Can Atheism Account For Rationality

[Tassman]

Very funny.

Well I thought so.

So, your counter to my "bald assertions" (which they are clearly not, as anyone can see that I've listed some of my reasons for believing that the mind is separate from the brain in this thread) is to throw out bald assertions of your own (and in your case they actually are bald assertions) and when asked to back them up you refuse to do it, and instead simply list some information that is no bigger a challenge for the belief that the mind is distinct from the brain than it is for the belief that the mind is simply "the brain in action"?

Certainly brains exist and they can be examined and increasingly understood by the cognitive sciences. There is no such certainty of an immaterial mind existing as a separate entity from the material brain.

I agree that we are not justified in thinking we have a COMPLETE understanding about how our minds function. When it comes to the things I've listed however, like intangibility and intentionality/"aboutness", there is no reason to doubt that these are legitimate attributes of our mind and thoughts, but not attributes of the brain or it's associated neurological activity, and the chance that any new discovery will give us cause to change opinion about this matter is slim to none.

I think you'll find I have done none of the sort in this thread. At the very least I haven't tried arguing for it.

Nevertheless, you DO argue that the mind/soul is separate from the brain so presumably, in your view, it can exist separately.

[little_monkey]

I don't hate any one, and of course atheism is a cult of death. The death of hope.

Wrong, most atheists worship LIFE.

And it seems that Carp, another atheist, agrees with me on the irrational thing.

Who is Carp? Just another individual among 7 billion people who live on this planet. Why his words are sacred to you is evidence that you are clueless and grasping at any straws for your pathetic understanding of a subject like logic. Your IP reeks not only of ignorance but also of arrogance.

If the laws of logic are not absolute then no claim or fact can be justified since it's opposite can be equally true. That is irrational. The sun can not both exist and not exist at the same moment. This is the law of non-contradiction and it is absolute.

Wrong again. There are many examples for which the law of non-contradiction fails.

EXAMPLE 1: a) An electron is a particle? True or false? b) An electron is a wave? True or false?
True or false doesn't apply.

EXAMPLE 2: a) A virus is an inert object? True or false? b) A virus is a living thing? True or false?
True or false doesn't apply.

EXAMPLE 3: A trans is a female? True or false? b) A trans is a male? True or false?
True or false doesn't apply.

EXAMPLE 4: This sentence is false? True or false?
True or false doesn't apply.

Logic fails for any system that is non-binary or to statement that are self-referential. Therefore it is NOT absolute.

I'm not going to debate any longer with someone like you who is so ignorant and is by all evidence close-minded.

[Zara]

Wrong, most atheists worship LIFE.

Do they? My experience is that they tend to be transhumanists, that would love nothing more to end their life to become a robot. AI is their wet dream machine. They appear to hate life and its limitations - full of self satisfied beliefs that it's theirs to make as they see fit through genetic engineering. I see atheists and their ideology as considerably more dangerous than most forms of being that have existed. A recent discussion with one concluded that Brave New World is the ideal world.

You think that most of the technology that is being developed are necessary for a people that worship life? I don't, I think it reflects a group of ignorant people that fear death. Half of them appear to reduce their life to what evolution says what it is to be human, seriously, they are that dumb. Have they missed the world's rich literature and depth of feeling that are part of what we already are?

That is the transformative variety, there are also the nihilists, the hedonists and the fatalists.

I see nothing good about atheism - especially the common variety that supports a world of deadbeats.

This is what worshiping life looks like: "In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling." The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

[seer]

Wrong, most atheists worship LIFE.

Do you personally know most atheists?

Wrong again. There are many examples for which the law of non-contradiction fails.

Is this statement both true and false?

[JimL]

The difference is that unlike pansychism, qualia is readily apparent to every single human in existence, except if you lack literally every single one of the normal human senses. It is possible to deny pansychism without being deluded, but if you deny completely (obviously it's possible to lack the experience of some of these senses) having the experience of seeing colors and shapes, hearing sounds, feeling things as they touch your body, and tasting and smelling things, then everyone is pretty much justified in believing you to be either a nutcase or a liar.




