Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ISM780B.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ucbvax!decvax!cca!ISM780B!jim
From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <27500134@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Sep-85 16:45:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27500134
Posted: Sat Sep 28 16:45:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 05:59:15 EDT
References: <718@utastro.UUCP>
Lines: 211
Nf-ID: #R:utastro:-71800:ISM780B:27500134:000:11375
Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Sep 28 16:45:00 1985


[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?

[balter]
You are equating "assume" with "conclude".  We can *assume* that that for
which we have no evidence is not true, because such assumptions simplify
the modelling process (if there are little blue men in the center of the
Earth pulling levers that move the continents around, then plate tectonics
is not a correct model, but I don't think it is twisting the normal
use of language to say that we *assume* that such blue men do not exist).
But we cannot *deny* such things, which is tantamount to *concluding* that
they are false (I have no proof that the little blue men do not exist;
they just don't seem necessary to explain anything).
I agree that Haldane's dictum can be used as a warning, but I think Wingate
is using it to justify the manufacture of models out of thin air.

[ellis]
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]
Just like little blue men.  No objective objections.  Counter-evidence
is not required, only lack of necessity.  When someone proposes a theory,
the burden is on the proposer to provide evidence for the theory; the
theory must answer some question left unanswered by current theory.
That is a fundamental rule of scientific method.  Merely demonstrating
that the theory is not provably wrong is not sufficient for it to be
considered.  That is the error that almost all crackpots make.

>[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
as 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.

[balter]
Not unfair at all.  You have just stated that Charles is cool because he
only doing those things which I just stated are the things done by yokels.
I didn't say that Charles offered dogma, or insisted existence, or provided
something inconsistent, so why are you responding to that strawman?
What I did was criticize those who offer models *merely because they
cannot be proved wrong*.

[ellis]
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).

[balter]
It isn't an issue of whether it is only "one particular faith";
it is a matter of faith, not a philosophical issue, unless you can demonstrate
the *possible necessity* of reincarnation.  Show some question in the real
world such that world_model_X does not answer it but
world_model_X + reincarnation does, and then it will be possible to discuss
reincarnation beyond the level of "some people believe in it and you can't
prove them wrong".  Otherwise, it belongs in net.religion or net.sf_lovers.

[ellis]
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.

[balter]
Actually, I think the identity discussion arose after the discussion of
reincarnation, but in any case, I consider the discussion naive because
you cannot deal properly with the effects of transporters etc. on your
notions of identity *until* you have formulated a notion of identity.
And notions of identity of objects are being confused with
personal identity, sometimes viewed from without and sometimes from within.
The discussion would be more coherent if restricted to transportation of
rocks first; if you can decide questions of duplicate copies of rocks,
transmitting rocks with or without destroying the original, etc.,then you can
expand to more complicated questions.  Most important is to read the writings
of people such as Bertrand Russell who have analyzed these issues deeply.
As I see it, identity is a linguistic concept which we use to organize and
coordinate our sense perceptions into a coherent model.  The idea that there
is some sort of "thread of identity" that exists as a thing in the real world
seems rather confused to me.  To ask whether I am the same person as I was
five minutes ago, or whether a teleported copy of a rock is the same rock, is
to ask for a refined definition of the word "same".  It is *our choice* as to
whether they are the same; whether we want "same" to mean that or not.  So
many of these discussions seem to stem from this fundamental error of
assuming our words are universals.  If an electron disappears and one
with the same qualities shows up elsewhere simultaneously, are they the same?
Well, aside from the non-existence of simultaneity and the fact that they
differ enough in the quality of location that we were forced to ask the
question in the first place, how do you tell?  What does it mean for them to
be the same?  An electron is the same as itself, but beyond that it is all
linguistics.  Saying "it disappeared from A and it showed up at B" and "one
disappeared from A and one just like it showed up at B" are equivalent
discriptions.  They both adequately describe the observed phenomenon.  But,
since sameness is not an observable or measureable quality, in fact is not a
quality at all, neither description is more "true" than the other.

>[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!

[balter]
To repeat:
unreasonable: requires extra mechanism.
misleading: separates the mind from memory, mood, history, thought, as a
trace of the change of physiological states in the brain.
To reduce the mind to mere information is misleading.
I think the best analogy is mind to process (computer science sense),
brain to computer running a specific (powerful problem-solving) program,
and input to input.  Of course a process is non-physical, just as a mind is,
but it isn't *separate* from the physical.  You cannot extract out the
process; you can only repeat it.

[ellis]
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. 

[balter]
I think you are quite confused about what my position is, and the best way
I can think to illustrate it is to ask you if you think that the harder
people insist that a machine is mechanical, the more convincing Charles'
case becomes?  I never said that mind *is* matter; rather it is process;
it is purely descriptive.  As I see it, Charles' (and your) case
is that mind is matter, in that it is some kind of entity that exists on
its own.  I view mind as simply a *way of describing the actions of the
brain* (in conjunction with a specific input stream, including signals
and other impingements from the rest of the body).

[ellis]
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?

[balter]
Obviously not, and the fact that it may seem that way to you should encourage
you to consider that you have misinterpreted their position.
And in any case, I cannot see what this has to do with religion;
there are plenty of religious people who have a mechanical view of
human consciousness.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com