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Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Root of All Evil? Uncut Interviews
From "Root of All Evil? The Uncut Interviews" 3-DVD Set
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This interview was filmed for the TV documentary "Root of All Evil?" but was left out of the final version. Time restrictions dictated that not all interviews filmed could be used. This was especially regrettable in the case of the McGrath interview, which is therefore offered here now, unedited.
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Buy it now
This interview was filmed for the TV documentary "Root of All Evil?" but was left out of the final version. Time restrictions dictated that not all interviews filmed could be used. This was especially regrettable in the case of the McGrath interview, which is therefore offered here now, unedited.
Click here to play video
Old Google video version
Click here for the QuickTime version
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Posted: Thursday, May 31, 2007 | PermalinkComments 551 - 600 of 2523 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers552. Comment #49432 by Philip1978 on June 12, 2007 at 12:45 am
Dianelos Georgoudis Very interesting post, I enjoyed reading that
One thing I would like to ask is which god are you talking about? In all seriousness is it Allah, The Protestant God, The Catholic God, David Robertson's God, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Odin? All of these gods could be justifiable in explaining the way your brain produces conciousness.
I simply can't see why a god would have to fit into all this. Neurology and science may indeed come up with the answer one day but then anthropomorphising that explanation into a god makes no sense to me.
I don't know if you have heard of him but there is a chap called Derran Brown, look him up on utube, he can plant ideas into people's heads and make them believe and think things they would never have contemplated before. Now is Mr Brown a god? No, he is a human being, a very clever psychologist who is able to read people and mess with their minds a little simply by the power of suggestion. I would not call what he does to the brains of his audience anything to do with your god or the other plethora of others people have created, the explanation is far more simple than that.
One thing I would suggest is go to the Andrew Sullivan/Sam Harris debate on this site you can find it on the home page in the grey area for a good explanation by Sam on how the mind can perceive things and how the brain translates information that it receives.
Right, my mind has just told me I would very much like a cup of tea and I don't think I will argue with it! Catch you later,
Philip
Other Comments by Philip1978
553. Comment #49433 by epeeist on June 12, 2007 at 12:53 am
Comment #49343 by Dianelos Georgoudis
That's not so bad for a really short version :-) But let me improve on it, for example I do not claim any as yet unsolved problems by science itself. So here my really short version:
There are some serious problems that a naturalistic understanding of reality cannot solve, and they leave a perfectly God-shaped gap.
Gap being the operative word of course.
Its back to existential import again. Your assumption is that the class of gods is not an empty set.
Or alternatively, if the set is not empty then which particular member of the set actually fits the gap.
Other Comments by epeeist
554. Comment #49435 by Quetzalcoatl on June 12, 2007 at 1:02 am
Philip1978- did you see the Derren Brown thing where he went around America and convinced people that he was psychic, had been abducted by aliens etc. Very interesting, because it says a lot about what people want to believe.Dianelos- the trouble with "extending" the scientific method to include non-objective evidence is that it gives all sorts of others a way in. Obviously I don't mean you! But people like astrologers and clairvoyants could claim that their "beliefs" come under the scientific method.
To say that the supernatural realm is not amenable to the scientific method seems a bit of a cop-out, if you don't mind me saying so. If something is orderly and comprehensible, and is linked inextricably to the physical world via the medium of human consciousness, then the "standard" scientific method should be able to give us at least some insight into it. It seems more reasonable to assume that, because science tells us little about the supernatural when it has done so much to explain the world around us, the problem might be with the idea we have about the supernatural.
If however, consciousness is nothing but a function of the physical processes of the brain, then science can tell us a great deal. To me, the studies of the brain that are now and have already been carried out, suggest this option. Damage to one area of the brain can fundamentally change a person's personality forever, wiping out memories and rewriting who they are, sometimes permanently. To me, this does not gel with the idea of consciousness having a supernatural element to it.
Just my opinion.
Other Comments by Quetzalcoatl
555. Comment #49437 by Philip1978 on June 12, 2007 at 1:11 am
Quetzalcoatl I have indeed seen Mr Brown at work, I think one of the weirdest was when he got a room full of atheists and turned them into believers in about an hour!
Other Comments by Philip1978
556. Comment #49442 by steve99 on June 12, 2007 at 1:38 am
I mean one of the hallowed principles of science is that only objective data count as scientific evidence. I really think it would be confusing to change all that and keep calling it "science". But what name we should use is the lesser of worries.
Why call it anything else? One can apply experiment and testability to one's own experiences just as to physical data.
And if Chalmers considers the problem consciousness to be something that can be subject to investigation, I am at a loss as to why you insist the matter is beyond hope.
And I am afraid I still haven't a clue as to how God is involved - by what mechanism is he supposed to give us consciousness?
Other Comments by steve99
557. Comment #49452 by Logicel on June 12, 2007 at 2:19 am
Dianelos, You regard atheists as having thrown out the baby with the bathwater, and I regard your theistic viewpoint, as keeping both the baby and the bathwater, but coloring the bathwater with a dye of your own choosing, a very opaque dye. Your 'evidence' for your theistic viewpoint is the lack of satisfying explanations from science, especially regarding human consciousness, therefore setting up a perceived crucial situation where need trumps hard evidence. The explanatory and predictive power of your lovely dyed bathwater--your particular and carefully polished theistic viewpoint--is not on the same par as the explanatory and predictive power of scientific theories as your viewpoint is a hypothesis and not a scientific theory. En bref, I regard your theistic viewpoint to be woefully inadequate. If I do understand your viewpoint, which is essentially that there exists, a priori, a supremely perfect and good entity, who, in its goodness, wants to allow us humans a chance at being as good and perfect as It is. To do this, this entity has made the universe, essentially a trial ground for us to achieve virtue. All I can conclude, is that this entity, takes itself too seriously, as the elaborate setup It has created in order for humans to achieve virtue boggles the mind. I suppose you can suggest that this only proves how important humans achieving virtue is. How come this perfect being has deprived rocks, ants, and clouds from not having the chance to become as virtuous as It is? All these other creations, are just props placed cunningly so the main actors, humans, can achieve virtue?
The cattle prod which I use to encourage myself to achieve virtue is reality. This life of mine is all I will ever have. And that is enough motivation to be the best that I can be. It was possible for me to come into life, and it is possible for me to be the best that I can be. No splashing about in fancy-colored bathwater with a divine baby is required.
Other Comments by Logicel
558. Comment #49454 by Logicel on June 12, 2007 at 2:22 am
And if I regard Dianelos as a gifted and talented salesman, then I also regard myself and many others posting at this thread to be consumer advocates. Why use a product of which there is no need? Other Comments by Logicel
559. Comment #49457 by Logicel on June 12, 2007 at 2:44 am
And since humans are the ones with the fullest consciousness--to the best of our present knowledge--then humans are Gods, because they can choose to give a chance for another human to have the opportunity to achieve virtue by deciding to give birth to another human. Therefore, I conclude that women are Godnesses. Other Comments by Logicel
560. Comment #49461 by BMMcArdle on June 12, 2007 at 2:55 am
"God did it!"Other Comments by BMMcArdle
561. Comment #49462 by Logicel on June 12, 2007 at 3:03 am
You mean that God is having It's way with your women? Other Comments by Logicel
562. Comment #49463 by Logicel on June 12, 2007 at 3:05 am
Regarding atheists and theists being better than one or the other, or one viewpoint being better than one or the other, the way I regard this topic is that atheism is the most realistic view based on the most evidence, and that's about it. Atheists can be bastards, theists can be wonderful. Other Comments by Logicel
563. Comment #49464 by Philip1978 on June 12, 2007 at 3:05 am
Logicel, I definitely agree with you there, oh Great One whose husband owns The Trousers!RAamen to that BMMcArdle!
Other Comments by Philip1978
564. Comment #49469 by _J_ on June 12, 2007 at 3:20 am
Apologies for quite a long post. 548. Comment #49425 by Dianelos Georgoudis:
If I understand you correctly, the argument is as follows:
1. Religious experience is caused by God. (questionable – that's what religious people believe)
2. Religious experience is caused by LSD. (fact)
3. Premise 1 and 2 contradict each other, so 1 is false.
Is that it? So let's try an analogous argument:
1. Our experience of light is caused by photons.
2. Our experience of light is caused at the absence of photons, for example when we dream or when we apply sudden pressure to our eyeballs.