There's just one big glaring problem with this theory of yours that the mind/consciousness is an illusion, namely the fact that illusions do not exist anywhere but in the conscious mind. In order for consciousness to be an illusion there already has to exist a mind in which this illusion can arise. Illusions are essentially qualia that do not accurately correspond to things in the physical world, and for qualia to exist you need a mind.

If qualia, if consciousness, were an illusion, then they would be an illusion which we call mind. The illusion of mind, the illusion of qualia, would itself take place in the physical brain.

[carpedm9587]

Well, I might have missed some of the evidence, but none of the evidence I know of personally supports anything more than some sort of relation of dependence between the mind and the brain. There's no reason what so ever to try and get the evidence to support the notion that the brain is the cause of the mind, unless one is already pre-disposed to believe in it because of some prior assumption(s). By itself the evidence does not point that way.

Again, what do you do with all of the evidence provided by fMRI, brain stimulation, and the reported effects on peoples physicality (moving part of their body, which can be objectively observed) as well as repeatable changes in the state of their thoughts and emotions. It has been shown that correct electrical stimulation can repeatedly and predictably trigger the "out of body" experience often reported as a near-death experience. It has been shown that electrical stimulation can alter emotional states, reduce violent impulses, etc. What do you do with all of those reports and studies? Simply repeating "the evidence doesn't point that way" doesn't get you there. If physical manipulation of the brain can produce self-reported changes in mental state, how is that not evidence of brain producing mind?

I do nothing with it, because nothing you stated here is a challenge to what I stated. The link between thoughts and the mind is intimate and immediate. Thoughts literally exist in the mind. It is nigh impossible to have a stronger connection between two phenomena than the connection that exists between your thoughts and your mind. If the association was any stronger they might just as well be considered the same thing. The connection between brain activity and thoughts is strong, but compared to the connection between the mind and thoughts it's properly called a secondary connection.

I don't see how you can show this. My perception is thought IS mind. I can think of nothing about my mind that is not about my thoughts. My mind is the sum total of my thoughts.

I can do two, and probably more if I'd bother to think about it some more, namely your will and your focus/concentration.

I cannot have "will" without a thought. I cannot have focus/concentration without thought. You have not named two things that are independent of thought.

Well, this is all well and good, and for the most part (except for some obvious parts) I don't really disagree with much here. The only problem is that it doesn't answer the problem I mentioned, namely the one about "aboutness". Unlike my thoughts, neither the activity in the computer, nor the brain is obviously about anything at all. The activity in the computer gives rise to visual phenomena on the screen that we have decided mean certain things, while the activity in the brain is associated with certain thoughts. But in both cases it's our thoughts, both when we interpret what's happening on the screen and when the thoughts that are associated with certain brain activity arise, that are about the things that we think about, not the brain activity, or the activity/states of the computer.

I have to admit, Chrawnus, none of this rises to your usual level of argumentation and logic. You seem intent on splitting hairs where there sometimes doesn't even seem to be a hair (e.g., separation of mind/thought) and ignoring evidence where it is plentiful. Is it at all possible that you so need "mind" to be pre-eminent that you are filtering your evidence to support your preferred view?

Sweet ignorance?

Actually, I was thinking "I'm traveling from illusion to reality."

[JimL]

With this I have to disagree. Conscious phenomena CAN be empirically tested. The entire field of fMRI is part of that. Then there are all the adjoining disciplines. Qualia does not mean "not empirically testable." It simply means one person can never experience as another person does. Experience is always subjective to the individual. It does not mean that there are no ways to do empirical testing and evaluation. We have learned a great deal from fMRIs.

I don't think that is true carpe, fMRI may be able to test subjective experience in some sense, but it can't test the phenomena associated with subjective experience. The subject may be experiencing a beautiful sunset, but, there are no pictures of it to be found in his/her head.

So first, I think your "no empirical evidence" is simply not sustainable.

In the physical brain itself there is no evidence of qualia. I'm not talking about the experience, I'm talking about the actual qualia as they are thought to exist in a mind. Empirical has to do with observation, and we can only observe the feelings, the subjective experience, not the phenomena associated with them. We can't observe pictures in anothers head, thoughts, pain, taste, or anything associated with the experiences themselves. So the question is, do these qualia exist unseen in an immaterial mind, or are they an illusion of the physical brain. When we look out at the world we in some sense see it, but the view doesn't exist in our heads in the same sense as it exists outside of our heads, or on the surface of our eyes, it's simply encoded as electrical activity. So does the chemical encoding amount to an illusion of some sort of the outer reality?

