The fact that an empirical method (science) is by far and away the most successful at understanding reality, only got a poisoning of the well fallacy using quantum mechanics. This rather belies the idea his position is rational of course, but I certainly accept your point, in that it is being touted as rational.
I’d have settled for a straight answer, to a few salient questions, but after a certain amount of time in a debate, reticence or evasion on a point becomes an answer’
If he could demonstrate some objective evidence for a deity, or that a deity is even possible, then is it reasonable to imagine he’d not have done so?
Panpsychism is unfalsifiable, if one believes an unfalsifiable idea is true, what is one’s criteria for disbelief? One cannot believe all unfalsifiable ideas, as this must involve contradictory claims, if one believes some and not others, then in this can only involve bias, and is therefore closed minded by definition. It is rational to disbelieve them all at least.
No point reading yet another repetition of the claim, if it’s predicated on this possibility, then for it to have any meaning you’d have to demonstrate they are possible, and you have failed to do so beyond mere assertion.
No it doesn’t, this is a false equivalence fallacy since we can detect those properties of matter empirically, demonstrate them with objective evidence, but all you can offer for the other is an hypothesis, you can’t even demonstrate they are possible. I’d say that was a significant epistemological difference.
Except it is not, as you seem to have violated Occam’s razor, by skipping from “if it is possible” to it being the same as properties we know exist.
Clearly she’s asking you to demonstrate something to support that claim, beyond the claim itself. You can’t claim something has properties, then that you can’t explain what those properties are.
I can give my personal opinion on how mermaids smell, it would have the same epistemological value, and for the same reason.
Like speculating whether mermaids have scales or are wet to the touch.
Why, if it’s speculation as you say, then it has little empirical value. If it’s unfalsifiable then this idea can’t be tested either. The main value you seem to attaching to it, is it makes claims that you want to believe explain something material scientific methods currently can’t. Religions never test and discard false or unfalsifiable ideas at their core, science does, and science is manifestly and vastly better at helping us understand reality, despite have a very short time compared to the millennia religions have had.
That’s the same argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy you started with.
Oh I think you have gone way further than that, from qualia to the completely unevidenced and unfalsifiable idea of panpsychism, and the leap from there to a deity was equally underwhelming.
That isn’t true at all, consciousness as an emergent property of an evolved brain clearly has the advantage that we know evolution and evolved brains exist as an objective fact, we can test this as well. When a human brain dies the consciousness disappears, when it is damaged, consciousness is impaired. We can observe differing brains states in an MRI, when we subject the person to different emotional stimuli.
It’s panspyschims that violates Occam’s razor here.
Nope, the problem is it is unfalsifiable, and unsupported by any objective empirical evidence. the implications have no relevance to whether it is true or more pointedly whether anyone can demonstrate it to be true, or even possible.
In science yes, that is one the methods greatest strengths, in stark contrast to religions of course, which adhere to the same core beliefs no matter what, and discard the evidence that doesn’t support those beliefs, the opposite of how science works. However if an idea has massive implications for things we currently think we know, because they are supported by objective evidence, tand that idea is not only unsupported by any objective evidence, but is unfalsifiable and therefore untestable, it’s clearly the latter that should be discarded.
Well definitively establishing an idea as true is the very end of the methodology, at the moment panpsychism doesn’t go beyond the very first step, as it is an unfalsifiable untestable idea, and despite your claims, it appears to be violating Occam’s razor.
This escaped me the first time, but here goes: How can you claim the existence of shit you cannot measure or observe? How do you arrive at its hypothesised existence at all, unless you just pulled it out from your arse? Well, I’m convinced that the phenomenon those qualia describe really are the intoxicating effects of the magic farts emitted by Eric the invsible rainbow-farting unicorn. His rainbow farts are undetectable by empirical methods, but trust me, they’re definitely there. This explains your qualia at least as good as your panpsychism. In fact, I know they’re due to intoxicating unicorn farts, because Eric himself told me.
Yes, the idea of dark matter is really wild, yet there are people attempting to simulate the evolution of the universe. And you probably accept these simulations as a significant advancement for science, even though they include something we can’t measure or observe.
Look, all I do is present what I find to be the most plausible explanation for qualia. Now, if you disagree, tell me what the alternative is. Maybe this?
