Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Blue has given a very good and sufficient response for this already in #29117.

The 'I' that feels in control, makes choices, has feelings, is at a wholly different level of complexity and emergence from the underlying substrate of reality and at those higher levels it is useful to talk of such things as 'control' and 'choice'.  Nonetheless such concepts dissolve at more fundamental levels. Do you imagine that particle physicists refuse to buy apples from market stalls because they know that they can't really touch them.  Touch is a useful concept at our everyday levels of thinking, but it doesn't really happen.  So it is with 'control' and 'choice'

In other words you are OK with the emergent as long as you have the option, when in difficulties, to retreat to more fundamental levels to dissolve any difficult ideas.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I can accept most of what you are saying, but none of this answers the question:

How I can be accused of personal incredulity if everything I do is entirely determined by natural occurring events outside of my control?

Yes it does answer that question. In the sentence, “I identify your use of the argument from personal incredulity” the “I” and the “your” just refer to terms for selfhood that are apparent to us but that are no more than practically useful constructions. Without them we couldn’t function – there’d be no “you” to send the gas bill to, no “me” to buy my wife a birthday present etc.

That doesn’t mean though that there isn’t a deeper reality – that the “you” and “I” “we” perceive aren’t assemblies of countless interacting constituent parts from which the emergent properties of “you” and “I” emerge. You can tell us as much as you like that “your” deepest sense of reality tells you something, but that’s no more reliable a guide to epistemic truth than you telling us that your deepest sense of reality tells you that you’re actually touching the coffee cup you’re holding. Sometimes there are truths and realities deeper and more nuanced than our immediate perceptions allow.

The mistake here is to think that evolution requires us to identify “the” truth, and that that truth is what we perceive it to be. Evolution though needs to provide only truths that are functionally useful, and thus has equipped us with the senses and quick thinking to do that that have stood us in good stead for millennia. More recently though we’ve developed better tools and reasoning that tell us that underlying those apparent truths are deeper ones, and no doubt in due course we’ll identify deeper ones still. And that’s why simply taking a paradox (“free” will) that occurs only at the top line, apparent truth level (but is explained by deeper understandings) and inventing a little man at the controls called “soul” to explain it away is just poor thinking.   

Sorry, but there it is no matter how much it upsets the long-held faith beliefs “you” happen to have.

[torridon]

So if I have no control or choice, I get back to my original question of how I can possibly be held responsible for personal incredulity?

'Being held responsible' is similarly a useful concept at our everyday levels of activity.  It is useful, in that sense, but it does not reflect anything meaningful at the deeper levels where people talk about determinism.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

The big price is that they have no method to validate their claims. This is the problem some people here always run away from: If I line up ten people before breakfast, and the first one says "The Christian God is real for you and I know that because that's my faith", the next says "Allah is real for you and I know that because that's my faith", the third says, "Poseidon if real for you and I know that because that's my faith", the fourth says "there's an invisible dragon living in my garage and I know that because...." etc how then should anyone distinguish the truth value of any one such faith claim from any other?

In other words, abandoning reason and evidence for faith invites only a "meh" in response.

I agree that they have no method to validate their faith. They rely on subjective experience - it's a numbers game - someone in their audience may try a particular interpretation of faith, someone may find something of personal value in it; Others may not try it, or they may try it and find nothing of value in it. Presumably that is one of the reasons why Alan is on here - pass on a message and it may or may not persuade someone to try the experience themsleves.

And yes, many people may respond to faith claims with "meh" for the reasons you have stated.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

In other words you are OK with the emergent as long as you have the option, when in difficulties, to retreat to more fundamental levels to dissolve any difficult ideas.

No. There's no path from torri's post to your misrepresentation of what it means.

[torridon]

In other words you are OK with the emergent as long as you have the option, when in difficulties, to retreat to more fundamental levels to dissolve any difficult ideas.

We don't need to concern ourselves with underlying detail most of the time.  When I boot up Windows 10 on my laptop I have the power of 10 million lines of code at my fingertips, which can all be accessed with a click on an icon.  There is an underlying reality there with which we don't need to concern ourselves.  But if people want to start arguing that Windows is some magic thing that can be invoked with a magic mouse click, then there is scope for debate in which the 10 million lines of code are going to figure.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

I agree that they have no method to validate their faith. They rely on subjective experience - it's a numbers game - someone in their audience may try a particular interpretation of faith, someone may find something of personal value in it; Others may not try it, or they may try it and find nothing of value in it. Presumably that is one of the reasons why Alan is on here - pass on a message and it may or may not persuade someone to try the experience themsleves.