But for the rest, there are some interesting philosophical positions these days - but many of them boil down to "you cannot prove you're not a brain in a vat." I agree. Some things we accept as self-evident because we have no choice but to do so - a conversation I had earlier with Seer. I assume that my perception of the universe is "workingly accurate." I cannot prove any of you actually exist outside of my imagination. Or that we aren't all part of a gynormous computer simulation. I take it prima facie that you all actually do exist, and go from there.

We needn't be a brain in a vat for reality to present itself in our brains as a sort of illusion, what we observe is all just as real, what we experience is reality, it's just that we percieve it through an encoding mechanism that represents the actual image. When we close our eyes and imagine a scene, the images we see are skewed, the code is not immediadely available to us, but open your eyes and what we see exactly matches reality.

But there is a marvelous novel in that concept...and I'm coupling it with my theology/scriptology background to create a series I hope will be interesting. Now that I am moving to semi-retirement, I hope to devote more time to it.

Cool.

[seer]

If qualia, if consciousness, were an illusion, then they would be an illusion which we call mind. The illusion of mind, the illusion of qualia, would itself take place in the physical brain.

Wouldn't that make you an illusion?

[JimL]

Wouldn't that make you an illusion?

No

[seer]

No

Really? If your subjective experiences, memories, feelings etc... which make up you, are mere illusions what does make you, your unique self? The self too you be an illusion. That is exactly what Sam Harris says BTW...https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-the-self2/

[carpedm9587]

I don't think that is true carpe, fMRI may be able to test subjective experience in some sense, but it can't test the phenomena associated with subjective experience. The subject may be experiencing a beautiful sunset, but, there are no pictures of it to be found in his/her head.

Are you under the impression that qualia is only about pictures? If science finds a spot in the brain that, when stimulated, the person reports feelings of "euphoria," and that can be replicated from person to person with the same report, then we have empirically identified and tested the part of the brain that can produce euphoria. If they isolate another region and the person reports "smelling chocolate," and they can do that from person to person, then they have identified that region. Right now, that stimulation is limited to gross feelings and activating the senses in some crude fashion. Our knowledge and tools are comparatively primitive. But they keep getting better. There is no reason to think we cannot someday reach a point where we can so carefully pinpoint regions of the brain and map them as to be able to recreate the image the person is seeing and have them validate it. We will never be able to experience it exactly as they are experiencing it (AFAIK) - that is qualia. But empirical testing is happening all the time.

In the physical brain itself there is no evidence of qualia. I'm not talking about the experience, I'm talking about the actual qualia as they are thought to exist in a mind. Empirical has to do with observation, and we can only observe the feelings, the subjective experience, not the phenomena associated with them. We can't observe pictures in anothers head, thoughts, pain, taste, or anything associated with the experiences themselves. So the question is, do these qualia exist unseen in an immaterial mind, or are they an illusion of the physical brain. When we look out at the world we in some sense see it, but the view doesn't exist in our heads in the same sense as it exists outside of our heads, or on the surface of our eyes, it's simply encoded as electrical activity. So does the chemical encoding amount to an illusion of some sort of the outer reality?

Qualia is not a "thing" to exist in the mind, Jim, AFAIK. It is a general description of a reality: that one person cannot experience what another subjectively experiences in the same way they experience it. You and I can look at the same object, and you can never experience it as I experience it.

We needn't be a brain in a vat for reality to present itself in our brains as a sort of illusion, what we observe is all just as real, what we experience is reality, it's just that we percieve it through an encoding mechanism that represents the actual image. When we close our eyes and imagine a scene, the images we see are skewed, the code is not immediadely available to us, but open your eyes and what we see exactly matches reality.

I'm afraid not. There is no way for us to perceive reality "exactly." It is simply not possible. Reality is filtered through our senses. What we see is a mere fraction of reality, and potentially slightly skewed at that.

