101. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #193574 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:33 pm

Damn, no takers for my "holy spirit tastes of the droppings of a white-dove roasted on a flame above people's heads"-joke?

It must be late - and I must be insufficiently drunk.

102. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #193568 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:25 pm

I think we're way past Strike number 20 right now...


Re: Spirit... I don't know. Can't stand the stuff myself - tastes of roasted dove-droppings.

103. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193561 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Also, interestingly - I just tried both download-links and they seem to work fine from here.

Weird.

104. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193559 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:13 pm

Brian,
Ah - I knew the IP was from Australia, but it might just have been somebody else :)

I just sent you a proper E-Mail with the Paper as plain PDF-attachment.

105. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193557 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:10 pm

Joining the Hitler Youth was a choice was it not?

It was definitely not the free choice of the child - and the social pressure on those who did not enlist their children into the Hitler Youth (not to mention on the children - being a social outcast in Nazi-Germany definitely wasn't easy. The first to be sent to the concentration camps were the socialists, not the Jews. They came later) was so enormous that I don't blame the "ordinary" parents either.

If he was "indoctrinated" in the HY, maybe he learned alot about indoctrination of the young there. Makes him a good pope, I suppose.

If you want to be really historically correct and use the abbreviation, it would be "HJ"... but that doesn't matter.

Anyway, I think having witnessed such indoctrination made him a far better priest and preacher than a pope. The pope rarely has to indoctrinate people - the lower levels do that mostly, those in direct contact with the congregation. But I think his knowledge of rhetoric, his proficiency in argumentation, his being an intellectual and his knowing about indoctrination certainly helped him "ascend" through the ranks.

106. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193550 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 8:01 pm

He definitely looks like Palpatine... and on a slightly related note - I loved the vid where they dubbed a report on a huge catholic ceremony to be about some alien, Star Wars-like cult. It was hilarious.


Say, Brian - I forgot - did I already send you my paper on "The Limits of Religion in a Liberal Society"?

107. Saving Us from Darwin

Comment #193547 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 7:59 pm

Was I out of line? I don't think so... just losing patience with amateurs who simply try to enslave any philosophical argument or position they think might be useful for defending their preconceived notions.

And I think you were indeed able to determine that what you quote was intended to be partially humorous.... and don't say that German's should stop trying to be funny. Stephen Colbert already did that twice in the last month :)

I forgot who said that, but the quote is true:

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy

108. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193544 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 7:55 pm

go talk to an elderly Nazi

Ratzinger may be many things - but a Nazi is not one of them. Not everyone who was in the German Army back then was a Nazi... you practically didn't have a choice. Also, remember that the children back then were indoctrinated everywhere - in school, university, possibly at home and in the Hitler Youth.

Many of them turned out to be prime examples of defenders of democracy once the de-nazification was complete.

Don't blame it on them, not really fair.

Ratzinger is a very proficient thinker - there is no doubt about that. A very good thinker holding a position that's totally nuts, and immoral to boot. It's not like that has never happened before or since (just look at Swinburne, Craig, Plantinga etc).

Actually, Ratzinger used to be among the most progressive catholic officials... He even was partially responsible for the huge modernizations the catholic church underwent in Vatican II - but then the '68 revolution wrecked havoc at the university he was teaching at and used physical violence to interrupt learning - and he turned staunch conservative.

I don't like him any more than any atheist on here - but he is definitely not a Nazi.

109. Saving Us from Darwin

Comment #193537 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 7:41 pm

Yep - I like to recommend good books on subjects that come up again and again, and are of interest to people here... I know those are expensive, sorry :)

Anyway - yep, Craig and Plantinga.

But the first cause argument has been properly demolished by many people.

And concerning eliminative materialism and "properly basic belief". It may be that some future neuroscience will eliminate entities such as "beliefs" - in the way élan vital or phlogiston were eliminated. But the experiences and phenomena we explain by making use of that term will still exist and require explanation... so something functionally identical or similar will have to take the place of the ontological commitments we make with "belief".

I don't see how eliminative materialism would render epistemology meaningless - I think it's very interesting.

Now, to business:

5. God can be immediately experienced: "Properly Basic Belief" is a philosophical idea that we can only truly know what we truly experience ourselves. Our belief that the external world exists is "properly basic" as we can't prove that it does, but it is entirely rational that we "know" it does because of our own experiences in that world. Same with God. Those who have had an experience with God, know that this is an experience with God and nobody from the outside can tell us otherwise. It is appropriately grounded in our own experience.

Yep, Plantinga alright.... but he seems to have only skimmed over it. Plantinga himself freely admits that when challanged, the theistic belief(s) cease being properly basic, and have to be defended sufficiently to be maintained at all. This has all been done countless times, from the ancient greek philosophers to Mackie, Martin, Oppy, Everitt, Sobel and others.

Anyway - "reformed epistemology" cannot escape the "Great Pumpkin Objection" modified to include a "sensus pumpkiniatus". It rests on foundations that are so laughable I struggle for words to describe them.