And yes, many people may respond to faith claims with "meh" for the reasons you have stated.

Which is fine when people say, "I find believing X to be true is useful" and it doesn't matter much what "X" happens to be - your god, another god, whatever - it's basically a game of celestial yoga. The minute though such people overreach into objective claims of fact about the world - there really was a resurrection, there really was a "prophet", there really is a "soul" etc - then it all collapses in a heap of competing (and often mutually incompatible) claims and assertions.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vladdo,

No. There's no path from torri's post to your misrepresentation of what it means.

There's this:

Do you imagine that particle physicists refuse to buy apples from market stalls because they know that they can't really touch them.  Touch is a useful concept at our everyday levels of thinking, but it doesn't really happen.  So it is with 'control' and 'choice'.

Torridon like Dennett with consciousness has conveniently disposed of touch and explained it away. It doesn't really happen according to him. Because Torridon is committed to explain the emergent by reference to the lower level.

He is thus only paying lip service to emergence since here he is declaring that emergent things are not real.

You are wrong about my post.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

There's this:

Do you imagine that particle physicists refuse to buy apples from market stalls because they know that they can't really touch them.  Touch is a useful concept at our everyday levels of thinking, but it doesn't really happen.  So it is with 'control' and 'choice'.

Torridon like Dennett with consciousness has conveniently disposed of touch and explained it away.

He’s done no such thing. He’s just explained that our perception of “touch” as meaning actual contact is false, but that it’s a functionally useful perception nonetheless.   

It doesn't really happen according to him.

No, it doesn’t “really” happen according to the science that demonstrates that.

Because Torridon is committed to explain the emergent by reference to the lower level.

It’s not torri, it’s science. Torri is just reporting what it tells us.

He is thus only paying lip service to emergence since here he is declaring that emergent things are not real.

Incoherent nonsense. He’s actually just pointing out that what we experience as “real” is real enough at a superficial level but that there’s simultaneously a deeper reality at play that falsifies it.

You are wrong about my post.

No I’m not.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

Which is fine when people say, "I find believing X to be true is useful" and it doesn't matter much what "X" happens to be - your god, another god, whatever - it's basically a game of celestial yoga. The minute though such people overreach into objective claims of fact about the world - there really was a resurrection, there really was a "prophet", there really is a "soul" etc - then it all collapses in a heap of competing (and often mutually incompatible) claims and assertions.

Not sure what you mean by "it all collapses". Competing claims of belief aren't necessarily problematic, and people not sharing your beliefs or claims of fact goes with the territory of beliefs that can't be objectively validated as true.

I can see it is an issue when people try to force their ideas through using violence or intimidation, but using language to seek to persuade others to support an idea through the use of rhetoric and metaphors and similes seems fairly standard behaviour, as we are seeing in the Brexit debate. Lots of competing claims of facts or predictions for the future.

I get that it appears particularly problematic for you that competing religious claims have a supernatural element, but I don't see it as any more problematic than competing claims about national strategic interests. Some people do strange and sometimes horrible things to promote their claims and ideas, but many don't.

[SusanDoris]

That was such an interesting set of posts to catch up on.

AB: Do you not realise that, because things run on natural  processes, the Solar system will come to an end . Not soon, true, but no amount of wishful thinking will stop it happening. Read a bit more Science.

ETA that Gabriella seemms to have  managed to evade the point again - by a slim margin, true, but evaded nevertheless.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

Not sure what you mean by "it all collapses". Competing claims of belief aren't necessarily problematic, and people not sharing your beliefs or claims of fact goes with the territory of beliefs that can't be objectively validated as true.

I can see it is an issue when people try to force their ideas through using violence or intimidation, but using language to seek to persuade others to support an idea through the use of rhetoric and metaphors and similes seems fairly standard behaviour, as we are seeing in the Brexit debate. Lots of competing claims of facts or predictions for the future.

I get that it appears particularly problematic for you that competing religious claims have a supernatural element, but I don't see it as any more problematic than competing claims about national strategic interests. Some people do strange and sometimes horrible things to promote their claims and ideas, but many don't.