The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it. Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens. This reliance on a “magical emergence” of consciousness does not address the “objectively unreasonable” proposition that elements that have no attributes or properties that can be said to relate to consciousness somehow aggregate to produce it.
Therefore a significant part of neuroscience seems to accept magic as the origin of consciousness, and you seem very comfortable with that. But I’m not comfortable with it because I want to understand where qualia comes from. So yes, I prefer something you cannot measure or observe but at least makes sense, rather than NOTHING or MAGIC, which I believe is your current position.
This paper also continues by saying…
If strong emergence is not considered to be a satisfactory explanation of how consciousness arises, then a reasonable alternative might be that, rather than it emerging at some point in a complex system, it was actually present all along – perhaps even as an exotic field or particle or similar component that comprises the fundamental fabric of the universe. Some ToC include a proposal that consciousness in some most elemental or fundamental form, is a currently unrecognized (in that it is missing from the standard model of particle physics) basic constituent of the universe. For example Benjamin Libet’s “conscious mental field (CMF)” that “would not be in any category of known physical fields, such as electromagnetic, gravitational, etc. ” (Libet, 1994). Such proposals recognize that in a more comprehensive appreciation of the nature of the universe’s most basic composition we would appreciate consciousness in the same way that we appreciate that the fundamental constituents of the universe we know about have properties such as mass and spin and charge. Variations of this idea either propose that everything is, to some degree, consciousness [panpsychism (Skrbina, 2007; Goff et al., 2018)] or that consciousness emerges in a recognizable form, or reaches a critical threshold, only under certain constructions. Clearly, brains would be one such construction (indeed currently the only such construction known to us), but even then, there needs to be an explanation of why some aspects of nervous system function have consciousness and why some have not.
This fragment feels like déjà vu of everything I’ve been saying here that you’ve called irrational. I want to ask a simple question: What is the alternative to panpsychism—magic? Please offer an alternative. Thank you.
“Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”), is a fallacy in informal logic.”
Not have an alternative explanation to the unevidenced and unfalsifiable idea of panpsychism doesn’t relationally lend that idea any credence at all. Though of course the alternative has been offered multiple times, that consciousness is an emergent property of a physical evolved human brain. This is where you ignore this fact, and the fallacy you keep using, and circle to science not being able to fully explain how this leads to subjective experience or qualia.
…and around and around we go…
No explanation yet of how panpsychism remotely evidences any deity either, or what objective evidence can be demonstrated for any deity, or that a deity is even possible. Just the same claim, using the same logical fallacies over and over and over…all while ironically invoking the word logic.
Forget your god thing, @JESUS_IS_WITH_YOU ; Eric reigns supreme in regard to the ultimate experiential phenomenon of the universe/ qualia. Is that rainbow scented gas I smell?
Of course, you are free to disagree and re-switch the burden of proof. Perhaps consult (re-consult?) Spinoza or Chalmers for guidance,Tye for criticism.
You’ve got this bass ackwards. What is measured is galactic rotation curves - the rotational velocity of galaxies as a function of distance from the center. Turns out these do not follow the rotation predicted by newtonian physics based on the measured mass density of the galaxies. So what’s up with this? There is clearly something wrong here, either in the measurements or in the modelling of large scale physics of galactic gravitation. We’re pretty certain the measurements are OK. So the physicists set up two main hypotheses to explain this phenomenon: 1. there is some undetected and unknown mass present in the galaxy that affects the rotation; 2. our understanding of the gravitational interaction on these scales is incompete. Option 1 leads to the hypothesis of dark mass. If we can detect such dark mass particles and/or figure out what the dark mass really is, the problem is solved. Scientists are working on this problem as we speakwrite, but it is challenging, as there is a huge parameter space to cover experimentally. Option 2 is handled by modified newtonian dynamics and relativistic variants, plus full galactic scale calculations using general relativity. So far, only #2 has had some progress in fititng theory to data. Even if both avenues towards an explanation fails, we have learned what not causes the effect we measure, science has progressed, and we have learned more about the universe.