3. Therefore 1 is false.
Uh-uh, Dianelos. You're being selectively naturalistic and then dropping supernaturalism from up your sleeve when it suits you. Photons and pressure on the eyeball are both observable, measurable, physical causes. Were God similarly well provided for by evidence as LSD, of course I could accept your contention that both He and the drug were factors that induce transcendent experiences. But as God refuses to demean his existence with anything so trivial as actual existence, it's rather hard to say. Claiming god to be a factor that affects the brain similarly to LSD is like claiming that photons have the same effect on the eyes as Magic Dragon Fire.
Actually, the argument I was making (perhaps unclearly) is not that god causes transcendent experiences that can also be caused by LSD, but that there are various naturalistically observable physical causes for such experiences. These include various chemicals and ritual behaviours. Since religious people having a transcendent experience make use of practices akin to these naturalistically observable physical triggers of subjective transcendence, it is unsafe (and completely superfluous) to hypothesise an additional supernatural cause for them. Making such a claim is rather like pressing your thumbs against your eyes and shouting 'This is how you see the Magic Dragon Fire!'
Basically, if an experience can be shown to be happily accounted for by naturalistic causes, there's no basis for assuming a supernaturalistic cause. This appears to be the case for the impressive 'transcendent' feelings that seem to inspire and sustain faith for many people. That's my point.
In fact I think everybody has had religious experiences. It's what one experiences when one is smitten by the beauty of a piece of music, or the euphoria one feels at the moment of creativity, or the kind of love one feels when one gives without expecting anything in return. All our experiences are caused by God, and we call "religious" those experiences that more clearly or powerfully reflect God's nature. So how come people who, say, are very creative or love music or sacrifice themselves for others do not always realize the presence of God? Well, it's a cognitive failure but not a failure of experience.
Well, that's a cosy enough sweeping generalisation. It's clearly 'a cognitive failure' to fail to recognise that there are many types of emotional and sensory experience, and it would be a touch presumptuous to suppose that, were we to study the mind, we could not thereby gain an increasingly sophisticated appreciation of what those many different experiences are. We have people who do this job, and the experience I described as 'transcendent', which they have identified as strongly associated with religious experience (and LSD, and so on), is not the same as finding something beautiful. This isn't an argument that can legitimately be swept aside with the remark 'Well, feelings is feelings is feelings, and I say god gives us them all anyway'. That's straw-man-ery plus presumption.
As for the rest of your response: we seem to be in the same territory that I've addressed later, in Comment 526. You see no problem with replacing minimal hypotheses with the theoretical possibility of your choice. Here's what you say of the competing hypotheses B (brain produces consciousness) and C (brain is only a puppet for the true, non-observable, supernatural origin of consciousness):
Even if neurophysiology somehow discovers how our brain produces consciouseness, B would still not become more plausible than C. Why not? Because any true thing we might discover about how consciousness is produced by our brain will also be true for C (assuming that consciousness is produced in one way).
How can I persuade you to see the silliness of this reasoning?
Suppose you go to the doctor with back pain. You have been in a car accident. The doctor inspects your back and finds damage to the muscles caused by the stress of the impact.
However, after describing a course of medication and physiotherapy consistent with this damage, he moves on:
'I'm not going to prescribe that, however, because I'm not persuaded that it's the cause of your discomfort. It's at least equally possible that you have been cursed by a witch, and that this muscular damage is only a manifestation of her malevolence. We'd need to deal with the root cause and burn the witch.'
Having drawn up a list of all the warty old women you know, the doctor starts again:
'Voodoo is another possibility...Your house may be on a ley line…Have you thought about feng shui?...Sprites! It could be sprites!...Have you said anything that might offend Poseidon?…'
After a few hours of these equally plausible explanations for your back pain, it becomes clear that you are never actually going to leave the surgery. The doctor is quite able, with his highly trained medical mind, to fabricate chillingly persuasive supernatural agents of backache forever.
I don't suppose you would accept this sort of approach to backache. I suspect that you'd demand the first course of treatment – the one endorsed by the same field of naturalistic, scientific medicine that's kept you alive and well to your present age – and hope never to cross his path again. Only if the treatment failed would you seek further advice (probably from another doctor). Your options would have to have run pretty thin before you began assembling pyres and scouting for hags.
In fact, I'd make a friendly bet that, were your concept of god to clash directly with naturalism in such a way as to cause you actual pain, you would either abandon your faith or else refashion it into something that allowed you to profit by the fruits of naturalistically-derived knowledge whilst maintaining your belief in Dianelos' God. I suspect that this is why you have come to hold a religion defined by a private conception of god, as this reduces to zero the chances of any detail of your faith clashing with your chosen life experience.
This, incidentally, is exactly the path I followed. I was a member of an evangelist church until my credulity was stretched to breaking point by seeing otherwise intelligent people persuade themselves that homosexuality was a sin because the same tome that authorised the massacre of the Canaanites told them so. I became a believer in my own interpretation of Jesus for a time. When you define your own faith, you can bend it any way you like. But continuing to pick away at my own assumptions and bases for belief, along with a reading of The Demon Haunted World, led me finally out of the whole mess.
I only include this digressive anecdote because I'm not quite ready to accept krogercomplete's understandably pessimistic evaluation of the situation here (550, Comment #49428). I think you can come to see that you are making a special allowance for you belief in god that you wouldn't make for any other important aspect in your life.
If this logic doesn't follow through, then I'm doing something wrong myself. And blow me down with a feather if I can see what it is…
...unless you are deliberately doing something that has occurred to me before. I've previously wondered if I might make myself a happier and more productive bunny through a religious faith, but realised that to do so I'd have to carefully fashion it so as to do no harm to anyone else and to fit neatly with the world as I observe. Then I've have to somehow lead myself into completely believing it. Like trying to put the placebo effect back into a recognised sham. I haven't tried this, partly because I'm not persuaded that religions provide access to resources of joy and profundity that good, all-encompassing naturalism can't reach, and partly because I can't get over the initial psychological hurdle of wilfully lying to myself on this scale. But, I wonder: if I were to do so, would I become, essentially, you?
Other Comments by _J_
565. Comment #49475 by Enlightenme.. on June 12, 2007 at 4:10 am
517. Comment #49227 by Dianelos Georgoudis Enlightenme (463):
Surely the only objective good is simply reproduction.
Dianelos;
"So stealing money without being caught, something that clearly increases one's reproductive success, is objectively good?
Or: Violating women without being caught is objectively good? After all that too increases the attacker's reproductive success.
Probably I misunderstand what you mean."
No misunderstanding, in fact I think you're being disingenous there.
Yes, In nature, and - Pre-Reason, and empathy in evolution - correct.
Other Comments by Enlightenme..
566. Comment #49485 by Dr Benway on June 12, 2007 at 4:53 am
Dianelos:On the other hand we can safely assume that we all share the same experimental environment (including the subjective bits of how it is to see red, how it is to perceive beauty, etc), so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to study it together. Only I think we shouldn't call such study "scientific", because to do so would be confusing.I know several psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists who would disagree with you. For example, Sam Harris says that as people can become aware of their optic blindspot, they can learn to become aware of the oneness experience. Because human brains are more alike than different, these things can be repeated and studied using ordinary scientific reasoning.
Because human brains aren't exactly the same and because lives aren't the same, I like to leave a little room for unique information only one person may have access to. This of course can't be studied scientifically.
Individual uniqueness provides a gap for God you can always count on. But only an apolitical God, one unable to impose himself on anyone other than the individual. A believer in this God is either a secularist or an asshole.
Afterthought: A personal God implies secularism. When something personal is imposed on another unwillingly, that's a violence against the other's personhood. We ought to point this out to those who brag of a "personal relationship with Christ." Too many of them want their personal Jesus in the public square.
Although I'm an atheist, I feel it would be improper for me to advocate for social policies favoring atheism over theism. That feels like a violence against the personhood of others also. I want everyone to have the elbowroom to sort these interesting and complicated issues out in their own way, in their own time.
Ironically, the gap I spoke of above which allows for a personal God vanishes in a theocracy.
Other Comments by Dr Benway
567. Comment #49589 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 12, 2007 at 1:09 pm
_J_ (548):Interesting post; I intend to comment in detail in the future, but would like to clarify two important points right away: one, why it is really impossible for a non-naive ontology to contradict or interfere with science in any way, and two, what the hard problem of consciousness is about.
