POG Philosophy and Religion thread

[DonkDonkDonkDonk]

Originally Posted by kcaw

After all this.

My only point is that evolution is not at all proven.

why is penicillin not a miracle drug anymore?

[kcaw]

for some reason Im eagerly awaiting this exchange

[kcaw]

Originally Posted by DonkDonkDonkDonk

why is penicillin not a miracle drug anymore?

haha, I don't know why I posted that. Everybody obv knows what I believe.

Penicillin rocks!!!!

[clowntable]

Originally Posted by Supine

Why? Waking up and looking out my window, or walking a few miles, a flat earth seems very reasonable. In light of evidence that its not, I abandon that hypothesis. I would do the same with evolution if a single evidence against natural selection was presented.

What are your thoughts on Chaos Theory?

Thats not the same. Your god hypothesis doesn't yield any testable predictions.

Why do I need to make predictions, my theory is concerned with the past not the future. The only prediction I need to make is that there will never be a counterprove.

Well let me not sound arrogant now (because if you put in such a disclaimer you can't possibly)...have you ever actually done any science? There are myriads of theories that had horrible predictions that were tested and shown to be wrong and the theories weren't just given up.
I'm always astonished that people who worship on the altar of empiricism and the "scientific method" choose to ignore findings when it doesn't fit their line of argument.

One could say that the idea of falsification being a valid and applied scientific method has been falsified by data of how science actually works (or one could say that the theory itself cannot be falsified which makes the whole idea kind of silly).

The hypothesis that any theory should yield testable predicitons or be ignored itself isn't testable. And I don't see how someone reflecting on a theory isn't an act of falsification. Human minds are pretty powerfull.

[metsandfinsfan]

Originally Posted by Supine

Are you sure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...eligious_views

ofc, for the matter of evolutions validity, it doesn't matter at all what Darwin thought.

We were asked why we believe in god

By digger

You guise starting this evolution discussion

[DiggertheDog]

Originally Posted by amplify

Take your time, I'm not going anywhere and I'd rather have a thorough discussion than a quick one.

My starting point would be - that we do not actually experience the ontology of 'other' matter but merely we signify aspects of our own experience of that object.
Which means that given that we do not actually encounter the ontology of other things other than through our own being - we cannot actually provide a hierachy of ontology over anything which is what your statements would imply.

e.g. We encounter an hourglass.
We have language that signifies that the hourglass is an instrument for measuring time.
We do not experience what it is to be that hourglass. Nor can we describe the 'essence' of or the being of that object other than through the language that we use to signify parts of that hourglass. Be it the sand, glass, structure of parts - reducible constiuents of any given part.

Nor is it enough for us to say - we experience the being of matter writ large of that hourglass. For what about the matterness of matter do we mean to experience.

Which is not to put into cartesian 'doubt' the existence of the hourglass or matter but to say that the ontological construct is left short of descriptive power beyond the signification process of language.

That is in part - some of my comments on your assertions.

[younguns87]

lots of big words being used itt.

[clowntable]

Nor can we describe the 'essence' of or the being of that object other than through the language that we use to signify parts of that hourglass. Be it the sand, glass, structure of parts - reducible constiuents of any given part.

I'd say that is the core of our disagreement.

Interesting that you picked an hourglass, could you apply your thought process to "time"? There are no parts for time and it's not really reducible to anything (well units of time not withstanding)

Also how can we form X is like Y or X is Y-ish relations without understanding the essence of objects?

What's also interesting is the "reducible constiuents of any given part." part. What are your thoughts on spontaneuous order or Anderson's "More is Different"?

[metsandfinsfan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...ological_proof

[kokiri]

Originally Posted by clowntable

Also how can we form X is like Y or X is Y-ish relations without understanding the essence of objects?

because what we're really saying is <my perception of X> is like <my perception of Y>. I don't really see why that gives us any access to the essence of other things.

AFAICS (and i have to confess that ontological is one of those words which usually makes me stop reading) Digger is arguing that our own (conscious) being is the only being we can ever truly know. That seems to me to be a pretty solid answer to his question as to why Amp might assert (hypothesize?) that consciousness is fundamental to reality.

To be honest, given that Amp's quote is a critique of a reductionism which subordinates consicousness to a material reality, afaics Digger's comments are more of a partial agreement with amp or maybe an encouragement to go further, than they are a disagreement.

(And language is even more problematic that you suggest, digger, i think)

[DiggertheDog]

Clown - thank you for the reference - I will read Anderson's article in the next 24 hours and give you my thoughts.

[DiggertheDog]

re: Kokiri

In part I was seeking an expansion of Amplify's position. It was not intended as a critique.
It is also true that I am not particularly enamoured with reductionist explanations. It is also true to say that my atheist beliefs are not founded upon positivist or materialist objections. I would not, for example, attempt to exclude god based upon the scientific method.
Finally - I am intrigued by your comment "language is more problematic than I suggest".

[kokiri]

i don't have time to really work it out in my mind fully, and certainly not to articulate it comprehensibly, but just to suggest that the nature of entanglement between our consciousness and language, as well as between language and the physical world, and hence by extension consciousness and the physical world, is sufficiently complex and mutually influencing as to fatally undermine my ability to really think about the hourglass scenario at all. This might be true of the senses, too, but i'm a historian not a philosopher, and i like words and language.

edit: and i understood the thrust of your comments to amp as an expansion on what he was saying, but wasn't sure you intended them as such

[kokiri]

Originally Posted by clowntable

...or Anderson's "More is Different"?

interesting read (and short), thanks for linking. PDF here: http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/c..._different.pdf

my initial feeling is that, whilst he's saying something interesting about the nature of human scholarship - that we need different methods to tackle different problems - that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the nature of physical reality.

That is to say, just because our tools for modelling atoms don't really work above a certain scale, say, it doesn't to my mind imply that there is something fundamentally different going on at that larger scale than is contained in the laws that govern the atom. Rather than there being some new laws/information/nature of reality, i think that it's more likely that our understanding of the atomic level & our maths is incomplete, or that we're unable to really grasp their implications.

I'm not sure that he's necessarily trying to argue this second paragraph, but he seems to be hinting at something akin to it.

[ibavly]

Originally Posted by metsandfinsfan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...ological_proof

existence is not a predicate

I've always been amazed that people can find this at all convincing.