So, the dark mass hypothesis starts with objective empirical data, and formulate possible and falsifiable explanations to the measurements. Your qualia+panpsychism concept tries to explain subjective experiences with something non-falsifiable that can not be empirically measured. And that’s the difference. For the galactic rotation problem, we fan falsify/rule out hypothesis #1 or #2 above (or both) by figuring out whether they fit the empirical data or not, in popperian fashion. Panpsychism cannot be measured empirically, so it cannot be ruled out. Thus it is nonscientific, it has no explanatory or predictive powers, and we have learned absolutely nothing by formulating it. And you can just as well explain whatever you try to explain with it by invoking the intoxicating farts emitted by Eric the invisible rainbow farting unicorn. It’s just as valid (in fact, it’s subjectively superior since I formulated it myself). Here are some other questions that, if answered, will lead to similar amount of knowledge (i.e. nil):
How many angels can fit on a pinhead?
Can an almighty and all-powerful god can create a rock that is so heavy that she cannot lift it?
How many roads must a man walk down?
Etc.
Why this cop-out invocation of magic? Others, e.g. @Sheldon, have already brought up the concept of emerging properties of big enough and complex enough clusters of neurons. This explanation has the obvious advantage that we know that…
So we start with empirical facts, and formulate the (falsifiable) hypothesis to fit the empirical data. Unlike your unfalsifiable panpsychism.
I will not open new cans of worms; I simply refuse to do that. If we can’t agree on something as straightforward as acknowledging that panpsychism is a valid position—maybe not the one you prefer, but one that isn’t necessarily irrational—then it will be even harder to discuss more complex issues.
You posted it, why not try addressing the fact it is an irrational false dichotomy fallacy, instead of dodging the point yet again.
Oh your dishonesty has been manifest in evading all objections, no need for any pretence.
Yes it’s clear you can only quote the arguments of others, and have no idea how to rationally defend the position you favour. However in a debate one is obliged to point out when you lie, and misrepresent panpsychism as plausible, and now valid while you ignore all objections that refute those claims utterly, and ignore more plausible alternatives, based on objective facts, to endlessly repeat the same logically fallacious claims, over and over. When you accuse others of irrationality it just makes me smile, like the “no you are!” schoolground taunt of a small child who has no answer.
All anyone need do is read your posts to see they are littered with common logical fallacies, but by all means quote where you think I have violated a principle of logic?
This is a quite common trope among superstitious apologetics, the pretence they contain some esoteric meaning that is beyond the intellect of poor bumbling atheists like me. The real reason you can’t move past panpsychism is because the idea is an unevidenced unfalsifiable notion, that cannot be tested. It’s not more or less complexity your irrational spiel needs, it’s an open mid, and some grasp of informal logic.
Which he neatly side stepped, again, as if using someone else argument ringfences his claim from critical scrutiny. Since panpsychism has no explanatory powers as to how human consciousness emerges, I would normally marvel at such cognitive dissonance, but it’s de rigueur
for superstitious beliefs.
This is a blatant lie. Your explanation of qualia as an emergent property has the problem of “hard emergence,” which is equivalent to saying “magical emergence.” In other words, your supposedly more plausible explanation relies on magic, yet you keep repeating that it is more plausible.
When I provide you with references showing that this is a sophisticated form of magical thinking, you ignore them and continue insisting it’s more plausible.
Let me explain it in simple terms: You can’t build red walls with green bricks. I don’t find it more plausible than assuming there are red bricks. This view is supported by papers, discussed in philosophy and neuroscience, and clearly makes more sense to me.You refuse to acknowledge the core problem to avoid admitting its logical conclusions. This is the issue we’re facing here.
No, that’s a lie, as I never claimed that the emergence of consciousness could be fully explained, only that there is objective evidence it is an emergent property of the brain, which is falsifiable and testable, in stark contrast to panpsychism.
Another lie, this is a false dichotomy fallacy, you’re clearly impressed with this irrational claim, but all it indicates is you haven’t even a basic grasp of informal logic.
One can admit to not fulling understanding how consciousness emerged in evolved brains, without any recourse to magic, paradoxically panpsychist has no explanatory powers whatsoever, is completely unevidenced, and unfalsifiable and untestable, I am starting therefore to think magic doesn’t mean what you think it does. Would you like me to look it up for you, and quote the definition?
The idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain can be tested, is falsifiable, and supported by objective evidence, so of course it is more plausible that panpsychism, which is unfalsifiable, untestable, and is not supported by any objective evidence, and of course does not explain the emergence of human consciousness at all.
Another lie, far from ignoring the argument, I pointed out (in the post you;re responding to) that this claim is a false dichotomy fallacy, since one can accept that we don’t fully understand how consciousness emerged as a property of the brain, without any recourse to magic. Panpsychism is peddling magic, by definition, and again this was also explained, and duly ignored by you.