You wrote:
Suppose you go to the doctor with back pain. You have been in a car accident. The doctor inspects your back and finds damage to the muscles caused by the stress of the impact. However, after describing a course of medication and physiotherapy consistent with this damage, he moves on: 'I'm not going to prescribe that, however, because I'm not persuaded that it's the cause of your discomfort. It's at least equally possible that you have been cursed by a witch, and that this muscular damage is only a manifestation of her malevolence. We'd need to deal with the root cause and burn the witch.'
According to science (and therefore according to my worldview also) the phenomena in question in your story are to be understood as follows: the injured muscles send signals to the brain where they cause a particular pattern of neural firings in its pain centers. Science (or at least science in the traditional sense of creating knowledge using the scientific method) has nothing to say about what causes the subjective experience of pain, i.e. why the particular pattern of neuron firings in the brain caused by the reception of these signals is experienced as painful, because the subjective experience of pain is beyond the realm of objective scientific investigation. Now our doctor is not only a scientist but also knows some philosophy and has her own ontological beliefs: maybe she is a naturalist and believes that the relevant pattern of neuron firings are objectively real and cause the experience of pain themselves; or maybe she is an idealistic theist like me and believes that God causes the experience of pain as part of the goal to give us the experience of an orderly experiential physical environment; or maybe she has voodoo leanings and believes that it's a witch who causes the sensation of pain when such neural firings happen in the brain. In all three cases though, i.e. no matter her ontological beliefs about reality, she is going to prescribe medication and physiotherapy in order to stop this pattern of neural firings from taking place in her patient's brain. Why? Because by stopping that, no matter what or who causes the subjective experience of pain, her patient will feel better.
You see? Unless one uses a very naive worldview, one's understanding of reality cannot possibly contradict or interfere with scientific knowledge.
Having said that I would like to remind you that as I argued in post 492 (#49081 point 2) one must be careful not to confuse the concept of consciousness with the concept of conscious experience. Consciousness denotes the capacity of having conscious experiences in the first place. So what characterizes a conscious material system is having that capacity. And what troubles those who study consciousness from the naturalistic perspective is literally the question of how "something material could become conscious", i.e. how a particular configuration of matter could achieve the capacity of having conscious experience. If we accept that capacity as a given, it seems to me that the problem of consciousness becomes easy: the only thing remaining is to map exactly what physical processes in the brain correlate with specific conscious experiences. And that's not a hard problem.
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
568. Comment #49592 by the great teapot on June 12, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Dianelos wrote"Now, experiencing having a physical body is not strictly necessary for interacting with our physical environment (one can conceive of a disembodied condition of interacting with physical things) but the presence of a physical body gives coherence and closure to our experience of the physical world, and therefore represents a better experiential environment, a better solution"
Are there any disembodied entities out there that can confirm that. Speak now or forever...
Sorry I see what you are suggesting. We could be disembodied but that would be too easy, we need a challenge. Here son you have this one lets see how you get on with it.i'll judge you when youv'e worn it out, or wrapped it round a lamp post.
Thats too easy. You have used an awful lot of sophisticated argument just to bring us back to a simple an anthropomorphic view of the world.
(Dianelos - Thanks for correcting my misspelling on your quote of my question earlier)
Other Comments by the great teapot
569. Comment #49609 by Benjamin Michael on June 12, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Post 567 by Dianelos: ...Consciousness denotes the capacity of having conscious experiences in the first place. So what characterizes a conscious material system is having that capacity. And what troubles those who study consciousness from the naturalistic perspective is literally the question of how "something material could become conscious", i.e. how a particular configuration of matter could achieve the capacity of having conscious experience. If we accept that capacity as a given, it seems to me that the problem of consciousness becomes easy: the only thing remaining is to map exactly what physical processes in the brain correlate with specific conscious experiences. And that's not a hard problem...
Out of interest, do you have any thoughts on consciousness in relation to a coma patient?
In the comatose state, do you consider that consciousness continues, and that the patient merely does not 'experience' it so has no cognisance of it?, or does consciousness supernaturally cease when the coma is induced only to be "switched on" again by supernatural means when the patient awakes?
Also, perhaps I am misunderstanding something here, but do you consider consciousness peculiar to humankind only, or do you consider some or most or all animalkind to have forms of consciousness? If you do consider animals, such as dolphins or mice (for example, drawing a literary reference to Douglas Adams) to have consciousness, then how does this reconcile with a theistic viewpoint that has humankind as the purposeful centre of the universe?
Other Comments by Benjamin Michael
570. Comment #49640 by _J_ on June 12, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Hi, Dianelos, thanks for getting back to me.Okay, my responses to your two points in 567. Comment #49589:
The first begins with the whole Speculative Doctor scenario. Okay, my metaphor building was a bit shoddy. What I was hoping to suggest was this:
An entirely naturalistic doctor would reason 'An injury has been caused, this damage is the result, treat the damage and everybody's happy'.
A doctor who regarded supernaturalism as having an equal claim would have to accept reasoning along the lines of 'Well, if it's a witch's curse, treating the symptoms (the muscle damage) is a waste of time, because the injury will recur until the curse is lifted. And if it's ley lines, he'll need to move house. And if…' and so on. Even if any one of these lines of reasoning is not necessarily the only way in which a person might interpret the required treatment for witchcraft-inflicted injuries or ley-line-induced damage or whatever, they are strands of reasoning that fall within the (infinite) field of available supernaturalistic hypotheses. This field, being infinite, is crippling in so far as making any kind of practical decision is concerned. Our doctor could make a trial-and-error stab at it, but a supernaturalistically governed trial and error procedure lacks rhyme or reason for favouring one hypothesis over another and it could literally take forever to strike it lucky and hit the right result. ('Oh, the Invisible Weasel-bait didn't work? Hmm, this week let's try appeasing Freya…').
If we actually want our back curing, we (both, I suspect) want the doctor who starts with the 'let's fix the injury' hypothesis and works from there. We'd also like her to use her naturalistically derived knowledge of what sort of treatment actually works for this type of injury and provide some sort of tried-and-tested therapy; not, say rubbing our ears with rhubarb and chanting incantations in Swahili. Even if we are happy to accept a doctor who, unfathomably, believes all explanations she can imagine to be equally valid, we'd rather like her to start with the minimal hypothesis: that we've hurt our back in a one-off accident and it wants fixing in a way that has a track record of working, please. We want our doctor to employ a naturalistically-based selection process to her footloose and fancy-free ontology, and we want her to be as handy with Occam's Razor as with a surgical one.
So, when you say:
Because by stopping [the neural firings that constitute pain], no matter what or who causes the subjective experience of pain, her patient will feel better.
…I'd like to point out that you are using a process of naturalistic observation of cause and effect. A truly supernaturalistic ontology would admit the possibility that the (arbitrarily) chosen process of trying to stop the pain might have no effect, or might cause the patient to burst into flames, or to turn into a Wurlitzer. Supernatural agencies need not be bound by the causalities we detect through naturalistic observation.
And so, when you say:
Unless one uses a very naive worldview, one's understanding of reality cannot possibly contradict or interfere with scientific knowledge.
…the impression you are giving me is that a 'sophisticated' supernaturalistic worldview is simply one that is carefully hand-crafted to exactly fit behind the operational model of the world provided for us by naturalistic enquiry, but that then elbows naturalism aside in the one or two places in which you feel that you'd rather like to stretch your wings and believe whatever you want to. And, because you can point back to the rest of it and say 'Look, my supernaturalist model exactly fits the naturalistic one, see?' you can convince…somebody (maybe) that it actually works as an entire metaphysical system.
This is rather like borrowing a friend's car and maintaining that it's powered by jelly-eating demons. We can all regard your vehemently-stated belief as rather quaint for as long as it has no effect whatsoever on how you drive the car ('The demons work harder when I press this pedal…see!?'). But someone's going to look silly when you try to fill the tank up before handing the keys back. (I'll take bets on who it will be.)
Okay, flogged that one to death. The other thing:
what troubles those who study consciousness from the naturalistic perspective is literally the question of how "something material could become conscious", i.e. how a particular configuration of matter could achieve the capacity of having conscious experience. If we accept that capacity as a given, it seems to me that the problem of consciousness becomes easy: the only thing remaining is to map exactly what physical processes in the brain correlate with specific conscious experiences. And that's not a hard problem.