Anything that - in order to even be considered - already requires a strong ontological commitment via a "sensus divinitatis", (not to speak of a philosophy that has to explain natural evil as the free will acts of fallen angels) is so ridiculous no one can take it seriously. It already has to make the ontological commitments of the beliefs it tries to provide an epistemic foundation for, which is amusing, really.

Plantinga is only of technical interest to rest of philosophy - even to Swinburne, who is a far better Christian philosopher. To philosophers who do not have an axe to grind, Plantinga's position is simply ridiculous (as is Craig's) - and as I said, their arguments are only of technical interest.

Plantinga has made a laughing-stock of himself with his ridiculous argument for the inconsistency of naturalism based on evolution and Craig with his "Holy Spirit Epistemology".


Oh, and - aside from the fact that we have no justification to believe in metaphysically objective, intrinsic moral values - theism can NOT provide an unproblematic metaphysical foundation for this hypothesis - not to speak of the lack of epistemic justification.
Intersubjectivity, empathy and reason are all that is required to provide a coherent and actually applicable ethical and meta-ethical theory.

Anyway - the Kalam fails, reformed epistemology fails, the (modal-)ontological argument(s) fail, inductive arguments fail...


... and finally: The concept of any causally active non-spatiotemporal entities does not make sense, because the concept of causality requires a spacetime-like framework.

.... anyway, nice try with the philosophy. Better luck next time. ...NEXT!!!

110. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #193478 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 4:54 pm

However, I would save my energy and my "jumping up and down annoyance" for when they claim that these methods are in some way superior just because they are so nebulous.

Ah, I see.

Which would lead to a discussion about methodology/epistemology - yes. However, you might wanna save your "jumping up and down annoyance" for when they THEN bring up Plantinga's reformed epistemology.

I don't know - but when I first read about reformed epistemology, I imagined a congress on epistemology... with all the greats of epistemology: Ayer, Gettier, Goldman, Lehre, Paxson, Dretske, Armstrong, Chisholm, BonJour, Price, Sellars, Quine, Kim, Nozick, Davidson, Strawson etc (never mind that they aren't/weren't all entirely contemproraries).... who all discuss their intricate theories... then Plantinga gives a talk on "reformed epistemology"...

- the entire hall turns silent... blank faces, wide eyes... a cricket chirping.

I mean: WTF?

111. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #193473 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 4:37 pm

Corylus - well, we might personally say that we're fine with methodological naturalism and don't need ontological naturalism. (I say the former leads to explanations that only make ontological commitments to natural things, and thus in effect leaves us with ontological naturalism anyway)

But that wasn't my point. My point was that the distinction methodological-epistemological doesn't seem to make sense to me, since former basically makes a statement about epistemology.

I was just saying that we might get theists to agree that there's a difference between methodological and ontological naturalism.

They might then claim: "Okay, methodological naturalism is fine with me - for the sciences, but there are other ways of investigation", which of course they would have to prove - and prove that they are productive, reliable and non-arbitrary.

112. New British Petition: Stop the Nightmares

Comment #193464 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Hey guys - just wanted to let you know that my paper on "the limits of religion in a liberal society" is now uploaded.

You can download it for free - the link is on my blog:

http://mphil.livejournal.com

Comments are welcome!

113. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #193452 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 4:10 pm

the validity of the distinction between methodological and epistemological naturalism could be assumed

I assume you mean the distinction between methodological and ontological naturalism?

I mean, methodological naturalism basically says "Magic is not an explanation - if we want to investigate the world, whether or not anything exists beyond the natural, we can only make use of the natural for explanations" - which basically has a strong epistemological dimension.

Thus the distinction methodological-epistemological doesn't seem to make much sense to me, but the distinction methodological-ontological does.

114. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #193211 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 12:19 am

Guys - Robertson is back. And he deserves a thorough thrashing once again. I've already made the first step, but have to leave now...

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2686,Holiday-in-Hellmouth,The-New-Yorker,page3#193161

115. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193198 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 12:06 am

As far as I can tell, the only reason you don't think he is irrational is because you agree with him.

I seriously doubt David has the capability to understand and evaluate Haldane's position. You would need quite some knowledge of philosophical ethics for that.

116. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193183 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:52 pm

Sorry - but the notion of God using ,natural' causes is perfectly logical.

No, it is not - it is vacuous unless you have a coherent and applicable concept of
1.) What entities in a non-spatiotemporal realm would be
2.) How such entities can be at all in causal relation to something
3.) How causality from a non-spatiotemporal realm into a spatiotemporal realm should be possible
4.) What such causality would be
5.) How a causally closed chain of events in the spatiotemporal realm should allow for influence from outside (that is actually a contradiction, as are 2 and 3 - so no wonder there are no coherent concepts thereof)

No one has ever managed to provide a coherent and applicable concept of even one of those.

But the arrogance is in assuming that because you have argued it, therefore it is arrogant for anyone to reject what you have said.

Nah, the arrogance is in failing to provide conclusive counter-arguments and then still make the old ones that have already been dismantled.

Are you seriously claiming that the debate is over and that all philosophers are now of your opinion.

