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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
 Posted - 08/19/2010 : 11:23:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
kil said:
The argument that something can't exist cannot rest on whether it's commonly assigned to the supernatural or whether there even is a supernatural. That point is irrelevant to the actual existence of whatever it is.
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Yeah, you are completely not understanding me.
I'm not making any comment on the existance of some deity, what I'm saying is simply that if they exist, they are not supernatural, because supernatural is a nonsense word. It doesn't really mean anything.
Don't know how to explain it any better than that.
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I'm with you (I've thought this for many years).
Supernatural = nonsensical.
If it exists then it's natural. (period)
This whole thought process led me to this conclusion:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10552 |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2010 : 17:44:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
kil said:
The argument that something can't exist cannot rest on whether it's commonly assigned to the supernatural or whether there even is a supernatural. That point is irrelevant to the actual existence of whatever it is.
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Yeah, you are completely not understanding me.
I'm not making any comment on the existance of some deity, what I'm saying is simply that if they exist, they are not supernatural, because supernatural is a nonsense word. It doesn't really mean anything.
Don't know how to explain it any better than that.
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I don't know how you can say that I am misunderstanding you when really, I agree with you. I'm just pointing out that even if we reasonably conclude that there is no such thing as the supernatural, those things commonly attributed to the supernatural still rise or fall on each claims supporting evidence.
All you're saying is that there is no supernatural. Okay. So there is no supernatural. Got you. Agree with you.
I think we are talking past each other.
The thing is, Ebone4rock is saying there is no god because there is no supernatural, and I'm saying that that's not a good argument against the existence of a god. Do you really have a problem with that? I'm freaking trying to teach Ebone4rock a little lesson about facts is all. And I have no idea why you think that I thought that you were "making a comment about the existence of a deity." I wasn't even addressing you.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2010 : 23:13:26 [Permalink]
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These various definitions.....super
embracing in its structure or authority complexes of its own nature |
supernatural
differing from the natural only in degree by being much more than is natural or normal: |
natural
having a physical or real existence as contrasted with one that is spiritual, intellectual, or psychical |
......simply demonstrate that supernatural may define one or more of many different existential states depending upon what the user of the word intends. Supernatural may, or may not be shown to exist, depending upon your understanding and use of the words spiritual, intellectual, or psychical
To successfully communicate, a person must qualify the meaning of the word he uses in the context he has chosen. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 05:47:17 [Permalink]
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originally posted by Kil
I'm freaking trying to teach Ebone4rock a little lesson about facts is all. |
Understood about the use of the word "fact". I shall be more careful about using that word in the future. Doesn't change that it's bullshit though and also doesn't change the fact that I will continue to call myself an Atheist. |
Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 06:43:53 [Permalink]
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bng said:
| To successfully communicate, a person must qualify the meaning of the word he uses in the context he has chosen. |
Oh, I agree. And I have also done just that, as I said I'm using the definition of supernatural that indicates something apart from nature, the context I'm pretty sure I have also made clear.
Ricky said:
| Does it not make sense to assign the word supernatural to those things which, by definition, can not be studied by natural science? Things such as many people's idea of god? Or is there another word for this? |
First, no. Second, yeah, the word for that is "ridiculous shit people made up."
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 06:48:00 [Permalink]
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[can't help myself]I bet I can get you to change Rock, to an (a)theist, it's not capitalized.[/can't help myself]
Still plenty of room in the anuminist section, we gave up on the semantic arguments. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
| Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 08/20/2010 06:49:28 |
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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 07:06:37 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
[can't help myself]I bet I can get you to change Rock, to an (a)theist, it's not capitalized.[/can't help myself]
Still plenty of room in the anuminist section, we gave up on the semantic arguments.
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Shit, go ahead and have a field day with all of my spelling, grammatical, and syntax errors. Have at 'er. |
Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 10:24:58 [Permalink]
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| Just messing around EBR, I would'nt last five seconds in a grammar war. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 19:05:47 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
thoughts are nothing more than an emergent property of brain chemistry and biology, and so wholly material. Suggesting that they're not is to suggest that there's something other than matter and energy in the universe, something for which there is no evidence.
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.....Agreed, I guess, however neither is there any evidence as to the "materialism" of thought phenonomena. I certainly don't deny that thought itself may someday be quantified and qualified into a firm classification and understanding similar to that of many energy forms in the electromagnetic spectrum. However, to my knowledge, that degree of analysis has not yet been accomplished as to thought, and it seems a bit presumptive to firmly define it as "material" in precisely the same sense as energy phenomena is defined simply by stating that there is nothing in the universe except energy and matter.
For one thing, it appears that it is possible that there is nothing in the universe except energy.....| In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. |
...as evidenced by E = MC², matter being merely another form of the manifestation of energy. This, in turn, would suggest that thought, love, hallucination, etc. may be forms of energy (or matter) and presumably be subject to measurement and control such as more conventional elements of the EMS are.