I might need to ask you to explain that a bit for me. 'If we accept that capacity as a given…the problem of consciousness becomes easy.' 'That capacity' being 'the capacity of having conscious experience'. Assume it as a given? As in saying: 'Oh, we don't need to explain that - it just happens?' Forgive me, but don't most problems become easy if you just assume the answer to be a given? Isn't it the case that we generally regard it to be necessary to find some basis for taking something as a given? I don't think Just Deciding It To Be So constitutes such a basis.
I may be misunderstanding your elucidation of 'the hard problem of consciousness'. I'm no expert, so please do put me right ! But, to give my very simplistic approach to brains and consciousness – behold:
Observation 1: 'We're conscious. I wonder how that works…'
Observation 2: 'Look at this brain we're carrying around! Its activity seems to bear some kind of coded relationship to our conscious experiences. And it's such a complex assembly of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of cells that it could be capable of…well, damned if I can say, for sure! Come back in a few decades when we've poked it a bit…'
My conclusion from this: 'Seems like a good chance that the field of unknowns presented by Observation 2 might fit the big unknown in Observation 1. Let's find out.'
Your conclusion (as near as I can tell): 'The Observation 1 problem is doubtless solved by something else that we can't observe, and the field of as-yet unresolved complexity presented by Observation 2 is pretty much incidental, or at least is subject the unobservable thing that's really in charge.'
This latter conclusion seems to me to be like jumping from an injured back to pentangles and exorcisms.
Basically, there's a reason why 'smoking gun' is a meaningful phrase, and it isn't that guilty-looking people holding still-warm pistols are ignored at murder scenes in favour of drawing up arrest warrants for supernatural gunslingers.
We do the simplest explanation, the one that most closely fits with our prior experience, first. Then we posit more outlandish hypotheses (like some of the weird and wacky theoretical physics you've referred to) as our simpler hypotheses fail. This is how we catch murderers, refuel cars and fix bad backs. It is also how we approach the question of consciousness (calling it 'The Problem of Consciousness' seems to me to betray an undeserved scepticism about finding an answer from the outset).
Both of my responses seem to have turned into emphatic restatements of Occam's Razor. Forgive me if I've spent a long time banging on ad nauseum about something that's patently obvious to you. But you are giving me the impression that your worldview hinges an unjustifiable inconsistency in the way you apply (and then don't apply) this principle. This seems to me to be the big problem that needs addressing here.
Read you soon…
Other Comments by _J_
571. Comment #49683 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 1:03 am
Krogercomplete (501):I am still waiting for a justification of objective morality other than: (1) my intuition tells me, or (2) I would not want to live in a world where morality was not objective.
Sorry, I don't have any justification for my belief in objective morality. It's just an intuition: it's intuitively obvious for me that to torture children is objectively wrong and not a matter of opinion or convention, and that's that. Don't you agree it's objectively wrong? Actually knowing how it is to be a human being I have trouble imagining another human who would disagree. I can imagine that some people might think that they shouldn't believe that to torture children is objectively wrong, as some people might think they shouldn't believe they have free will (because to believe these things goes against naturalism) – but as far as I know the human condition I think it's impossible to really disbelieve them.
Now intuitions can be wrong, and several were shown to be wrong in the past. In the book I am now reading, "Conversations on consciousness", several of the interviewed people pointed out how the intuition that life cannot be reduced to chemistry (i.e. the intuition that there must exist some life giving force, the "elan vital", which when injected into an adequate physical body made it alive) was shown to be utterly wrong.
Let's define intuition as "a basic belief one considers reasonable even though one cannot justify it using even more basic beliefs". Then I would like to point out the following:
1. All normal people use or believe in intuitions. For example I bet you believe that there exists an objective reality out there that causes your conscious experiences, even though there is no justification for that belief. Similarly we all believe in the existence of other minds, i.e. that other people are really conscious beings and not just behave as if they were, but naturalists cannot offer any justification for that belief. Science is based on inductive reasoning, but it turns out that one cannot justify the validity of inductive reasoning. (Inductive reasoning is when one infers from many successful cases some universal claim; it turns out that one cannot justify inductive reasoning because to do so requires inductive reasoning.) And as inductive reasoning lies at the root of the scientific method strictly speaking all scientific beliefs cannot be justified. But no scientist loses any sleep because of that. Indeed you need induction to justify the validity of logic itself, but again no mathematician looses sleep because of that. After all, reason must start somewhere by asserting some basic beliefs. (Indeed Plantinga says that belief in God is such a "proper basic belief", but I find unnecessary to to assert belief in God as a precondition.)
2. Not all intuitions are equally strong, in other words there are degrees of "obvious". I would suggest that the deepest intuitions (the ones I think one cannot really disbelieve) are the ones related to our conscious experience, such as that we are conscious in the first place, or that we have free will. Then come the intuitions about the whole of reality, such as that there is an external objective reality that causes our experiences, that other minds exist, that objective morality exists, that induction is reasonable, etc. And at a more superficial level we find intuitions about specific properties of reality, such as that a life giving force must exist, that physical space is flat, that physical space and time are independent, that no physical "spooky actions at a distance" exist, that there is a deepest mathermatical description of physical phenomena (the theory of everything, TOE) etc. Incidentally all the latter intuitions but the last were shown to be wrong.
Intuitions have implications, and if it turns out that these implications conflict with other beliefs then we must drop one or the other. In the field of the problem of consciousness there is one philosopher, Daniel Dennett, who has adopted the following methodology: define anything that people believe about consciousness that does not fit with my own ideas as "intuition" and ask them to abandon them as "unscientific". In the end other philosophers (e.g. John Searle) decided that Dennett does not believe in the existence of consciousness. Here is how Dennett comments on this in an interview: "People don't like me saying that they're not conscious as much as they thought they are, and what they are conscious of doesn't have the features that they say it has. Their reaction to this is 'Oh Dan's just denying the existence of consciousness.' No, I'm not. I'm just saying it's not what they thought it was." Of course this is like saying: "I am not denying that ducks exist, I am just saying that ducks don't look like ducks, don't walk like ducks, and don't quack liked ducks."
In conclusion, one's worldview must of course be logically compatible with one's intuitions, and there are times when one must abandon some intuition when one finds it does not fit. (Conversely some worldviews can explain why some intuitions are true, for example theism explains why there are other minds). For example, even though Einstein did not live to see it, his very strongly felt intuition that there aren't any "spooky actions at a distance" was proven wrong by experiment, so he would have to either abandon the entire experimental validity of science or else abandon this particular intuition of his about physical reality, and of course he would have abandoned the latter. On the other hand if one's entire worldview is found to conflict with some of one's most deep intuitions I think there comes a point where the most reasonable reaction is to abandon one's worldview, especially when there are alternative worldviews that are free of such conflicts and at the same time have no disadvantage compared to one's previous worldview.
Which brings us back to my argument that a (non-naive) theistic worldview is more reasonable than naturalism. Such a theism has no disadvantage when compared to naturalism, in the sense that all that works well in naturalism (science, technology, you name it) also works well in theism. But theism avoids naturalism's problems and moreover is able to answer some deep questions that naturalism can't (such as why physical reality exists in the first place, or why the human condition - i.e. how it is to be a human being, how human life is subjectively experienced - is like it is). Such explanations are not mechanistic but, rather, are contingent on God's psychology as it were. I can understand that people used to mechanistic explanations find such psychological explanations not impressive but they are still explanations, and some explanation is better than no explanation. (I personally find such explanations very satisfactory, maybe because for a long time I have considered the basic constituent of reality to be personhood and not matter.)
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
572. Comment #49686 by epeeist on June 13, 2007 at 1:17 am
Comment #49683 by Dianelos Georgoudis
Science is based on inductive reasoning
No it isn't. It is based on hypthetico-deductive reasoning.
Other Comments by epeeist
573. Comment #49690 by steve99 on June 13, 2007 at 1:58 am
But theism avoids naturalism's problems and moreover is able to answer some deep questions that naturalism can't (such as why physical reality exists in the first place, or why the human condition - i.e. how it is to be a human being, how human life is subjectively experienced - is like it is).
If it did, then you would be able to answer questions like 'how does God produce conciousness?'
What you are doing, I think, is proving very dodgy reasons for 'why' something happens when what is required is explanations for 'how' things happen. Shifting things into some supernatural zone does not provide any 'how' answers.