No, I am not. But I will have you know that in philosophical ethics, hardly anyone recognized in the community of philosophical ethics hold your position. It's a tiny minority, really. But that, in itself is of no consequence. I have provided the arguments, you have failed to refute them and still go on making bold claims.

Haldane subscribes to "analytical thomism"... nice, but resting on fictional foundations. Also, thomism doesn't avoid the consequence that while moral values would be necessary, they would still not be intrinsic and would be arbitrary. Also, it rests on the concept of aseity, which is logically contradictory (as is that of the trinity and many more).

Do you really want to make the argument from authority, though? Because I can name you many more philosophers who have provided coherent non-theistic theories of morality than you can for your side. Cherry Picking people who agree with you is unimpressive. Cogent arguments are - you fail to provide those.

The points of my last comment stand irrefuted.

117. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193162 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:11 pm

David,

Steve - by whose definition? The trouble is that you are confusing things. Who says that answered prayer always has to be miraculous? If I pray that the Lord will provide me with food and he does so by enabling me to buy food out of a shop (thereby using 'natural' agencies), rather than causing food to miraculously appear on my plate - then why should that be considered strange. The vast majority of answered prayers are done through ,natural' agencies. It is just that we believe that God (as well as human beings) is well able to use them.

My goodness - that really made me laugh. Someone doesn't get the principle of exclusion: If an event e at time t has determinable cause, that's it. It eliminates the need - and thus any justification for assuming another cause. Even if - counterfactually - the concepts of the supernatural and of god were meaningful and even if - counterfactually - it had any explanatory value... if there is a naturalistic explanation, that's it. There is no room left for any supernatural causal origin, no dials to set, nothing to tweak.

my personal empirical evidence

Either there is real evidence - then it holds up to critical examination by the standards of rationality, or it isn't evidence.

Either you have a problem with reading or you have a completely different definition of logic and reasoning.

Holy cow - that is certainly a contender for the most hubristical comment you ever made.

Remember when I laid out some of the logical inconsistencies in the concept of God?
Try reading Sobel's "Logic and Theism", or Martin's "The Impossibility of God"... and then make that claim with a straight face again.

But what's more - you have proved yourself to be arrogant beyond description by yet again having come up with the arrogant claim of "No morality without absolute morality, no absolute morality God"... I took that apart ages ago, time and again. I have shown both how theism cannot escape the conclusion that the foundation of its morailty is either contingent and subjective, or necessarily arbitrary. I have further pointed out to you that there are dozens of philosophically coherent metaethical and ethical theories that do not necessitate a deity, or even universals. And I was neither the first nor the last to do so.

Normally, I would say you are simply ignorant of the tradition of philosophical ethics over the last two and a half thousand years. But your errors have been pointed out to you - and yet you come back and make that same, stupid claim. That, David, is not just ignorance, it's irrationality and hubris.

118. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193107 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:49 pm

Many of those things are important to political theorists. But I don't think that most of the points above relate to implementation...

Anyway, you're not coming across that way. Not at all :)

Now I have to go do some work. Specifically, prepare a talk on John Bickle's account of intertheoretic reduction. That, btw (teapot)- is also something you cannot explain without Jargon, because it rest on formal logic and set theory. Without knowledge of these disciplines - the account cannot be understood.

119. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193105 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:31 pm

PBUM,

However, the idea of organising society by setting rules or ascribing actions as good or bad in a way that tries to achieve maximum benefit to society doesn't seem that complicated to me.

I think it is complicated: First, you have to determine what the range of applicability ought to be: Why construct a first-order moral theory to maximize the benefit of one society? What about inter-social relations? What about the nature of that society as it is already - how should that figure in?

Then you have to ask yourself - should society be of more value than the individual? Wouldn't that end in collectivism?

Then you might ask: What is the proper balance between protecting individuals and protecting society as a whole?

Furthermore, what moral code would work best, how do we judge this, how do implement it?

A lot of questions :)

120. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193104 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Jargon is the last refuge of the bullshitter

Maybe, but the converse doesn't hold. Do you think it is possible to explain for example string theory in "plain English", without losing precision?

121. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193096 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:01 pm

teapot,

if you tell "the philosopher" what terms were too technical for a non-philosopher, that person might be happy to explain/translate...

122. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193094 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:57 pm

PBUM,
I'm specializing on philosophy of mind.

But I would say that philosophy of religion is also something I can do very well :)

Moral Philosophy is deeply interesting to me.

But then, most branches of philosophy are related. When you have a certain position on metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind etc - that will determine to a great deal your position on metaethics.

I assume you mean to ask what I think of first order ethics (trying to answer the first order questions of what we ought to do)? In that case, I think it is a very important discipline, but has to rest on solid metaethical foundations.

Concerning this, I subscribe to contractualism. Basically, roughly in the way Rawls arrives at political values from the deliberation of the hypothetical original position, with agents beyond a veil of ignorance, I think we can rationally derive a moral code from that.

The best attempt to make this thought into a working first order moral theory so far has been T.M. Scanlon's "What we Owe to Each Other".

Explaining empathetic urges - that's, I think, something for biologists and neuroscientists to work out :)

123. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193088 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:47 pm

Do french people have morals.
I ask because I can not speak french.

