilibrium". Basically, things stay in equilibrium until that is punctuated by crises and then change occurs.
We’re not far apart on the “cause” of water boiling. I agree that “why” someone puts the kettle on the stove is a bit distant from a proximate cause. However, the “conditions” necessary for water to boil are infinite. So saying, “It’s boiling ‘because’ the water is heated to 100 degrees centigrade” is also incomplete. It’s reasonable for us to use such shorthand, but (obviously) if there is no oxygen in the atmosphere, water wouldn’t boil (I think – my chemistry and physics may be off). So we are ASSUMING normal, earthbound, sea level conditions if we say, “heating the water to 100 degrees ‘causes’ it to boil.”
As far as the shaky history of science, of course science progresses, in general (it sometimes regresses, too). However, my basic point was that we are still probably wrong about many things we consider to be “scientific facts”. I’ll grant it’s the best we can do – but it’s no guarantee. We must muddle through the best we can.
As to my point about “understanding reality”, it’s not just literature that can help us understand things, it’s also non-scientific academic fields, like history. History is one of the “humanities”, not one of the sciences. Eye witnesses testify in court. Historical accounts, like eye witness testimony, are not “scientific” – but surely they help us “understand reality”.
Finally, morpheus says, “To simplify and summarize: Yes, I think art is uniquely qualified to give us insights into how we experience reality subjectively, but we shouldn't confuse our experiential subjectivity with reality.” Why not? Is “experiential subjectivity” unreal? Also, isn’t one postmodern concept that we cannot HELP but confuse our experiential subjectivity with objective reality (or that there is no objective reality)?
One more point, about the “broken watch being right twice a day” (and I make this not to make any claims about the historical accuracy of biblical account, but because I think it’s a cool story, which demonstrates how literary insights can help us “understand” – I got most of this information from a book by neurosurgeon Oliver Sacks):
“Seeing is believing,” according to the aphorism. But William Moyneux, whose wife was blind, asked philosopher John Locke: “Suppose a man was born blind and taught by touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere. If his vision was restored, could he distinguish which was which before touching them?”Quote:
“And Jesus took the blind man by the hand…and when He put His hands upon him, He asked him if he saw anything. And he looked up and said, “I see men looking like trees walking.” Mark, 8:24
In several rare medical cases, the blind actually have had their vision restored. As reported by Oliver Sachs in An Anthropologist on Mars, the adjustment has not always been easy. H.S., a patient who received a corneal transplant after 22 years of blindness reported:
All of the newly sighted have difficulty adjusting. S.B., another individual who had recovered his sight was always struck by how objects changed in appearance from different perspectives. For those not accustomed to seeing, this flux of appearances is not anchored to the world of objects – to space.Quote:
During the first weeks I had no appreciation of depth or distance; street lights were luminous stains stuck to the window panes, and the corridors of the hospitals were black holes…. Nor was it possible for me to count my own five fingers… it was not possible to pass from one to the other while counting.
The infant learns to coordinate the impulses sent to the brain by his optic nerve with images sent by his sense of touch by batting a mobile around in his crib. As adults, we have no memory of this process of learning how to see. But Mark’s version of Jesus restoring the blind man’s sight is in remarkable agreement with the medical records. When Jesus first restores the man’s sight, the man can see, but cannot distinguish between men and trees. So Jesus, “put His hands on his eyes again… and he saw every man clearly.” The miracle was actually two-fold – restoring physical sight and providing enlightenment as to how to interpret it.
On the off chance that the irony has escaped anyone, I (and others) have been criticizing Hitchens for being a dilletante who loves to argue, but doesn't pursue the subject with any depth. Once more, we find a small speck of wisdom in the Bible, from Luke: "Physician, heal thyself."