To explain this, let's use the example of Paley's Watch, but in a different context. Walking along I suddenly notice a watch. I pick it up, and I wonder how it works. I ask you, and you say "someone made it so you can tell time with it, no more questions need be asked."
That is just what you are doing with matters such as conciousness. You think you are providing explanations, but you really aren't.
Other Comments by steve99
574. Comment #49694 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 2:16 am
USA_Limey (502):This would be like the nazi's saying in 1943 we don't have the right to question their extermination of the jews by herding them into gas chambers until we became anti-semites, becuse we just don't 'understand' the complexities of the jewish problem. Once an anti semite; well sure then you can question whether gassing them is the right thing to do. Or is that unfair?
I think one can always question the extermination of the Jews, but the Nazi answer that in order to understand why that extermination is reasonable one must first understand why antisemitism is reasonable, is I think valid. But then we can easily show that antisemitism is wrong, which implies that the extermination of the Jews justified on antisemitism is wrong too. Similarly, if you could argue that theism is wrong then Cristianity would be wrong by implication of that. But not vice-versa.
Maybe I see where the problem is. Maybe you are thinking thus: If theism brings some people to believe in some specific Christian beliefs which are plainly nonsense then theism must be nonsense too, and I don't have to waste any time studying it. Such train of thought might at first appear to be reasonable but is in fact fallacious. Consider the following analogy: Some people are led by science and the scientific method to believe in the existence of psychic phenomena such as telekinesis (for example see: "The conscious universe: the scientific truth of psychic phenomena" by Dean Radin.) Now I trust we agree that psychic phenomena is nonsense, but the fact that some people are led by science to believe in that nonsense does not mean that science itself is nonsense. Similarly science is used by some to do evil, but this does not mean that science is evil.
Regardless, your answer to my question was complete nonsense; I have no idea what it meant quite frankly.
I expected that. Indeed from the outside you won't understand Christianity before you understand theism.
Dianelos, by all means believe in God: but the divinity of christ? Dying for our sins? Resurection? This is garbage. I BEG you to please go and do some sober research into the early christian church and the pagan religions that went before it.
My objective here has been to explain why theism is reasonable. When you say "by all means believe in God" I take it you agree that theism at least might be a reasonable worldview. As for the specific Christian beliefs you mention, as I said before I too disagree with several Christian dogmas. But I am reluctant to right now discuss Christianity – that's a different ball game. I don't at all mind trying to explain how I justify my own Christian beliefs, but I'd rather not right now make our discussion here even more longwinded and complicated than it already is. First things first. See what happened when I tried to quickly answer a specific question about Christianity: you found it complete nonsense :-)
And I HIGHLY recommend the works of Joseph McCabe:
http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/library/myth.shtml
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/
McCabe was an ex-Franciscan monk who was fluent in latin and greek and could not reconcile what his English language bible was telling him and what he could read, first hand, in the ancient texts he read.
It's really all about the man made constructs of religion. It always was.
I had a go at the last link. I have seen that argument before: Christianity teaches of God's death and resurrection but there were many previous pagan religions where some god also died and resurrected. So? What does this imply? After all people have thought of thousands of gods, death and resurrection are big concepts (virtually all religions everywhere taught of life after death), so it is to be expected that some of these thousands of gods would undergo death and resurrection in the respective religious beliefs. But suppose I am wrong, and that the ancient beliefs about gods who died and resurrected are really remarkable and cannot be explained on statistical grounds. Even then, how does this somehow imply the falsity of Christian belief? On the contrary if resurrection myths are really that remarkable then a Christian might argue that this evidences the truth of Christianity. How so? Well, God created people in such way that they intuitively knew about the truth of God's death and resurrection in Christ, but as Christ had not yet come they created myths to instantiate the truth they intuitively knew.
There is an entire class of fallacious arguments with the following form: "The fact that one can explain on naturalistic grounds how some belief X that opposes naturalism has evolved implies that belief X is wrong". The fallacy should be obvious: the evolution of all beliefs can be explained on naturalistic grounds, so this cannot say anything about whether any one belief is in fact true or false, and of course some are true and other are false. One could call the entire class of such fallacious arguments "the naturalistic fallacy" (the term is normally used for the special case of ethical beliefs).
Fallacious thinking is very common, and both popular theism and popular atheism are plagued with such bad arguments. A good idea for both theists and atheists is to study books written by serious philosophers and see what kind of arguments they use to defend their positions or attack the opposite one. Let nobody think that theism or atheism are trivial matters easily disproved, for if it were so philosophers would have disproved one or the other long ago. For the record I predict that no serious atheist philosopher will include Dawkins's much ballyhooed "ultimate Boeing 747" argument against the existence of God in their future books. Rather future theist philosophers might use that argument as evidence of how naively and fallaciously even intelligent and educated atheists like Dawkins think about theism.
In my judgment the most common atheist fallacy is this: To attack the most loud, popular, or even most official/dogmatic theistic worldviews, and not the stronger theistic worldviews - which is a textbook example of the strawman fallacy.
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
575. Comment #49696 by BMMcArdle on June 13, 2007 at 2:45 am
"God did it!"Other Comments by BMMcArdle
576. Comment #49711 by _J_ on June 13, 2007 at 4:58 am
Hello again, Dianelos,About your Comment 574 (#49694):
There is an entire class of fallacious arguments with the following form: "The fact that one can explain on naturalistic grounds how some belief X that opposes naturalism has evolved implies that belief X is wrong". The fallacy should be obvious: the evolution of all beliefs can be explained on naturalistic grounds, so this cannot say anything about whether any one belief is in fact true or false, and of course some are true and other are false. One could call the entire class of such fallacious arguments "the naturalistic fallacy" (the term is normally used for the special case of ethical beliefs).
I think you've got your fallacies in a twist.
Two points:
One:
"The fact that one can explain on naturalistic grounds how some belief X that opposes naturalism has evolved implies that belief X is wrong"
Correct, and not fallacious. Note your (correct) use of the word 'implies'. A naturalistic explanation for an apparently supernatural event does not prove beyond doubt that there is no supernatural agent at work, but it renders a supernaturalistic hypothesis superfluous. Once I know how my toaster heats bread, I need not take recourse to speculations about magic. It may later turn out that I actually do have a magic toaster, but this is only one of countless supernatural hypotheses which I would be unable to pursue without something to point me in the right direction. (For example, if my toaster one day produces a white rabbit from its sleeve, I might suspect that my hitherto persuasive 'electric current through thin wires' explanation is insufficient.)
Two:
The fallacy should be obvious: the evolution of all beliefs can be explained on naturalistic grounds, so this cannot say anything about whether any one belief is in fact true or false, and of course some are true and others are false.
Nope.
Person A believes that when a piano falls off a building, it will make an impressive noise as it hits the road. I can use naturalistic observation and reasoning to uncover and detail the thought processes and life experience that have led Person A to this belief. And then I can push a piano off a building and find that, lo and behold, they are absolutely right.
Person B claims, in earnest belief, to be King Henry VIII. Again, I can use naturalistic observation and reasoning to unpick where this belief has come from and, if I'm good enough at it, come up with a convincing answer. (If it really is a good answer, it'll allow me to make accurate predictions about unusual beliefs and their stimuli in other instances.) I can also use naturalistic observation and reasoning to show that Person B was in fact born in Woking in 1964 and bears not the slightest resemblance to King Henry VIII, and, furthermore, is a woman.
The basis of a belief is a subject for naturalistic enquiry. So too is the accuracy of that belief. In the case of accurate beliefs, we will usually find some degree of causal relationship between the two: Person A's belief about pianos will proceed from an accurate understanding of pianos, gravity and roads. But in the case of inaccurate beliefs, we will tend to find a causal background for the belief that stems not from the thing being believed, but from elsewhere: Person B's assumption of Renaissance kingship stems not from an accurate perception of herself and her status, but from some set of other experiences within her life or unusual activity within her brain which have led her to commit wholeheartedly to a false belief.
Your claimed fallacy relies on a failure to recognise what an exploration of beliefs on naturalistic grounds entails. You've actually given yourself a clue when you go on to say 'and of course some are true and others are false' – a distinction that proceeds from naturalistic enquiry and which would have to form part of a naturalistic investigation of a belief.
Not for the first time, you are using naturalistic reasoning when it suits you, and simultaneously caricaturing 'naturalism' as something much shallower and sillier than it really is. Your own unacknowledged uses of it actually often fill the gaping holes that you have attributed to it as an ontological method. You move the goalposts halfway through your arguments and thereby claim to have won the game. 'Foul', I say, sir!