French can be translated to your native language though. Furthermore you can inform yourself in many ways about the explicit societal norms in France throughout history, about the work of French moral philosophers - and you can see a complexity of social interaction that requires the grasping of normative concepts even aside from the above.

124. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193086 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:44 pm

Yes - I thought so... just wanted to make that clear :)

125. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193084 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:40 pm

What I meant that if a person were to act instincitvely, without weighing the consequences, then that action could still be seen as moral even if there are no ethical or societal formalities on what is and isn't moral.

In the sense that others can ascribe moral value to that action - yes. But not in the sense of the action itself actually being moral outside of intersubjective evaluation. Actions don't have intrinsic values. That would require metaphysically object moral values - it would, in short, it would require the supernatural.

126. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193079 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:33 pm

An instinctive action can still be moral.

That's kinda question-begging I think.

Let me explain my argument:

Morality is always the ascrption of moral values to actions, intentions, dispositions, traits of character etc. But morality is not metaphysically objective - there are no metaphysical entities, actions don't have intrinsic values. Morality is thus an intersubjective construct - the actions get ascribed value through the application of the concept of right or wrong of an aggregate of individuals in relation to each other. Animals do not have conscious concepts of this kind. They do not ascribe value to actions, intentions, dispositions etc. Morality necessitates such ascription - therefore animals do not have morality. They have social behaviour that has certain effects on other members of society or themselves - they have egotism, deception, they care for each other and have altruism. But we have no justification for assuming that they ascribe moral values to things.

In saying that animals have morality, we simply make the mistake of thinking certain actions/dispositions/intentions etc to have intrinsic moral value - so that when we find them in animals, we ascribe morality to them.

This also answers the following:

what I meant is that acting morally is still possible without an ethical framework and linguistic concepts sufficient to "formalise" what is and isn't moral informing the person's actions.

.

In my analysis, which I think is at least approximately correct, this would be wrong insofar as it rests on your ascription of intrinsic value to actions.

127. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193056 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Guys - I think you need to make a distinction between unreflected action that corresponds to what we would call moral actions and morality as in being consciously aware of moral demands etc.

If we want to reserve the term "morality" for the latter, then it probably appeared very recently, with language complex enough to communicate and operate on these concepts, to have them explicitly.

We might call the rest "proto-moral behaviour".

128. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193051 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Well, I am a philosopher - and have studied ethics in quite some depth.

This:

A good example of an arbitrary preference is meat-eating. We, at least in the industrialized world, live in a time and place where everyone can and should be a vegetarian.

...Is question-begging. There are many consistent and applicable ethical theories that do not require vegetarianism.

Also, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that moral values are anything but intersubjective social constructs.

And no, a moral philosopher would not necessarily say that it isn't altruism when it's directed at one's kin. For the moral philosopher, the base entities are individuals, not kins. The interpersonal relationships are important, but they are not the base entities to which moral behaviour is ascribed.

129. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192980 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:30 am

Speciesism, for example, just refers to a type of collective, pathological self-love whereby we show an arbitrary preference for own species at the expense of every other.

Every species has that - it's not pathological.
What would be pathological in this respect would be to regard every thing on this planet has having equal moral status. That would be pathological in rendering us incapable of any action - and thus in its ultimate consequence would be the demise of ours species.

The moral question is far too difficult to be dismissed by an a priori assumption of equal moral status of everything.

130. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192968 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 10:58 am

I assume trying to convert family members is a misfiring of the otherwise useful instinct for looking out for our own kin.

I don't think it's a misfiring - it fires correctly, but the information (the beliefs which evoke this) is wrong.

131. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192967 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 10:57 am

I'm with Steve here.

I have met and talked to so many religious people. And most of them do want others to know the "truth" about god - or at least how to find the true way so that they will be able to please God and enter the kingdom of heaven.

When it was still the official doctrine of the catholic church that unbaptized children who die are going to spend eternity in Limbo - that was a major incentive for christians to have their children baptized as early as possible. They didn'wanted their children to know the grace of god, to get into the kingdom of heaven.

There are many religious people who are genuinely altruistic and are genuinely altruistic and empathetic. That's part of the motivation for indoctrinationa/mission and has been all along.

That's the real pervasiveness of the doctrine. You are a human being capable of empathy and altruism. You believe firmly that in order not to suffer the worst fate possible in the hereafter, the others have to believe the right things and do the right things. So you have an altruistic motive for missionary work.

Actually I think the class of altruistic actions/beliefs are a subclass of egoistic beliefs/actions - because in the end, every action is motivated. Anyone's altruistic actions are always also done out of the desire to live up to one's own standards - to fulfill the own desire/moral imperative to behave altriustically.

I'm also not saying that religion isn't narcissistic - but it would be wrong to say that it isn't true that religious people act on their beliefs also out of empathy and altruism (misconcieved though it is).

132. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192639 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Okay - here's a defence of my position:

This seems to me to be the problem of metaphor. Evidently - we don't posit a real "virus" in a computer. There are no cells there injecting (part of their) genome into a cell.

