On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 12:43:27 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > On 25 Jul 2019, at 13:27, Telmo Menezes <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Thu, Jul 25, 2019, at 11:06, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >>> On 24 Jul 2019, at 20:31, Telmo Menezes <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 17:41, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> On 7/23/2019 11:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > >>>>> > >>>>> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 17:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > wrote: > >>>>>> > >>>>>> On 7/23/2019 4:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > >>>>>>> Hi Brent, > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > wrote: > >>>>>>>> On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > >>>>>>>>> I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural > (and > >>>>>>>>> arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we > cannot > >>>>>>>>> doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is > >>>>>>>>> immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect > >>>>>>>>> consciousness. > >>>>>>>> That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as > conscious, > >>>>>>>> unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day. The myth that > >>>>>>>> consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to > be > >>>>>>>> understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. > There's no > >>>>>>>> scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an > electron > >>>>>>>> either. But with the electron we're happy to have an effective > theory > >>>>>>>> that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery > mongering > >>>>>>>> about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere > measurement > >>>>>>>> and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory. > >>>>>>> I understand your point that we can always make additional demands > for explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do > more than what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly > predict phenomena. > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>> My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our > disagreement: > >>>>>>> No scientific theory predicts consciousness! > >>>>>> What would it mean to predict consciousness. When we predict > electrons > >>>>>> what we mean it we predict the observable effects of electrons. > >>>>> Right, so what are the observable effects of consciousness? All I > can see in neuroscience are predictions about the observable effects of > (wet) computations. Neuroscience is not capable of pointing to a behavior > and saying: ah! consciousness! see, this couldn't happen without > consciousness. > >>>>> > >>>>> If you rob physicists of electrons, suddenly many of their models > will have holes in them, they will no longer be valid. If you rob > neuroscientists of consciousness, everything works the same. > >>>> I'm not sure that's true. ISTM that some of the experiments by > >>>> cognitive neuroscientists include conscious thoughts and judgements > as > >>>> elements of their theory. > >>> > >>> They try, but they can't measure. > >>> > >>> - Alexa, are you conscious? > >>> - Of course! > >>> > >>> Err… > >> > >> Most neuroscientists believes in Matter, and, sometimes even > >> explicitly, like the ASSC, do not address the mind-body problem. > >> > >> When they have some understanding of the problem, they eliminate > >> consciousness and person, which is the logical thing to do for people > >> believing in both matter and mechanism: consciousness does not exists. > > > > I have met a few neuroscientists, and this is also my impression. I have > also met researchers who were trying to become neuroscientists, but > eventually were discouraged by the lack of philosophical rigor in the > field. The former become well-known, the latter disappear into other > endeavors. I will not get into more details to protect identities. This > sort of dynamic creates a false impression of consensus in some scientific > fields, especially with the lay people who are interested in science, and > helps make scientists with non-aligned positions seem crazy. > > > I know. That lasts since 1500 years. > > Separating religion from science is like saying that you have the right to > believe in any BS, which is exactly what the exploiters of fears needs. > > Some scientists (to be sure very few, but some are influent and nobody > knows why) consider that doubting physicalism is just an heresy. > > They don’t argued, and unlike John Clark and Bruce Kellet, they only > ignore. It is the lie by Omission. > The lie by omission is what Barr did when “summarising” the Mueller report > (to give another example). > > The book by Patrick Dehornoy “Théorie des Ensembles” has the merit to > point how the Bourbarki (the French mathematicians with many heads) imposed > somehow their misconception on sets to some generation of mathematicians. > Just the field of mathematical logic is not well seen in both mathematician > circle and philosophical circle. At the social level, we are still at the > primal level where people dispute territories, instead to collaborate on > extracting and sharing what grows there. > > Theology has to come back to reason. Reason + the universal machine => > modesty, and essentially undecidable theories. > > Presented roughly, > - Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem says that about the numbers (and > digital machines) we just understand about nothing. > - Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem is that the (sound) machine’s > themselves understand “quickly” that they understand about nothing about > the numbers. > > Judson Webb is right, Gödel’s incompleteness protect Mechanism. It makes > the Church-Turing thesis consistent with Cantor-Kleene's diagonalisation. > The “negative theology” of the universal machine (that is Solovay’s > results, and G and G* and the intensional variants) makes the universal > like a baby god, and if we can understand this, in the long run that makes > terrible children. > > Unfortunately, the current option seems to perpetuate the old technics of > insults, violence, and lies, in the fundamental domains (and then in the > rentable domains as well). > > The problem is always with the dogma. The inability to doubt might be a > form of symptôme of insanity, like the pretence of selconsistency by the > machine makes her inconsistent. > > We have just to transform the Renaissance, and let Theology comes back > where it is born, in science, through science, that is trough doubts and > dialogs/arguments. > Only the liars fear the truth. > > That will take some time. Meanwhile if we could stop the lies on > medications, that would already help a lot. > > Bruno > > >
Actually, from the *Stawsonian materialist view*, *most neuroscientists do not believe in matter*, or rather, they believe in a facade of matter absent experientiality. Feyerabend talked of science and religion, but as science has been turned into a religion, with scientists claiming that their theoretical entities are godlike in their reality (their "truth"), and thus other competing theoretical entities are like other gods that should be banned. @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6a5a49c6-232b-4ae2-b7ef-0918c2bf4a10%40googlegroups.com.