Other Comments by _J_
577. Comment #49719 by Philip1978 on June 13, 2007 at 6:24 am
Dianelos Georgoudis I still don't understand, why the anthropomorphism?
Its all very well saying things happen but I cannot for the life of me understand how your god comes into all this.
Since your god cannot be detected by anything except "faith" (belief without evidence) doesn't that even prod you into thinking something is wrong here. I don't think you are a total looney, well possibly a bit of a one but no more so than I!! Is it possible that perhaps humans invented their gods rather than the other way around. That is the only way I can see how your god can do the things he does, you imagine him/her/it to be able to (I use the words "your god" because I think David Robertsons, Devolved and Bizzaro Dawkin's descriptions of their god will be different from yours)
Still, I also have to ask again, are you sure its not Thor providing your thought processes? It might as well be Elvis, its equally weird and I cannot understand why it has to be your god.
I am totally confused, I think I need more tea!
Cheers,
Philip
Other Comments by Philip1978
578. Comment #49723 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 6:48 am
Steve99 (503)I wrote about God's objective to give us an experiential environment optimized for attaining virtue, and you responded:
That isn't really any kind of argument. Why would it be anything to do with virtue?
Because God, who according to my worldview is an objectively good person (i.e. a virtuous person), would like us to achieve that state too. At least it's very plausible to hypothesize that a virtuous God would want that, and the fact that our experiential environment is indeed an excellent environment for attaining virtue is powerful evidence that reinforces that hypothesis.
I fully understand the theist worldview. I used to be a theist.
There are many very different worldviews, and some of them such as fundamentalist Christianity strike me as grossly wrong. So there is no the theistic worldview. Similarly there are many naturalistic worldviews. Some of them, such as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (that some notable scientists subscribe to) strikes me as even more grossly wrong than Christian fundamentalism. In our discussion here I tried to center on what I find are the strongest theistic and naturalistic worldviews.
I wrote:
Now, this is not the kind of naturalistic explanation you are used to, and I can imagine that it is difficult to let go of your naturalistic intuitions and evaluate the worldview I suggest at face value.to which you responded:
On the contrary, it is natural for many to want an all-powerful protector figure. It is not difficult to see why the idea is attractive and common.
What you are saying is an example of the naturalist fallacy. Let's assume that you correctly understand how my beliefs evolved based on naturalistic grounds. Even then, that knowledge does not in any way imply that my beliefs are therefore wrong.
For example the argument "your worldview is what somebody who would like to have an all-powerful protector figure would believe" is fallacious, because desire for a protective figure may partially explain why I have belief in God, but says nothing about whether that belief is true or not. On the contrary if God exists it's reasonable to believe that God would have given people some tendency to seek Him/Her out.
Let me elaborate on this point by turning the tables. I trust you believe that the physical universe objectively exists. Now I could suggest how this belief has evolved in your brain or what psychological needs it fulfils, but even if I were right it would not somehow imply that your belief in the objective existence of the physical universe is therefore wrong.
I could just as easily posit a supernatural being that intends people to experience a world where they gain wickedness. If you look at the world, this is entirely compatible.
Er, no, this is not compatible at all. The experiential world I live in does not at all look like optimized for growing in wickedness. Actually I am very surprised you would use that argument. My own life appears to me to be a constant ethical challenge; I am always challenged at all levels to do the right thing. On the other hand maybe it's reasonable to believe that many people fail that challenge and end up growing in wickedness (even though it's really very difficult to judge other people because one does not know all parameters). What I think is pretty obvious is that the vast majority of people does not attain a lot of virtue in this life, which is one of the reasons why it's reasonable for a theist to believe that our experiential life does not end here but continues after death.
Therefore, your worldview has no foundation. It is just your feeling, I suggest. And as anyone who has studied this area knows, that is not a reliable guide to anything.
Ah, the unreliability of subjective data, or "feelings" as you put it. Of course if you are not willing to use your subjective data then you are stuck with naturalism and all its incoherencies. Now I am not saying that one cannot go wrong based on subjective data. Of course one can (and in fact it's also possible to go wrong based on objective data). On the other hand one must rely on one's subjective data in order to reach a better understanding than naturalism provides; after all subjective data is data too. Which is not to say one must blindly rely on them. As I mentioned in a previous post there are several criteria for the soundness of an explanation, and one can use them to check whether one's worldview (whether driven by objective only or by objective and subjective data) conforms with these criteria. I find my own worldview very solid under all these criteria including the empirical criteria. If you want to suggest arguments why I should doubt its basic soundness, I am very interested to hear them.
But you have presented no evidence or argument about why this being should be connected like this.
Remember my basic argument: The failure of naturalism to account for what causes our consciousness and for the existence of objective ethics makes it plausible to hypothesize that a supernatural and objectively good realm causes our consciousness. So the connectedness is implicit in the hypothesis.
I wrote:
Did you know that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that there are many physical universes where you and I will never die? It seems to me that naturalism works really badly even in its own natural subject matter of the physical world.
To which you answer:
I know the different interpretations of quantum mechanics in some detail. You are simply making an arbitrary value judgement here. You find this interpretation odd, so you claim that is a sign of the failure of naturalism. But that is an opinion, not evidence.
Well, opinions about plausibility do matter. Suppose a fundamentalist Christian would argue that God did in fact create the universe in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, and included much older looking geological strata and fossils (not to mention the background radiation) in order to test our faith in his holy book. There is nothing logically wrong with that worldview, and no objective evidence that contradicts it, but still I trust we both reject it because it is too implausible in comparison with other available worldviews. Similarly I feel free to note that all naturalistic descriptions of a physical universe consistent with quantum mechanical phenomena are highly implausible (not to mention fundamentally contradict each other) and that some popular ones (such as Many Worlds) is far more implausible than the most wild eyed fundamentalist understanding about reality. I wish people would study more the naturalistic proposals about how physical reality is, because it would help dispell various myths, such as that there is basic agreement about how physical reality is, or that there is objective evidence for all claims, etc.
I will agree though that the plausibility criterion by itself is not final. But if one opines that one worldview is more plausible than the other, then it is certainly reasonable to have this count in favor of the former. I mean if the only available worldviews were Christian fundamentalism or Many Worlds then I think it would be reasonable to choose the former.
Whatever you think of the Many Worlds interpretation, it is a useful tool in some physics work. This does not mean it is right - just that it helps work things out.
I agree. In particular domains it often helps to visualize reality in a way it clearly is not. For example when thinking about electrical circuits it's useful to visualize electrical charge as quantities of water and electrical connections as tubes. Some notable quantum physicists though (for example David Deutsch in his "The fabric of reality: the science of parallel universes and its implications") insist that Many Worlds is how reality actually is.
I wrote:
I hope to have at least dispelled one myth: that all theistic worldviews are incompatible with science. That can only be true for the most naive religious worldviews, for the rest seamlessly and naturally absorb science in their understanding of reality.to which you responded:
I am afraid you have done the opposite. Your confusion about God and quantum mechanics only helps to show that many people who are religious have a mistaken understanding of the physical world and assume a need for supernatural explanations where none is needed (as in your discussion of structure and order).The only God who is compatible with science is a God that does nothing.
Our discussion about whether structure and order can arise from zero structure and order (and not just from zero structure and order here while there is plenty of structure and order there) is in any case irrelevant to the main issue. I feel dispirited that you don't see that a theistic worldview can easily be such that no contradiction with science is possible. Why, suppose it turns out that we live in the Matrix like in the movie. That does not contradict science in any way, does it? After all scientists could do exactly the same experiments and observe exactly the same results - even though the physical laws, fundamental constants or even basic nature of the "real world" might well be quite different than the world the Matrix presents them for study. If the "real world" then were God how could that possibly contradict science? Again: if God directly causes all our conscious experiences including those observations on which all scientific knowledge rests what possible conflict with scientific knowledge could there be? And a God who does all that is certainly not a God who "does nothing".
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
579. Comment #49730 by Dr Benway on June 13, 2007 at 7:17 am
DianelosSimilarly, if you could argue that theism is wrong then Cristianity would be wrong by implication of that.Not necessarily. You read my post #495 because you responded to it in #547. But you missed my point.
But not vice-versa.Duh.