We know about computers because we constructed them. Computer viruses can be seen from the functional perspective as pieces of information that influence an appropriate information-processing system in a way that furthers their own distribution.

Didn't you note how every proponent of memetics is also a physicalist? This means that memes have to reduce - which is to say that they are nothing over and above certain information-patterns processed in certain systems.

Unless we have such a reduction - "meme" will remain a metaphor - and as such necessarily ontologically opaque. If the metaphor is taken literally, this will mean it's ontologically untenable. If it is not - it means we don't have a sufficiently detailed and "integratable" concept to make ontological commitments.


Now, I must express my gratitude to Al-Rawandi here. He has advocated a distinction which - I think - we absolutely have to make: Interpersonal relationships OCCUR, they are not entities.

The distinction between occurring and existing is an important one. Existence posits entities - things that occur are processes/structures etc., not entities.

Thus, "Memes" as pieces of information are abstract constructions from observations of concrete entities having certain effect on the systems that are in relation to them - playing a certain functional role. It is the "rôle" that is important here - and as such, "Memes" can be said to "occur" in a metaphorical sense.

In short: A meme is certainly not a concrete entity! What else could it be? An abstract entity? If one does not want to advocate ontological dualism/pluralism - this means that they reduce to mental concepts, which in turn reduce to structures and processes in information-processing systems of certain complexity.

The role these "memes" play in the interaction between organisms has to reduce (for the naturalist/materialist/physicalist at least) to information-processing systems exchanging patterns of information via activation-states of their various sub-systems (linguistic behaviour, "body-language" etc) - and as such are occurances, not entities.

A materialist/naturalist/physicalist ought to reserve the quantification of "existence" to entities - everything that is not a concrete entity "occurs" or "obtains".

Thus, "memes" are a metaphor for structures/processes - and are as such not entities. They are not elements of our ontology - but occur as interactions or structures between/of the elements of our ontology.

133. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192628 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Yes - I know.

Ah, you use the Frege-terminology. Reference as extension of a term and sense as that quality over which we pick out the entities to which the term is supposed to refer.

Oh my - don't get me started on the problem of universals. I think that either the problem is a pseudo-problem arising form the limits of our thinking and language - or, if that is not the case, I think either anti-realist conceptualism or trope nominalism would be the best answers we have.

I personally haven't made up my mind on the question of "meaning" - or, if you will - of sense and reference, although I do tend towards a Strawson-type behaviourism.

134. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192620 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 4:29 pm

fizhburn,

... I thought as much - I read through your comments, thought about the book you recommended and thought "Philosopher with a special interest in Philosophy of Language sounds about right" :)

Say, - if I may ask - what is your position towards philosophy of language (specifically concerning meaning)?

135. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192592 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Didn't see that coming, eh? :)

If we had a neuroscientific theory about content of consciousness, tacit belief and communication... then we might make out structures and processes to which the meme might reduce - but until then, it still makes for a good visualization tool.


Good to see that I can still surprise people.....*chirp*......*chirpchirp*.....*cough*

136. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192588 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Nothing against that Article by Blackmore - but I'm always a bit skeptical about her... the "meme" idea is a nice and helpful tool for visualization, but ontologically untenable I feel. Also, it seems a little conspicuous how she went from all-out endorsement and belief in esoteric bullshit to "hardcore scientific realism" so quickly.... ah well.

137. New British Petition: Stop the Nightmares

Comment #192585 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Interesting,

I recently wrote a paper on how religious indoctrination in childhood violates basic rights, such as inviolacy of the person, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought - because it is not freely chosen, it denies the children the opportunity to develop an understanding of their freedom of religion and the faculty to make use of it - and because it is mental cruelty.

I'm not saying we should remove the children from the care of the parents. But perhaps child services could impose requirements on the parents, and an impartial expert might have to check if they are fulfilled now and then.

138. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192576 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 12:47 pm

fizhburn,

Thanks - sounds very interesting. I don't mind difficult. I'm a philosopher specializing in philosophy of mind/neurophilosophy. I have some knowledge of neural network theory, neuroanatomy, automata theory, have good training in formal logic etc... I love difficult :)

Anyway - if you're interested in the body/mind problem and neuroscience... Paul Churchland is someone whose work you might find really interesting.

Sadly, I have so many books to read that I would need more than one life to earn the money to buy them all - and then I would probably need another life to read them all :)

Oh, btw - I have a blog where I post about philosophy, (neuro)science, religion and stuff... if you're interested, you're welcome to take a look and contribute to the comments if you like:

http://mphil.livejournal.com

You'd be in good company - Steve Zara, Brian English and others are frequent visitors as well :)

139. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192566 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 12:01 pm

But we're not in completely uncharted territory in terms of brains and computation. Our brains are neural networks - and while we are far from having a working model with the complexity of the brain, computational neuroscience does know how (in principle) the brain computes things - we know this by modelling dynamic neural networks.

Neural Network theory has perhaps provided more insight into the body-mind problem in terms of information-processing than anything else. You won't get anywhere with van Neumann architecture linear processing. Neural networks are the way to go... for example we can show that even incredibly simple artificial neural networks are extremely effective at novelty detection and learning.