Is this where your concept of | "thoughts are nothing more than an emergent property of brain chemistry and biology, and so wholly material." |
leads?
I am in no way even a shadow of a particle physicist, nor am I in any way suggesting that this is my opinion as to what "thought" really is or isn't. I have no opinion, only wild guesses because of my ignorance of such things. I bow to your far greater knowledge and higher intellectual sophistication in these areas and would not presume to contradict them, so please be gentle in your reply so that I am not forced to further overestimate my stupidity. Ignorance is not bliss, but it is only onerous if not corrected.
However, if thought is indeed "something" in reality terms, would this be a possibility of an appropiate description? If not, what is your view of precisely what thought is in particle physics terminology? |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 08/20/2010 : 21:37:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
.....Agreed, I guess, however neither is there any evidence as to the "materialism" of thought phenonomena. I certainly don't deny that thought itself may someday be quantified and qualified into a firm classification and understanding similar to that of many energy forms in the electromagnetic spectrum. However, to my knowledge, that degree of analysis has not yet been accomplished as to thought, and it seems a bit presumptive to firmly define it as "material" in precisely the same sense as energy phenomena is defined simply by stating that there is nothing in the universe except energy and matter. |
I firmly disagree that there is no evidence that thoughts are wholly material. Everything we actually know about brain function and cognition is entirely consistent with a materialistic view, including the fact that wholly material drugs and trauma change thoughts and even thought processes (and we know of no way that any non-material thing can be affected by anything material).For one thing, it appears that it is possible that there is nothing in the universe except energy.....| In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. |
...as evidenced by E = MC², matter being merely another form of the manifestation of energy. This, in turn, would suggest that thought, love, hallucination, etc. may be forms of energy (or matter) and presumably be subject to measurement and control such as more conventional elements of the EMS are. |
No. Thoughts, love (etc.) are abstractions carried by brains as chemical states. Imagine that the brain is a book that can re-write itself. All the letters and whitespace are made up of matter, but it's the arrangement that provides meaning, and differentiates a state like hunger from lust.Is this where your concept of | "thoughts are nothing more than an emergent property of brain chemistry and biology, and so wholly material." |
leads? |
No. Emergent properties are simply those characters of a system which cannot be predicted from an examination of the individual parts of that same system. For example, so far as my knowledge of physics goes, nothing about what we know about atomic hydrogen and oxygen predicts that water will be "wet." Going the other way, we can say that the chemistry of water isn't reducible to the physics of oxygen and hydrogen (at least, not yet). Hell, so far as I know, we can't even derive the melting point of water from the underlying physics of water molecules. However, we can still measure that melting point and base further predictions and science upon it, so saying that there are emergent properties doesn't imply that there's anything magical going on.
In other words, with our current knowledge, biology isn't reducible to chemistry, and chemistry isn't reducible to physics. There are apparently emergent properties in our way, even though nobody sane claims that God or magic is required to make a cell from DNA or to make DNA from a bunch of atoms. Similarly, thoughts aren't reducible to the biology and chemistry of the brain, even though all the evidence we have is consistent with thoughts being nothing more than the result of various patterns of neuronal excitation.
In still other words, thoughts are nothing more than particular arrangements of physical particles and energy potentials, but we can't currently look at arrangements of particles and potentials and say, "he misses his mother."
Now, my qualifications, above ("our current knowledge," for example) might be taken by some to be blatant scientism, in that I might be implying that someday, we'll have all this stuff figured out and science will win the day. But those who think so want nothing more than to stuff something into the "gaps" in our knowledge, something for which there's no evidence. I'm not saying that we'll ever know the answer - the "rules" for going from quantum physics to the wetness of water, for example - but that doesn't mean that there's room for any made-up nonsense in our ignorance. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2010 : 13:59:17 [Permalink]
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Dave......
Thank you for an elegantly simple and completely acceptably civil response. Discourse with you is becoming pleasant again. You state:| I firmly disagree that there is no evidence that thoughts are wholly material. |
At the risk of returning to a position of ignorance vulnerability as regards "semantics", I have to ask you to define what you mean by the predicate adjective "material". I will explain:
Common definitions of material are wiki
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. |
Webster
1 a (1) : of, relating to, or consisting of matter : PHYSICAL <the material universe> <the material nature of fire> (2) : CORPOREAL, BODILY <material needs> (3) : of, relating to, or derived from matter as the constituent of the physical universe <material forces> b (1) : of or relating to the matter of a thing and not to its form <the material aspect of being> |
I understand your occasional aversion to formal definitions, but it is worth noting that these two significantly relate the word "matter" to the meaning of the word "material"
If the entity "thought" is not matter but is definitely "material", why is it not possible that thought is a form of "energy", arguably another form or manifestation of "matter"?