That’s a category error. A religious claim of fact about the world would be, “there really is a god”, “there really was a resurrection”, there really was a “prophet””, "there really is a “soul”" etc. They’re binary – either there was or there wasn’t these things – and certain. It all collapses though because theres no way to distinguish the truth value of any one such claim from that of any other.

Claims about national strategic interest on the other hand make no claims to epistemic certainty – rather they say, “on the basis of my knowledge and experience, in my opinion if we follow plan A then consequence B will follow”. Moreover, when Plan A is followed we can check whether consequence B happened or not.

In short “faith” to justify claim of epistemic fact and “faith” about the outcomes of prospective actions are not the same thing.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Gabriella,

That’s a category error. A religious claim of fact about the world would be, “there really is a god”, “there really was a resurrection”, there really was a “prophet””, "there really is a “soul”" etc. They’re binary – either there was or there wasn’t these things – and certain. It all collapses though because theres no way to distinguish the truth value of any one such claim from that of any other.

Claims about national strategic interest on the other hand make no claims to epistemic certainty – rather they say, “on the basis of my knowledge and experience, in my opinion if we follow plan A then consequence B will follow”. Moreover, when Plan A is followed we can check whether consequence B happened or not.

In short “faith” to justify claim of epistemic fact and “faith” about the outcomes of prospective actions are not the same thing.

That's an error on your part. I didn't say they were the same, I said I didn't find one any more problematic than the other. That there is no method to validate the competing truth claims about the supernatural just means there is no reason, other than personal preference, why anyone should adopt one supernatural belief over another. My point was that evangelists engage in a numbers game - they spread their competing messages in the hope that someone else will pick a preference on a subjective experience basis.

By the way, it is rarely that simplistic in politics whereby we can check if consequence B followed plan A as continuously changing factors that influence the outcome as well as competing statistics and individual perspectives will be used to argue what the actual outcome was and why it occurred. There is often not the simplistic cause and effect you pretend there is.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vladdo,

He’s done no such thing. He’s just explained that our perception of “touch” as meaning actual contact is false, but that it’s a functionally useful perception nonetheless.   

No, it doesn’t “really” happen according to the science that demonstrates that.

It’s not torri, it’s science. Torri is just reporting what it tells us.

Incoherent nonsense. He’s actually just pointing out that what we experience as “real” is real enough at a superficial level but that there’s simultaneously a deeper reality at play that falsifies it.

No I’m not.

Touch is one of the empirical senses Hillside initiated by scientifically described pressure sensors and nervous mechanisms. It is a real thing without recourse to inverted commas.

Your ego and desire to look smart has led you down the Garden path.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

That's an error on your part. I didn't say they were the same, I said I didn't find one any more problematic than the other. That there is no method to validate the competing truth claims about the supernatural just means there is no reason, other than personal preference, why anyone should adopt one supernatural belief over another. My point was that evangelists engage in a numbers game - they spread their competing messages in the hope that someone else will pick a preference on a subjective experience basis.

Wrong again – you sought to draw an analogy between the two and I explained why they’re not analogous: one is investigable and the other isn’t.

By the way, it is rarely that simplistic in politics whereby we can check if consequence B followed plan A as continuously changing factors that influence the outcome as well as competing statistics and individual perspectives will be used to argue what the actual outcome was and why it occurred. There is often not the simplistic cause and effect you pretend there is.

I don’t pretend and you’ve missed again the basic point of principle – investigabilty vs non-investigability. How easy or practical the investigability of one of them happens to be is a different matter.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

Touch is one of the empirical senses Hillside initiated by scientifically described pressure sensors and nervous mechanisms. It is a real thing without recourse to inverted commas.

You’ve missed it again. Of course touch is one of the senses, as are sight, sound etc. The point though is that our perceptions of what’s “out there” and what’s actually “out there” are not the same. It appears that Beethoven’s 9th is somehow floating between the CD player and our ears, whereas what’s actually between them is differential pressure waves; we assume that “touch” means actual contact, whereas there’s no true contact at all.   

Your ego and desire to look smart has led you down the Garden path.

You really should try looking up the word “irony” one day.

[Alan Burns]

AB: Do you not realise that, because things run on natural  processes, the Solar system will come to an end . Not soon, true, but no amount of wishful thinking will stop it happening. Read a bit more Science.

Of course I realise that material things run on natural processes, unless divine intervention occurs. Our material universe will eventually burn itself out, with no light, no heat, molecular activity will cease, and over a vast amount of time, all material will evaporate into background radiation.  It is like a big firework and we currently exist in the early stages of the sparkly bit, living on the cooling crust of a tiny blob of molten material.