Paul and Patricia Churchland have been doing work in this area for quite some time.

"Neurocomputational Perspective" by Paul Churchland is well worth a read.

140. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192556 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 11:30 am

Even the capability for improving one's logical problem-solving faculty is highly dependent on the degree of neural plasticity (much higher in children and adolescents than in adults), and even more so on previous "conditioning" to rationality - ie the training of the neural network - which establishes and strengthens certain synaptic connections.

141. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #192324 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 7:08 pm

Podaar,

well, yes :)
________________
On a side note - just for those who don't know - I don't subscribe to Nietzsche's ethics - I just cannot STAND it when theists think they're smart and bring up Nietzsche in that way, or when they bring up the old "no justification for morality without god" crap.

142. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192264 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Brian,

as soon as I get to it, I will... really busy preparing two talks I have to give next week :)

143. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192257 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:35 pm

I won't give you an apology for my being pedantic - you should be used to that by now :)

144. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192254 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm

Brian,

IQ measures 'academic' intelligence, the ability to do science and math.

That's not entirely true... it measure problem-solving capacity (which is one definition of intelligence) via grasp of language, geometry, algebra, "pure" logic, complexity of spatial representation and ability to perform operations in that domain etc... not just math and science.

145. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #192250 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Just two things:

1. Steve - excellent job!

2. When, oh when will theists stop make bold claims about things they know nothing about (okay, I understand, that would make theism pointless)?

I am a philosopher, and have studied (among other things) ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science in great detail. I have also read all of Nietzsche's works several times and have studied a portion of them under one of the foremost experts on Nietzsche.

Nietzsche was not a Nihilist!!!

Nietzsche thought that one had to view the world from a perspective beyond good and evil in order to re-evaluate even the value of various moral codes. The death of god in Nietzsche's philosophy meant the dawning of the insight that the old moral systems, old values are baseless, without justification - mere products of society and struggle between groups (for example the "slave morality" of Christianity arose from being in the position of the weak and underprivileged before the Roman Empire became Christian).

Nietzsche thought that you have to abandon all previously held morality in order to establish new, adequate moral values. He never thought that morality itself has no meaning without god.

Theists like to bring up Nietzsche in the context you did... and to anyone knowledgeable about Nietzsche's work, they display yet another instance of ignorance, of baseless and blatantly wrong claims.

We have experts from so many fields on this site - you better think twice before posting any bullshit. But since thinking about whether one's position might be complete bullshit is not really a strength of theism, it's hardly surprising this keeps happening.

But it gets really embarrassing when - after having the flaws in the argument pointed out... theists figuratively stick their fingers in their ears and continue as if nothing happened...

... okay, I don't want to make unwarranted generalizations: MOST do - two or three have shown capability for real rationality here. You are not one of them (so far).

You make claims about philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, biology, philosophy of biology, ethics, metaethics, Nietzsche etc.

Everyone does that - but there are people who are experts in these fields. Who have put real work into this. Who have studied it rigorously - read the important works, contributed to the research.

Don't get me wrong - I have had wonderful, enlightened discussions with theists who have studied these things at least to an intermediate degree.

But all of the theists I have seen visiting this site show a blatant lack of knowledge in the areas they make bold claims about.

You are one of them. And you accuse the atheist of arrogance? You should be ashamed of yourself.


I will have you know that philosophical ethics and metaethics is doing an extremely good job without theism, and that numerous first- and second-order theories exist that are entirely compatible with materialism/physicalism/naturalsim (however you want to call it).

I will also have you know that theistic moral theory is philosophically vastly more problematic than any other theory - in fact untenable, because the Aquinas'-account of morality from god's necessary nature rests both on a logically inconsistent concept of god (especially in the inconsistent concept of aseity) and cannot evade the criticism of claiming to provide objective, absolute, intrinsic morality while actually only being able to provide a concept (inconsistent at base) of necessarily arbitrary and non-intrinsic morality.


Honestly - take about two years of intense study of ethics and metaethics. Maybe then you can begin to appraise the issues here - and contribute something meaningful.

You really should be ashamed of your arrogance and hypocrisy in claiming to be living according to a standard that demands humility.

...the nerve!

146. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190790 by MPhil on June 9, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Far be it for me to question your authority here, but do you have to do all that to dissent with plantinga's ontological proof?

No - but I think you should be able know why it doesn't work. There are various reasons, of course - so take your pick :)

But Styrer is right, the punishment I laid out is not enough... I still think he should have to do that, but hey - how about you think of some more things he should have to do?

147. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190754 by MPhil on June 9, 2008 at 1:56 pm

It really is wooter, only in English.

My goodness - evidently, this guy has no idea what a "logical proof" even is.

How is anyone supposed to take this seriously when the author makes the blatant mistake of labeling an inductive argument a "logical proof"... not to mention the incredible weakness of the arguments.

As a punishment - this guy has to read up on Plantinga's modal ontological proof and Mackie's refutation - and give a half hour talk on why the modal ontological argument doesn't work - including a formalization of all the arguments.

148. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #190305 by MPhil on June 8, 2008 at 7:13 pm

Of course it does. Purpose and intent don't just imply or suggest the need for an organizing agent. They demand it.

You have no idea, have you? You're making very bold claims about conceptual necessity... no, intentionality does not explain causation. Causation explains intentionality - you don't need to invoke purpose. All that is needed in this case is molecual chemical attraction. And in general, intentionality reduces to representation and information processing.... and we know positively that purely physical systems can do that.

Sorry, you are in way over your head here - philosophers (like me) have thought about this for millenia. Religion just rides piggy-back on whatever philosophical acheivement fits them best. In short - it's parasitic.

Read some John Bickle ("The new wave of psychoneural reduction"), Daniel Dennett ("Consciousness Explained"), Jaegwon Kim ("Physicalism, Or something near enough")... or dozens of other real philosophers.

It won't do just to make bold claims. This is my speciality - and I happen to know you're absolutely wrong.

149. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #185259 by MPhil on May 27, 2008 at 9:35 am

I think infidel_michael is correct. The theory can however be made much more elaborate and substantiated:

Our psychological pattern-detection is tuned by evolution to look for intentionality. In this case, more false-positives than false-negatives is evolutionary stable: It is evolutionary more stable to have a brain that mistakes a stick for a snake than to have a brain that mistakes a snake for a stick.

This being so, the sentence "And where is a person, there is a purpose." is getting it backwards I think. People observed these things (lightning, sun and moon moving around - and plants growing for example) and ascribed intentionality, for how could something that has such clear and present effects on their lives, the sun being hotter or there being too much rain caused their crops to die... there must be intentionality. And where there's intentionality, there's a person.

It is, of course, nothin more than a "virtus dormitiva"-explanation. (See Molière)
"Why does opiom make sleepy?"
"-Because it has a 'sleepy-making spirit/force/power'".

We are hard-wired for pattern-detection, and this pattern detection is linked to intentionality-ascription, because from the evolutionary perspective, only if you can predict the action of your predators/prey will you survive - and that requires intentionality-ascription, cognitive or non-cognitive, conscious or unconscious. But with humans it was at some stage cognitive and conscious - so they saw change/movement (sun, lightning, growing of crops etc) and were led to ascribe intentionality - and subsequently personality.

This also explains very neatly why (for all we know) there were polytheistic religions before there were monotheistic religions. Multiple individual events that had to have intentionality behind them - multiple agents for the various kinds of events.

150. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #185111 by MPhil on May 27, 2008 at 2:04 am

I should add that in general, researchers investigating animal cognition are extremely cautious. Even with the most sucessful and insightful studies, they are modest about their conclusions. For example Uller's study investigating "theory of mind" in animals maximally would show that certain animals have an understanding of intentionality on the level of human infants. But 1. the human infant level of cognitive understaning is not that of an educated adult, and 2. Uller herself said that more evidence is required before claiming that chimpanzees understand intentions (on the level investigated).

Humphrey was one of the first to suggest that social interaction requires theoretical understanding. This is a basic assumption of many researchers, but i) assuming this is true, the theoretical understanding we have evidence for ascribing is only ever at the level we test for (usually not surpassing human infants) and ii) this basic assumption is questionable, and has been criticized by many academics who study the mind and/or cognition in one way or another (see for example Carruthers).

In the "theory of mind" studies of animal cognition (most notably the "Sarah" study of Premack and Woodruff in 1987), they infer from certain behaviour that animals succesfully performing the tast have an "ability to predict and explain behaviour by attributing mental states". I could very well live with that, provided that one's interpretation of that does not exceed the evidence. This does not show understanding(explanation) as cognitive operations on the level adult humans use, but maximally on the level of pre-educated human infants. But anyway, this interpretation is now out of favor - it is not parsimoneous enough. The most scientifically warranted interpretation is that Sarah attended to the goal of the actors in the experiment, not their mental states. This is by the way also the interpretation Premack, the original researcher, now endorses (Premack 2003)

It should interest you that one of the people involved in the evalution of all the important research on animal cognition was/is Daniel Dennett, who is just as cautious about ascription of animal cognition as I am (as every sceintist should). He does not deny what I do not deny, but does deny what you assert above what I assert.

He was even involved in constructing better tests for animal cognition, for example together with Bennett in 1987, when they proposed that a (to be specified) coordination problem requiring the adaptation of one's own behaviour in expectation of what another subject will do is a far better test than that of the Sarah-study. A good coordination problem might require that the subject evaluates a false belief of another subject. But Dennett also recognizes that any ascription of cognitive faculties by such a test hinges on our ability to determine the content of predictions the test-subject (chimps) might make. And this is very problematic indeed.

It is generally recognized in the studies of animal cognition that it is extremely hard to develop a good nonverbal test for a theory of mind. This lowers the justification for attributing the faculties in question - meaning that nonverbal tests are always open to warranted interpretations not requiring the ascription of cognitive faculties. But I'm not that skeptic - I think nonverbal tests can be sufficient. But I still agree with Dennett (and others) that for an ascription of certain cognitive capacities of arrays of nonverbal tests to be warranted, is has to be the most parsimoneous interpretation and must not ascribe capacities beyond what it actually tests for, meaning that interpretations have to be minimal. This is of course basic scientific pracitice, guided by the rule of parsimony, because otherwise the probability of the interpretation will sink very low for reasons of arbitrariness when not observing parsimony.