Let me dumb this down for you, as it’s not sinking in, panpsychism is unfalsifiable, untestable, unevidenced, and has no explanatory powers as to how human consciousness emerged.
Repeating your claim, doesn’t address this.
That’s a lie, anyone can read this exchange to see this is not true. unlike religious apologists I don’t base belief on not knowing something, as I recognise that god of the gaps polemics, are an irrational and use an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
And widely refuted in the same.
logical, fnarr
This is the gap you’re desperate to insert a deity into, I don’t base belief on not knowing something, as it is irrational, and unlike your rhetorical use of the word logic, i know what it means.
Just to make it clear, it is OBVIOUS that certain conscious functions can be explained by studying the brain—this is known as THE EASY PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Nobody in this thread has argued against this, so stop trying to evade the issue as the circle narrows around you.
I’m speaking about the part where you yourself said, “… I never claimed that the emergence of consciousness could be fully explained…”. You ASSUME that these still-unexplained aspects are an emergent property, BUT THIS IS NOT PROVEN. You have your arguments, and I have mine.
Please try to understand that not reaching your conclusions does not mean I’m being irrational.
Irony overload right there…The only circle I have seen, is your use of circular reasoning fallacies, but fair play that made laugh.
Nope, I have never made and would not make any such claim. as I explained earlier, this indicates your inability to understand the epistemological difference between disbelieving a claim, and making a contrary claim. It’s a fundamental flaw in your reasoning. One of them anyway.
Straw man fallacy, I have never made any such claim. I wonder if the irony of your irrational lie, is remotely comprehensible by you here, using a known logical fallacy, while dishonestly implying that I am calling your spiel irrational because you’ve reached a conclusion I don’t share, because it unfalsifiable, untestable, unevidenced, and has no explanatory powers. Hard question of consciousness isn’t answered by panpsychism, anymore than the question of what caused (if anything) the big bang is explained by the evidenced assumption god did it.
They are both nothing more than appeals to magic.
What exposes that as a lie, is the fact I have explained why I think your arguments were fallacious, and you ignored them everytime, this leads to two unavoidable inferences:
You don’t understand common logical fallacies, or fallacies in informal logic, or the fact that your relentless use of them makes your arguments irrational… by definition.
You haven’t the integrity to learn this fact, as you’re more interested in closed mindedly pursuing this idea you want to be evidence for a deity, than trying to reason rationally and with an open mind, using critical thinking.
It’s your choice of course, these attributes pervade religious apologetics, but you can’t bring such irrational fallacious claims here, and expect people not to point them out.
The real inroy of course, is one doesn;t need panpsychism, it’s an extra step that is entirely redundant if one if going to posit a magical deity, since both ideas are unfalsifiable, untestable and unevidenced, why not drop the step, and go straight to a deity? Panpsychism adds nothing, which is likely why it fell out of popularity long ago, as it lost traction ot scientific advances that demonstrate objective evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
I’ll bet my house you are, but it wouldn’t matter. You assigned a claim to me I had not made, stop paraphrasing me with claims you think I have made, and use the quote function, that’s what it’s for.
For the record note the dishonest deflection away from the expansive criticisms of his arguments, yet again, in favour of more whataboutism.
Quote something verbatim, and I will address honest objections, but you just seem to be reverting to your previous dishonest tactics, because you could see your claims and arguments were coming apart like warm bread, and I encourage anyone to read the previous exchange for themselves to see this, and how you;re now spinning this into whataboutism.
Lets try some simply questions to test this:
Do you accept that panpsychism is unfalsifiable, untestable, and unsupported by any objective evidence, and that it adds no explanatory powers to our understanding of the emergence of consciousness?
Do you accept that there is objective evidence to support the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, that this idea is falsifiable, is testable, has and is being tested?
Clearly this makes position in 2 more plausible than that (panpsychism) in position 1.
That was a lie, I assumed and assume nothing of the sort.
This latest dishonest attempt to move the focus onto straw man misrepresentations assigned to me, no doubt has something to do with me highlighting this lie, and yet another logical fallacy you used:
…and how keen you are and have been from the start, to avoid ever directly acknowledging let alone addressing your endless use of known common logical fallacies.