[Alan Burns]

We don't need to concern ourselves with underlying detail most of the time.  When I boot up Windows 10 on my laptop I have the power of 10 million lines of code at my fingertips, which can all be accessed with a click on an icon.  There is an underlying reality there with which we don't need to concern ourselves.  But if people want to start arguing that Windows is some magic thing that can be invoked with a magic mouse click, then there is scope for debate in which the 10 million lines of code are going to figure.

But what invokes the mouse click?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vladdo,
 

You’ve missed it again. Of course touch is one of the senses, as are sight, sound etc. The point though is that our perceptions of what’s “out there” and what’s actually “out there” are not the same. It appears that Beethoven’s 9th is somehow floating between the CD player and our ears, whereas what’s actually between them is differential pressure waves; we assume that “touch” means actual contact, whereas there’s no true contact at all.   

You really should try looking up the word “irony” one day.

Again a bit liberal with inverted commas. Beethoven's 9th is real and reproducable. We are not ''hallucinating it'' when we hear it. It is not ''illusiory'', It is in fact repeatable. These are just terms an arse clenching reductionist cleaves to because of his own personal beliefs, when he cannot explain it.

''All must be described in terms of fundementals'' cries the believing reductionist since only it seems fundementals exist.

Yours and Torridon's reductionist ramblings are only possible on here where there is no intellectual supervision.

Good old Hillside, make out that you can only trust explanations at the particle level and the jobs a good'un.

[torridon]

But what invokes the mouse click?

Your desire to run Windows.

Where did that come from ?  The desire to get some work done.

Where did the desire to get some work done come from ?  .......

get the picture ?

[Alan Burns]

the “I” and the “your” just refer to terms for selfhood that are apparent to us but that are no more than practically useful constructions.

Words fail me, Blue.

So the "I" in me is just a practically useful construction.   

But the "I" is all I know.
The "I" is my existence.
The "I" is my world.
The "I" is my universe.

[Alan Burns]

Your desire to run Windows.

Where did that come from ?  The desire to get some work done.

Where did the desire to get some work done come from ?  .......

get the picture ?

It comes from my consciously driven freedom to interact with this world.
Not to just react to it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vladdo,

Again a bit liberal with inverted commas. Beethoven's 9th is real and reproducable. We are not ''hallucinating it'' when we hear it. It is not ''illusiory'', It is in fact repeatable. These are just terms an arse clenching reductionist cleaves to because of his own personal beliefs, when he cannot explain it.

When you miss the point you really go hard in the wrong direction don’t you. All that’s being said here is that our quick, ready-reckoner grasp of reality (yellow, Beethoven’s 9th etc) is good enough for day-to-day purposes but there’s also an underlying reality that’s very different.

Not sure why this is so difficult for you, but there it is nonetheless.   

''All must be described in terms of fundementals'' cries the believing reductionist since only it seems fundementals exist.

Nope, no idea. What are you even trying to say here?

Yours and Torridon's reductionist ramblings are only possible on here where there is no intellectual supervision.

There are no “reductionist ramblings”, just descriptions of where the logic and evidence lead. That you of all people seem to think that you’d be capable of “intellectual supervision” of either of us is beyond laughable, as your recent string of howlers attests.   

Good old Hillside, make out that you can only trust explanations at the particle level and the jobs a good'un.

Ah, I get it now – by “intellectual supervision” what you actually meant was “Vladdo’s lying”.

Fair enough.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Words fail me, Blue.

No doubt they do, but that would just be your incredulity at play again.

So the "I" in me is just a practically useful construction.

Yes. So what though?     

But the "I" is all I know.
The "I" is my existence.
The "I" is my world.
The "I" is my universe.

Only if you won’t permit that “I” to think outside the logically broken prison it’s built for itself. The “I” that is me is quite capable of grasping that there are substrates of reality that aren’t immediately apparent. Why isn’t the “I” that is “you”?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Words fail me, Blue.

So the "I" in me is just a practically useful construction.   

But the "I" is all I know.
The "I" is my existence.
The "I" is my world.
The "I" is my universe.

Yes, In Hillsides world

WE have an illusion of OURSELVES.....In which case what on Earth is it that is being Illuded.

He doesn't actually know if that is even the case but explaining the self away is so integral to his world theory.