[JimL]

Really? If your subjective experiences, memories, feelings etc... which make up you, are mere illusions what does make you, your unique self? The self too you be an illusion. That is exactly what Sam Harris says BTW...https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-the-self2/

Actually what Harris is saying is that the notion of self as something other than the body, a soul/mind, contained within the body, is what is the illusion. The inner experiences aren't an illusion in the sense that they do not exist as experiences, but the experiences are of the physical brain/body itself, not experienced by some sort of ghost in the machine. The ghost in the machine is what he is saying is the illusion. That means that the qualia too, as opposed to substance dualism, are in the brain, not the experiences of a distinct mind or soul. So the problem, at least for Harris and myself, is in explaining what exactly is meant by qualia, how do subjective experiences fit into the physical narrative. To pass the experiences off to an immaterial soul doesn't solve anything, it just transfers the problem from the material to the immaterial without adressing the actual issue such as, instead of the body/brain, why does the soul/mind have these subjective experiences.

[carpedm9587]

Actually what Harris is saying is that the notion of self as something other than the body, a soul/mind, contained within the body, is what is the illusion. The inner experiences aren't an illusion in the sense that they do not exist as experiences, but the experiences are of the physical brain/body itself, not experienced by some sort of ghost in the machine. The ghost in the machine is what he is saying is the illusion. That means that the qualia too, as opposed to substance dualism, are in the brain, not the experiences of a distinct mind or soul. So the problem, at least for Harris and myself, is in explaining what exactly is meant by qualia, how do subjective experiences fit into the physical narrative. To pass the experiences off to an immaterial soul doesn't solve anything, it just transfers the problem from the material to the immaterial without adressing the actual issue such as, instead of the body/brain, why does the soul/mind have these subjective experiences.

Sometimes...the only answer we have is, "I don't know." Learning to be comfortable with that while still exploring for possible answer is not easy. Replacing "I don't know" with gods and panpsychism doesn't help us know. It just helps some feel better.

[seer]

Actually what Harris is saying is that the notion of self as something other than the body, a soul/mind, contained within the body, is what is the illusion. The inner experiences aren't an illusion in the sense that they do not exist as experiences, but the experiences are of the physical brain/body itself, not experienced by some sort of ghost in the machine. The ghost in the machine is what he is saying is the illusion. That means that the qualia too, as opposed to substance dualism, are in the brain, not the experiences of a distinct mind or soul. So the problem, at least for Harris and myself, is in explaining what exactly is meant by qualia, how do subjective experiences fit into the physical narrative. To pass the experiences off to an immaterial soul doesn't solve anything, it just transfers the problem from the material to the immaterial without adressing the actual issue such as, instead of the body/brain, why does the soul/mind have these subjective experiences.

Yet Harris has no explanation for consciousness, and does not have a lot of hope that one would be found.

https://samharris.org/the-mystery-of-consciousness/

https://samharris.org/the-mystery-of-consciousness-ii/

So categorically denying a "ghost in the machine" is premature at best. Of course if you follow Harris' logic free will is out the window - completely...

[JimL]

Sometimes...the only answer we have is, "I don't know." Learning to be comfortable with that while still exploring for possible answer is not easy. Replacing "I don't know" with gods and panpsychism doesn't help us know. It just helps some feel better.

Well, that's true, but, though it is evident that we don't know, and obviously we don't, and whether we are comfortable with not knowing, or not, it is still a subject, as you say, worth exploring from a philosophical perspective in the hopes of an epiphany. An ah ha moment! Einstein found that Isaac Newtons hard problem of gravity, though seemingly unknowable, turned out in the end to be a simple one, space is a thing that warps. The simple idea came to him first, the proof came later. I'm not pretending to know, I'd like to know, but I'm not uncomfortable not knowing, and I'm not replacing "I don't know" with pansychism, I'm just exploring the idea because I enjoy the process and the possibility of coming up with an answer that is at least the most convincing answer to myself. The dual substance notion, the ghost in the machine idea, just doesn't cut it. On top of there being no evidence for it whatsoever, no possibility of exploring it, it would explain nothing, the question of consciousness and qualia/subjective experience, would still remain, we would just be trying to figure out how the ghostly mind works, rather than how the material brain does..