Wiki, Webster, or any other acceptable definition of "matter" is fully acceptable to me as corroboration for your rebuke.| Emergent properties are simply those characters of a system which cannot be predicted from an examination of the individual parts of that same system. |
But where is it stated that the emergent properties of matter are in themselves also matter?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy recognizes your view of emergence as relates to conciousness and the brain, but fails to designate an emergent property as of the same essence, i.e. matter as the brain| Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind. We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. There has been renewed interest in emergence within discussions of the behavior of complex systems and debates over the reconcilability of mental causation, intentionality, or consciousness with physicalism. |
I appreciate the uniqueness and novelty of your viewpoint, but as yet I do not understand it as the only possible description as to what a thought or emotion may actually be in a reality yet to be discovered..
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2010 : 18:34:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Thank you for an elegantly simple and completely acceptably civil response. Discourse with you is becoming pleasant again. |
I certainly can't say the same.You state:| I firmly disagree that there is no evidence that thoughts are wholly material. |
At the risk of returning to a position of ignorance vulnerability as regards "semantics", I have to ask you to define what you mean by the predicate adjective "material". I will explain:
Common definitions of material are wiki
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. |
Webster
1 a (1) : of, relating to, or consisting of matter : PHYSICAL <the material universe> <the material nature of fire> (2) : CORPOREAL, BODILY <material needs> (3) : of, relating to, or derived from matter as the constituent of the physical universe <material forces> b (1) : of or relating to the matter of a thing and not to its form <the material aspect of being> |
I understand your occasional aversion to formal definitions, but it is worth noting that these two significantly relate the word "matter" to the meaning of the word "material"
If the entity "thought" is not matter but is definitely "material", why is it not possible that thought is a form of "energy", arguably another form or manifestation of "matter"?
Wiki, Webster, or any other acceptable definition of "matter" is fully acceptable to me as corroboration for your rebuke. |
If E=mc2, then energy is matter (and vice versa). But I'm not going to be dragged into another stupid semantic argument.
By focusing on a matter/energy dualism, you're ignoring what thoughts are: chemical and biological processes in the brain. We don't know of anything else they could be. We can modify them with drugs and icepicks, and transmit them to other brains with air pressure waves, radio, squiggles on paper and even pixels on a screen. Do you think the ideas expressed in the sentences you're reading are immaterial?| The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy recognizes your view of emergence as relates to conciousness and the brain, but fails to designate an emergent property as of the same essence, i.e. matter as the brain |
Well, I'd like to know what they think it's "made of," then.| I appreciate the uniqueness and novelty of your viewpoint, but as yet I do not understand it as the only possible description as to what a thought or emotion may actually be in a reality yet to be discovered. |
We can't speak of anything if you're going to suggest that whatever it is might be viewed in some unspecified different way at some unknown time in the future. Thoughts might, after all, be caused by Martian hamsters running in wheels which transmit a code via odor lasers and our brains are merely antennae, but we won't find all that out for 500 years or so. I'm fine with talking about what we know and how we know it, or even what we don't know and why not, but I'm not going to engage with wholly unevidenced and unspecified speculation. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2010 : 19:01:22 [Permalink]
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| Bngbuck, as far as I can see, Dave W. uses the word material as a synonym for natural. In other words, thoughts are naturally occurring things arrising from natural processes in the brain. Whether you call that material or not, seems immaterial to me. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2010 : 19:04:18 [Permalink]
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Any and All (but especially Dave......)
Upon further reflection and some basic physics reference reading, I might want to suggest the possibility that Thought (and possibly Emotion, various mental states, etc.) could be considered as analogous to Potential Energy defined by classical Physics as:| In physics, potential energy is the energy stored in a body or in a system due to its position in a force field or due to its configuration. |
Further elaboration states:| There are various types of potential energy, each associated with a particular type of force. More specifically, every conservative force gives rise to potential energy. For example, the work of an elastic force is called elastic potential energy; work of the gravitational force is called gravitational potential energy; work of the Coulomb force is called electric potential energy; work of the strong nuclear force or weak nuclear force acting on the baryon charge is called nuclear potential energy; work of intermolecular forces is called intermolecular potential energy. Chemical potential energy, such as the energy stored in fossil fuels, is the work of the Coulomb force during rearrangement of mutual positions of electrons and nuclei in atoms and molecules. Thermal energy usually has two components: the kinetic energy of random motions of particles and the potential energy of their mutual positions. |
At this point it would behoove one to ask, "What is the force field that neurons in the Brain (probably Human) are positioned within such that their relative position (pattern) creates a Thought potential? At this point, I would certainly have to concede my ignorance and perhaps state that, if there is any value in such a theoretical framework, such a force field has yet to be discovered to validate it.
However, the Coloumb force, the Weak nuclear force, the Strong nuclear force, and many other complications of particle physics were certainly unknown only a few decades ago; so it may not be unreasonable to feel that there is probably more to be discovered in the particle physics of Neurology; as Science marches on, undaunted by doubt.
I offer this as just a random thought, not a positive declaration that This Is The Way Things Are, and I'm sure that there lurks a logical fallacy somewhere in such wild generalization.
I really don't intend it to be seen as Magic or the work of God, however! |
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Atheist/Agnostic