You suffer from excessively categorical thinking. You imagine categories nested within more abstract categories like Russian dolls. Your highest level category is "worldview", a term you use repeatedly. Beneath that, you have "theism" and "atheism." Under "theism", you have "Christianity", "Islam", etc. You imagine a rule regarding the more abstract category will apply to all particulars.
However, it's often the case that we only have experience with a few members of a particular set. Example: A person meets several Scottsmen and notes they all seem frugal. He will associate frugality with being Scottish. But he will hold that view tentatively, as he hasn't met all Scottsmen.
You're working hard to keep the debate at the level of "theism." From my point of view, that's not an interesting level. It's trivial. Many atheists, including Dawkins and myself, will grant you that theism is no more reasonable, ultimately, than atheism. Dawkins argues that probability favors atheism, but reasonable people will allow that improbable doesn't mean impossible.
So I grant you your theism. You don't need to defend it.
This "worldview" thing is tiresome. We're angels dancing on the head of a pin out here at this high a level of abstraction.
You don't need a grand unified theory of everything in order to boil an egg and make your breakfast. You don't need a map of the universe to find your house on a map of your neighborhood.
Other Comments by Dr Benway
580. Comment #49733 by Benjamin Michael on June 13, 2007 at 7:19 am
If no one objects, I would like to provide a comment reagrding a discussion between Danielos and Krogercomplete regarding objective morality, where the former stated:Sorry, I don't have any justification for my belief in objective morality. It's just an intuition: it's intuitively obvious for me that to torture children is objectively wrong and not a matter of opinion or convention, and that's that. Don't you agree it's objectively wrong? Actually knowing how it is to be a human being I have trouble imagining another human who would disagree.
1. It's intuitively obvious because humankind, in general, has evolved to have these intuitions, and for obvious beneficial evolutionary reasons. Some other species have not evolved with such an intuition, and it is perfectly conceivable that looking back into our evolutionary history could reveal a less evolved version of us (solo-nomadic, perhaps) that did not intuitively consider the torture of children as morally objectionable.
2. It should also be obvious that many societies today still do not consider the torture of children to be objectively immoral. The children of Hamas are regularly convinced by their parents to strap explosives to their chests and kill themselves and maim and kill others, regardless of their age. Organisations such as the World Organisation Against Torture exist precisely because some societies in the world do not consider torture (including the torture of children) to be morally objectionable. Look at what is going on in Pakistan: A recent report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) revealed that in Pakistan (as in many other parts of the world) torturous child labour is rife, and punitive measures for delinquents ranging from beatings to fetters, handcuffs and the death penalty is being applied to juveniles. (check the OMCT website). And it is not just Pakistan. These issues arise in tribal areas of India and throughout Asia and Africa, for example. That is why we need such things as the OMCT, the Asian Human Rights Commission, the UN Convention Against Torture and the like.
My conclusion: I don't think Danielos has really thought this issue through fully. In fact, it seems the 2 pillars holding up your theistic worldview are the arguments of (i) consciousness and (ii) objective morality. But to me, you appear to be observably misconceived on these issues.
Other Comments by Benjamin Michael
581. Comment #49738 by Dr Benway on June 13, 2007 at 7:40 am
Benjamin Michael:My conclusion: I don't think Danielos has really thought this issue through fully.He's a lad in his early 20s I would guess. At least, that was my thought when I read this amusing bit of instruction in #140:
As for how one is to know something, this is the subject matter of a major philosophical field called "epistemology".A smart man merely lacking in a few trips around the block. I've high hopes for him.
Other Comments by Dr Benway
582. Comment #49742 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 7:49 am
Steve99 (503)I wrote:
There are strong arguments that show that objective ethics is not compatible with a naturalistic worldview, and this clearly has something to do with naturalism.to which you responded:
You keep saying this, but you never actually present any such arguments.
Ok, here is the basic argument:
According to naturalism all events are composed of elementary events, and elementary events are either deterministic (in the sense that event B is caused by event A, which always causes event B) or random (in the sense that event B just happens without anything having caused it). So nothing "supernatural" interferes or causes events. Now goodness is a property of events which represents a value judgment we do. So in naturalism the proposition "to torture children is not good" is both meaningful and arguably reasonable as a value judgment, as long as it is clear that there is nothing intrinsically bad in an event that corresponds to the torture of children, because such an event is nothing more than the conjunction of elementary events that are either random or else caused deterministically by previous events. So the truth of the proposition "to torture children is not good" is contingent on our subjective value judgment and is therefore not objective.
All naturalistic efforts to find a way to assign objective value to some events must fail because they must be contingent on some other value which in the end must be reduced to subjective judgment. For example some tried to objectify ethics by reducing it to life. Roughly their idea was that everything that promotes life is objectively good. Apart from the obvious problem about which kind of life is objectively more worthy, the fundamental problem is that we have simply moved the question somewhere else. After all how is one to objectively justify that life itself is good? Life, after all, is nothing but a particular kind of chemical reaction and there is no intrinsic or objective reason why this type of chemical reaction is more valuable than any other. Other naturalists tried to objectify goodness by suggesting that any event that tends to maximize the experience of well-being and minimize pain is objectively good. But, again, this depends on the value judgment that some events that happen in animal brains are "good" and other are "bad". In short in order to define that some events are objectively good one must somehow inject goodness somewhere in the causal chain of physical events and start from there. But this initial injection requires a subjective value judgment by somebody or by a group of people or by society, and therefore is non-objective.
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
583. Comment #49743 by USA_Limey on June 13, 2007 at 7:50 am
With reference to: Comment #49694 by Dianelos Georgoudis.Thank you. I appreciate the reponse. You are spending alot of your time responding to multiple posts by many of us atheists.
I appreciate your time; I will hopefully respond later in detail; but you did get me thinking.
Other Comments by USA_Limey
584. Comment #49744 by _J_ on June 13, 2007 at 8:01 am
578. Comment #49723 by Dianelos GeorgoudisGetting carried away, I want to jump in and dispute the responses you've just made to Steve99. (Hope you don't mind, Steve99 – I'm sure it won't stop you dealing with them all beautifully yourself). I know you're overworked here, Dianelos. I'll just do bullet points:
1 – Your comments about the world as a god-made set of challenges to accrue virtue don't really dispel Steve99's challenges. I can't see your basis for dismissing his 'it could equally well be about wickedness' argument. Logically, it could. You see your life as being about gaining virtue (Where does your definition of 'virtue' come from, incidentally? Is it at all like morality, which appears not to have its origins in divine revelation?) and you thereby attribute your priorities to your god. In this vein, a glutton could see life as a god-created challenge to consume enormous amounts of food, or a mammonist could decide that it's all about gathering material wealth. 'That doesn't fit with the way I feel about life' doesn't negate the validity of these alternative perspectives, which are founded on the same type of reasoning as yours.
2 – all of your remarks about, for example, the Many Worlds theory sound like variations on the theme of 'I just can't believe that!' – the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Can you actually give some reason as to why you find it so implausible? Furthermore, I dub thee a hypocrite (don't take offence, though – we're all hypocrites somewhere along the line) when you finish off your argument with:
Why, suppose it turns out that we live in the Matrix like in the movie. That does not contradict science in any way, does it?
Yes, true, We Lost A Fight With Robots And Now They Are (in some way that surely offends the laws of physics) Using Us As Batteries Whilst Our Consciousnesses Languish In A Simulation is within the field of possible explanations, if we apply no reasonable selective criteria in our search for answers. There's no point pursuing this hypothesis because there's nothing to indicate it – or the infinite other non-evident theories of existence – to be true.
I don't know what the basis of the Many Worlds theory is. But there's no pressure on me to accept it as true. It's a contested area. We don't know those answers yet. And, I gather, the theory is helpful in providing potential explanations for difficult questions, whereas the Robots, Long Coats and Sunglasses theory gives us diddly-squat.
3 – you accuse Steve99 of using 'the naturalist fallacy'. Happily, this is the same 'fallacy' that I have attempted to show you is nonsense, in Comment 576 (#49711). If you can show me where I'm wrong, then maybe it stands as a response to Steve. Otherwise…
4 – continuing from the above two points, you try to turn the 'fallacy' on Steve99, saying:
I trust you believe that the physical universe objectively exists. Now I could suggest how this belief has evolved in your brain or what psychological needs it fulfils, but even if I were right it would not somehow imply that your belief in the objective existence of the physical universe is therefore wrong.