Dennett's suggestions were taken up by researches studying the theory of mind in children (see e.g. Wimmer & Perner 1983) (this was the famous "Maxi"-test, which has gained popularity even among laypeople). Such false-belief tests usually show that human subjects under the age of 4 are incapable of such a theory of mind. Similar tests have not succeeded for animals - because we don't know how to get animals to tell us under which box they think Maxi will look.

Also, the entire array of studies relies on the acceptance of folk psychology as a theory or as a simulation. Here I agree with the Churchlands (and others) that given the evidence provided by modern neurosciences (and artificial neural network research) tells us that the ontological commitments of folk-psychology are unwarranted.

Anyway, such distinguished researchers as Heyes (1998), Tomasello (et al, 2003), Hare (et al 2000) and Uller (2004) have reevaluated investigation into animal "theory of mind" from nonverbal paradigms. This lead to the abandoning of investigating whether or not we can ascribe a general theory of mind - rather, researchers now test for simpler, more isolated cognitive tasks and whether animals can perform them, such as understanding perceptual states, goals and intentionality.

Studies by e.g. Plooij in 1978, Whiten & Byrne in 1988, Goodall in 1986, Povinelli and Eddy in 1996, and Hare et al in 2000-20001 suggest (such studies of course never prove, only suggest, but that's enough for me) that chimpanzees can integrate into their behaviour-guiding mechanisms a basic understanding of perception and intentionality.

Studies by Emery and Clayton in 2004 suggest that certain scrubjays who have been put through certain learning-experiences engage in experience projection.

Andrews and Hare recognize that there are severe epistemological problems in drawing inferences about the mental capacity of animals from such experiments. But even taken at face value, they provide no evidence whatsoever that the cognitive faculties of the best test-subjects approaches that of an average adult human. An ascription of cognitive complexity approaching our own is simply not warranted, and all these researches know that.

The experience-projection, understanding of perception and intentionality these animals show is still far below what an average human adult can do.

One other difference in cognitive faculties between humans and other animals is that all the tests have shown are certain animals being able to functionally integrate a certain projection in situations of natural need (acquiring sustenance or averting danger for example). Humans are the only species of which we know that they can engage in cognition unrelated to their underlying drives - the acquisition of food, mating behaviour, establishing and maintaining social order, caring for infants etc. We see no evidence whatsover for cognitive behaviour unrelated to such things in animals - high-level complexity cognitive tasks such as philosophy, theoretical physics, set-theory, empirical investigations into the structure of spacetime, the fundamental particles etc are i) several orders of magnitude more complex than anything we observe in other species and ii) fundamentally beyond what is required for "mere" social survival (including establishment and maintenance of social structure) (and this is aside from the fact that these require language with meta-level capacity).

In a very recent study (2006) performed by Warneken & Tomasello, it was shown that for certain nonverbal requests (such as picking up a dropped sponge or opening a box), chimpanzees and 18 month-old infants did equally well - but that the human infants were able to perform far more complex tasks. Also, studies by Call et al demonstrated that chimpanzees are unable to distinguish between a person being unable to perform a tast and being unwilling to perform a task. - A capacity exhibited by human infants.

Even more than chimpanzees, dogs show social acuity in being responsive to intentional human actions - because we bread for their responsiveness to our needs.

Still, none of these studies warrant ascription of human-like complexity in cognition - in fact, many studies show positively, not only negatively, that the cognitive capacity of animals is far beyond that of adult humans or even human infants.

Some species (dolphins, rhesus monkeys, great apes) even show behaviour that warrants attribution of basic awareness of limited epistemic state - (Hampton 2001, Smithe et al 1995, Call & Carpenter 2001). This is fascinating, but again does not show near-human complexity. This is also shown by the fact that the test-stimuli that are ambiguous in the way that the subject is unable to categorize them (no above-chance correct categorization) to animals are not neraly as ambiguous in adult humans of average intelligence, showing that the cognitive faculties for categorization are far more developed in adult humans.

Furthermore, the inferences drawn from these (arguable most intersting) tests have been criticized by Carruthers, who argues that second-order reasoning is not necessitates by the experiment. Operating over beliefs and desires of different strengths on a first-order level is sufficient. This rival interpretation lowers the justification for ascribing the faculties in question. In fact, for ascription to be warranted, experiments would have to be devised that do not allow for more parsimoneous interpretation that does not ascribe second-order reasoning.

But I am not as skeptic as Carruthers, although I recognize that I am far less educated in this field than he is. I would be willing to ascribe this faculty. Still, the warranted ascription is again by several orders of magnitude less complex than than certain human behaviour we observe.

Now, having not only layed out the conceptual and meta-scientific requirements in my last post, but also having examined here what the actual experiments have shown, my position stands as strong as ever - while yours is clearly shown to be "bad science", unwarranted ascription of faculties beyond the evidence.