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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <27500123@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 02:45:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27500123
Posted: Thu Sep 19 02:45:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 15:55:51 EDT
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Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Sep 19 02:45:00 1985


[rosen]
Tell me, Charlie, what does blue look like?
Objectively?  I'm not looking for an answer describing the wavelength of
light, now, the question is does blue look at certain way in an objective
sense?  Or is the individual human brain responsible for a distinct
interpretation of what blue looks like?  We can show scientifically that blue
is called blue by every person without colorblindness and with knowledge
of colors.  But how do you know that sticking your brain into another
body will result in the same "feelings" of "blue"?

[balter]
Rich, your own words answer your questions elsewhere:
your knowledge of what blue looks like is subjective knowledge.
It certainly isn't objective, and it certainly isn't mere belief.
This "feeling" of blueness is not explainable mechanically.
You may mess around in the brain and note when the feeling happens,
but you won't find the feeling itself.  That is located only within your
personal experience.  Before you start devising a response, think about
whether you have a vested interest in contradicting what I have said.
Is your response obvious, or do you have to hunt for it?  Are you being
objective and scientific?  Note that I am not arguing against determinism
or a mechanistic view of the universe or for souls; I am only arguing that
subjective experience exists in a way that is not explained by the familiar
mechanical view.  I don't quite understand why subjective experience exists,
but I have a feeling that it has something to do with the fuzzy nature of
linguistics, description, and perception.  I think our attempt to describe
perception and self-awareness in language is a bit like trying to explain the
nature of light or matter using particle or wave analogies.  The reality,
which is available to us only indirectly, is more complex than the directly
available approximate analogs.

As for

[wingate]
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (Haldane).  The only
proper conclusion is that you can draw no conclusion.  If I sit in this
room (which has no windows) and assert that "the car in the first parking
space is blue," it is indeed possible for there to be a blue car in the
first parking space.  If one does not actually examine the parking space,
one is not in a position either to confirm or to deny my statement.
The ONLY correct response is "there is no evidence"; one cannot DENY the
statement, because to do so is to make the assertion that "there is no
blue car in the first parking space."  Since this statement is not
supported by evidence either, the situation is quite symmetrical.
Neither statement can be claimed to be true; therefore neither can be
claimed to be false.  All that can be said is "there is no evidence."

[balter]
Rich, I'm surprised you let Charles get away with this, and have dragged
the argument out so far.  Aside from the name dropping (was that Haldane
the geneticist, or Haldane the revivalist evangelical?), as long as this
conversation is going on in net.*philosophy*, as opposed to net.religion
where it belongs, there is a most powerful argument for the rejection
of souls, resurrection, and blue cars in parking lots.  It is called
***Occam's Razor***.  For the purposes of fruitful discussion, the situation
is most certainly not symmetrical at all.  Rather, the existence of a blue
car in the parking lot should be rejected (not denied) barring evidence that
can be more readily explained by positing such existence.  I certainly won't
*deny* the existence of Odin and Asgard, but I reject them as unnecessary to
the explanation of the world as it is.  It seems to me that almost all
*logical* religious arguments involve ignoring Occam's Razor at some point.
If you want to "argue" religion based on faith, that is, belief out of desire
to believe, you are welcome to it, but in net.religion.

>[rosen]
>Absence of evidence may not be
>evidence of absence, but if you carry that to its logical conclusion, you
>must believe in everything.  Remember, Charles, you say that the only proper
>conclusion is to draw no conclusion.  But clearly you have come to a
>conclusion.  How did that happen?
>[wingate]
>Well, the first staement is simple nonsense.
[rosen]
The easiest way to dismiss something you can't debunk is to call it nonsense.
If absence of evidence is not a reason not to hold a belief about something's
existence, then you logically must believe in the existence of every imaginable
thing.

[balter]
Well, not quite; rather, every imaginable thing that isn't known is in a
"maybe" state.  Occam's Razor is a management tool for high efficiency.
It urges you to assume that everything is false unless there is some
reason to think it true.  In my experience, it gets better results than
the muddle I would expect from following Haldane's dictum.

[wingate]
I am NOT arguing at all the ressurection takes place (or
rather, I am not arguing for objective evidence for it).  I am simply arguing
that there are no objective objections to it (i.e., that there is no
counter-evidence).

[balter]
Charles, do you have any objective evidence that we don't all turn into
mosquitoes with our souls buried in the right hind leg where they can't
express themselves, when we die?  *Who cares*?  Philosophic inquiry
is a game that requires analysis and evidence as part of the rules.
The "anything is possible" game is stupid and childish; it is like playing
dealer's choice and declaring all the cards wild.  Intelligent people who
have played the game for a while get tired and bored of yokels who come along
with "you can't prove me wrong" like it was something *deep* and *original*.

[wingate]
Sorry, Rich, reasonableness is not objective and not science.  You have no
evidence, so there is no reason to choose one over the other, especially in
the light of competing analogies with existing systems.  My competing
hypothesis is that "the mind is *represented* in the body, and is possibly
capable of expression in other media."  The only reason to choose on or the
other at this point is purely subjective convenience, since the evidence
neither confirms nor denies either.

[balter]
Reasonableness certainly is part of science, as Occam's Razor.
One could offer a "super-astro-observer theory", which says that distant
objects wink into existence when being observed, but disappear or jump
somewhere else when no one is looking; such a theory isn't *disprovable*,
but it isn't *reasonable*.  A model of the mind which says that it is
not a direct result of the workings of a particular brain requires extra
mechanism, for which there is no evidence (at least it can be argued that
there is not; I haven't seen any arguments that the mind is not mechanical
that are not easily refutable).  To suggest that the mind can be expressed in
other media says nothing about the nature of the mind; given a mechanical
view, it simply suggests that the brain is simulatable.  To say that the mind
has an existence separate from the brain is misleading.  The mind is
different from the personality; it is the sum total of memory, mood, history,
thought, as an evolving process.  My mind now is quite different from what it
was a minute ago.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)


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