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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <543@spar.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 14:58:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.543
Posted: Wed Sep 25 14:58:35 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 08:02:18 EDT
References: <718@utastro.UUCP> <27500123@ISM780B.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 120

[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.

[ellis]
Jim, I'm surprised at you! Earlier you (correctly) say:

      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.  

Then you contradict yourself with:

      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.

Haldane's dictum sounds like a clear warning on the use Occam, which
can be misapplied by assuming a statement like..

    George Washington sneezed on August 13, 1773

..is false. Must we conclude that George Washington did NOT, in fact sneeze
on August 13, 1773?

Occam's razor does not mean that we shall assume the truth or falsity of
anything, because if we assume either way, we have created a new `fact'.
Rather, it asserts:

    Entities shall not be multiplied without necessity.

..which means we shall leave unascertainables alone, indeterminate, in a maybe
state, which is as nonentity as an unknown fact can be. 

Charles continues (logically, I might add):

[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*.

[ellis]
Charles' treatment is quite unfair. He has not offered any dogmatic
assertions (although he has argued the heretical and logical point that
souls are not required). He is not insisting that reincarnation EXISTS. He
has admitted that whatever evidence there might be is not objective
evidence.  He has argued against huge competition that reincarnation is not
inconsistent. Finally, he has made the point that it is consistent with
the notion of mind as information.

Now there is the issue of whether the commonly held belief in reincarnation
should be held in net.philosophy. If this were a point of interest to only
one particular faith, perhaps it should not be discussed here. But in fact,
positions on this issue are quite diverse both among members of the vanilla
faiths and among those who do not (BTW - I hold no view on this topic).

This point originally arose as philosophical speculation concerning the
identity of a person -- as brain, soul, mind, or information? -- and
included such hypothetical phenomena as information transfer, star-trek
transporters, and reincarnation -- all are unknowable questions. The
most we can really determine about them is whether or not they are logically
consistent and physically possible given the facts of our universe.

[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.

[ellis]
Whatever is misleading or unreasonable about the mind as nonphysical
information? For a wishful religionist, Charles has taken a surprisingly
nonreligious position here! 

Anyway, the harder people insist that a human is mechanical, the more
convincing Charles' case becomes, since the essence of a machine (at least
from the engineering standpoint) lies in the interrelationships of its
(replaceable) parts, rather than some `magical' quality possessed by any
particular piece of matter composing the machine. 

Are the atheists and anti-religionists here now insisting that the matter
composing one's body possesses some `special spiritual aura' that is somehow
passed along (just like one's legal identity) during your life?

-michael


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