You have before suggested somewhere that we all tend to accept the existence of objective reality 'on faith'. You were wrong there and you're wrong here. We operate according to a set of assumptions which derive from and support a hypothesis that 'the physical universe objectively exists' because that hypothesis works and doesn't require us to imagine anything unsupported by our observations. On the day my kettle turns into a toad and Allah turns up selling tiny belly-dancers on my doorstep, I will revise this hypothesis; ie, show me that my belief is wrong, and I'll find it wrong. Show me that it is insufficient, and I'll find it insufficient. Say 'Yes, but this wildly more speculative version is also carefully contrived to avoid contradicting your hypothesis and is therefore equally valid', and I'll smile reassuringly and avoid making any sudden movements.
5 –
naturalism and all its incoherencies.
I'm still not seeing these! Naturalism has only ever appeared incoherent in your posts when you have given an inadequate expression of it. Similarly, your supernaturalism has only ever appeared plausible to the degree that you have fashioned it to imitate true naturalism. Please find some incoherencies we can agree on before bandying this phrase around as if it means something.
6 –
Suppose a fundamentalist Christian would argue that God did in fact create the universe in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, and included much older looking geological strata and fossils (not to mention the background radiation) in order to test our faith in his holy book. There is nothing logically wrong with that worldview and no objective evidence that contradicts it, but still I trust we both reject it because it is too implausible in comparison with other available worldviews.
You frequently disregard things because they are 'too implausible', whilst buttressing your claims for Dianelos' God with assertions that he is 'plausible'. The word 'plausible' doesn't say much without some explanation of why something is (or isn't) plausible.
In this particular instance, whilst it is indeed impossible to evidentially disprove a belief that specifically states all the evidence against it to have been falsified, it's certainly not wise to regard this particular belief as 'logical'. Is it logical to suppose that a god would imbue us with reason and then expect us to defy this reason by regarding one piece of highly unreliable evidence as superior to a vast store of far stronger, more reliable evidence? Such a god would be playing practical jokes that endanger our immortal souls – a mischief maker, a psychopath (in his insensitivity) and an idiot. This belief is not logical.
Anyway, Dianelos, no need to respond to this post - I'd rather you replied to my earlier ones. But, next time you're talking to Steve99, please bear this in mind.
(Sorry again, Steve99. Over to you.)
Other Comments by _J_
585. Comment #49766 by steve99 on June 13, 2007 at 10:28 am
(Sorry again, Steve99. Over to you.)
Absolutely no need to apologise. I am interested in the general argument, and have no objection if someone else feels they can contribute to matters I am discussing.
Other Comments by steve99
586. Comment #49771 by steve99 on June 13, 2007 at 11:32 am
According to naturalism all events are composed of elementary events, and elementary events are either deterministic (in the sense that event B is caused by event A, which always causes event B) or random (in the sense that event B just happens without anything having caused it).
No. This may have been a reasonable summary of things centuries ago, but it is not now, not since (sorry to keep mentioning these, as they are relevant) Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. These have shattered our ideas of space, time and causuality. You are setting up a classic 'false duality' argument here.
All naturalistic efforts to find a way to assign objective value to some events must fail because they must be contingent on some other value which in the end must be reduced to subjective judgment.
OK, I agree with this.
In short in order to define that some events are objectively good one must somehow inject goodness somewhere in the causal chain of physical events and start from there. But this initial injection requires a subjective value judgment by somebody or by a group of people or by society, and therefore is non-objective.
This is the tail end of a long paragraph, which still does not provide any argument that objective ethics is not compatible with a naturalistic viewpoint. All you are saying here is that objective ethics are not found when you look at the world in a naturalistic way. Well, I agree. But so are many other things that we consider objectively true, and are not found in nature, but that does not make them incompatible with a naturalistic viewpoint. Let me re-state an argument I have put forward before. I don't think anyone (well, hardly anyone) would question the objective nature of certain mathematical facts. In fact, we consider mathematical principles so objectively true that we assume in our search for alien intelligences that others will have discovered them independently. But are all these mathematical principles physical in any way? You aren't going to find PI by looking at nature - it is too rough and uncertain. But we consider it an objective mathematical object. If you tried to persuade a mathematician that the existence of PI was both beyond naturalism and required a supernatural realm, their reaction would be .... well, let me put it this way - you would not stand a chance.
Yet you seem to think that the existence of some objective standard of ethics (which, after all, is only another form of maths and logic: Given X = "child killing" and Y = set of bad things, then Y contains X) is anti-naturalism. Do you think the mathematical existence of PI is anti-naturalism?
Where I believe you are going wrong is, as I have expressed before, in 'reifying' abstractions. Something can be objectively true, but abstract, requiring no actual existence, in either the naturalistic or supernatural realms.
Of course, I dispute the fact that there is any such thing as objective ethics, but that is another matter.
I would like to add to what others have said here, and express my appreciation of the effort and patience you have put into posting here.
Other Comments by steve99
587. Comment #49772 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 11:36 am
_J_ (505):Our naturalistic understanding of all things is a work in progress. It may very well always be so. To acknowledge this is not to find a fault in naturalism as a reliable approach to discovery and description.
The signs though are not good. The problem of consciousness and the failure to account for objective goodness appear to be insurmountable problems for naturalism. And as for naturalism's descriptions of reality, things appear to be deteriorating right now.
Again, our understanding is in progress. Hopefully, our many competing theories [about how physical reality is] will gradually resolve as we learn more.
Hopefully. But even then the other problems (such as the problem of consciousness) remain. But maybe they too will be solved in the future, who knows? Time will tell. But meanwhile I judge that competing theistic worldviews are clearly better. They avoid naturalism's problems without losing any of naturalism's usefulness (including science, technology, etc), add at least some explanatory power, and are found to offer significant experiential and ethical gains. So I think that here and now it's much more reasonable to abandon naturalism and adopt some of these other worldviews. (Of course that's only my judgment; I understand that other people judge that some naturalistic worldview is preferable.)
I find the stated theory [of Many Worlds] much more plausible than one that states that a carpenter was resurrected within a universe in which resurrection is, by all observations, impossible.
I don't; after all according to Many Worlds there is a huge number of universes in which you and I live and resurrections happen all the time (maybe steve99 would like to confirm this). Anyway Many Worlds is maybe the least plausible naturalist worldview, so we may drop it. There is still a long term problem though: I know of no argument to justify the belief that our continuously improved modeling of phenomena through science will tend to allow for only one description of the physical reality that produces them. So unless you can suggest such an argument the reasonable assumption is that naturalism will never agree on one description of physical reality, which is kind of a serious letdown.
In any case a worldview based on the existence of an objectively good God who created us and our experiential environment with the goal that we attain virtue on personal merit represents, as far as I am concerned, what is most important to know about reality.
I must mention something that just occurred to me: If it turns out that the physical reality that according to naturalism is objectively real and causes the physical phenomena we obs
551. Comment #49429 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 12, 2007 at 12:30 am
Dr Benway (500):I completely agree.
I don't think that the supernatural is amenable to the scientific method. The scientific method requires the presence of objective evidence, which can only be objectively observable physical phenomena (including human behavior and how people talk about the conscious experiences). On the other hand we can safely assume that we all share the same experimental environment (including the subjective bits of how it is to see red, how it is to perceive beauty, etc), so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to study it together. Only I think we shouldn't call such study "scientific", because to do so would be confusing.
In the book I am reading right now ("Conversations on consciousness" by Susan Blackmore – and interesting but also sprawling book) David Chalmers (one of the brightest minds working in the field of consciousness) begs to disagree. Here is what he says:
"Sure, science is meant to be objective, and consciousness is subjective. So you might say that therefore science can't deal with consciousness. I think that's a fallacy. [snip] So now I guess the question is how to bring consciousness back into the scientific world. My own attitude is that consciousness is data. As scientists we are used to talking about data and the results of certain measurements, and we try to build a science that deals with them. Usually these are objective data, but we have subjective data too. The data of consciousness – the way things seem to me right now – are data too. I am having a certain sensation of red with a certain shape right now. I am hearing a certain quality in the tone of my voice and so on. This is as undeniable as the objective data in the world of science. And science ought to be dealing with that."
I actually agree with everything there, but if Chalmers wants science to deal with subjective data too then the scientific method must be extended. I mean one of the hallowed principles of science is that only objective data count as scientific evidence. I really think it would be confusing to change all that and keep calling it "science". But what name we should use is the lesser of worries.
Other Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis