Logical fallacy makes for a poor beginning to any endeavor. However, a deep study of the meaning of scripture, while being careful about your attribution of belief, might indeed, provide a starting point for understanding the human condition.
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Too Many Extremes in Disbelief
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Except, you're claiming that belief in god is a crime, and you're claiming libel/slander is not a crime. Something to consider, don't you think?
OK. I'll keep scrolling past your posts then.
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
How is it a logical fallacy to begin with something that makes sense to the individual?
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
Your logic is in error.
You have committed the "Straw Man Fallacy" by attacking a weak argument that was neither explicitly nor implicitly made in the post you're replying to. Since this is a fallacy, it means your reply is a non sequitur and does not logically follow. Since it does not follow, it is not sensible.
Since it is not sensible, it is nonsense.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Just boil water - bubbles, dissolved air. Upturn a glass into a bowl of water.
Being convinced of what makes sense to one in no way preempts or negates logical fallacy. It made sense to David Koresh of the Waco cult that he was a god, was he not subject to logical fallacy? It seems to make sense to Tom Cruise and John Travolta that they will inherit their own planets (or some such nonsense) someday, are they not under the delusion of a logical fallacy?
Usually, those bubbles are steam. In other words, gaseous water.
A better way to see air, and I am sure one that everyone has seen, is to blow some air through a straw into some water. You will see a nice, spherical volume of air.
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No.
Belief in god is a crime? Slander is not a crime? You know better than to misrepresent what others say. If you think I said anything above quote my actual statements.
The logical default is not my opinion, it is part of the rules of debate and logic. Obviously when a person makes a claim it is inefficient to accept their claim as true because not only are there many casual consequences in our lives, but in debate the process will have to procede with tearing down the claim versus building it up. What do you do if two contrary claims are presented and you have to accept both as automatically true? Confusion. The system works vastly better by considering the two claims by default untrue and you examine the evidence to reveal which is true. It could be neither is true.
As far as personal consequences do you believe every claim you hear? Someone tries to sell you a bottle of pills and claims "They will add years to your life", do you accept it as true? Most of us are aware of scams and our best defense to the magical claims is to not believe them. Something sounds too god to be true, do some research and find the facts. Someone walks up to you and asks if you have heard the good news of Jesus' sacrifice, would you believe them and become a Christian?
What does my experience with a diverse set of Christians have to do with anything I said? You are casting some accusations here but offer no evidence nor any explanation.
Again you don't clarify what you are responding to.This is the prosecutor's fallacy. The statistics world-wide do not match the statistics of individual populations. Your experience is not representative of everyone.
Base rate fallacy - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
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Clizby Wampuscat
Well-Known Member
I find the same attitude from some Christian’s when presented evidence for the truth of Islam. Some Christians will even deny personal experience from Muslims while expecting you to believe their personal experience or working of prayer.
The bottom line is the evidence presented for Christianity is not good enough for belief. However everyone’s basis for belief is different. Generally the reasons christians reject Islam’s claims are the same reasons I reject christian claims.
This is why determining truth through science is better since there are no truths in science only things that have not been shown to be false yet. Gravity is a great example. Newton described it correctly but had no idea the connection until Einstein figured it out. Anyone can confirm these facts and many have. Religious claims cannot be tested or repeated. When we try they fail.
I try to be a bit more flexible, as is common in science. When presented with an existence claim, the first question I would ask is how could we tell the difference between existence and non-existence of the object claimed?
For example, the existence of axions would predict the existence of extra gamma radiation from certain areas of the galaxy. This gives a difference in prediction between the 'existence' camp and the 'non-existence' camp. The issue remains unresolved until an observation is made concerning that extra radiation (or some other predicted effect).
Two things are crucial as I see it: the first is that there be *some* way of distinguishing existence from non-existence through observation. The second is that judgement is withheld until the evidence is in. If the first condition is not achieved (in other words, no way to found to distinguish existence from non-existence), the existence question is considered to be moot and the whole issue irrelevant to any understanding. It "isn't even false".
In this context, the issue I have with most theology is that there is no way to distinguish a universe without a God (but which operates under natural laws) from a universe with a God (and also operates under natural laws). So it is more that the question of the existence of God isn't even well defined (in most cases).
Wouldn't you agree that in the scenario you're describing the camps can attain an answer because it is plausible and solvable?
I understand your point, but I don't think the ideas of God matter much at all. What matters is that there are mere mortals making claims about a God existing, yet seldom admit uncertainty and fallibility, not can explain how they actually know anything at all. I'm vastly more tolerant of believers who "know their Bible" and believe to a degree that gets them through Tuesday night Bible study. I think there is a big difference for believers who believe for their own reasons and mind their business versus those who debate, which seems a very small portion. It amazes me how many believers don't really know what they believe, but have a strong belief that a God exists and try to express themselves. They don't really seem to learn how to debate, nor care. It seems they are more interested in being heard that they believe, and to hell with doubters.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
The amount of data a robot processes may far exceed anything a human is capable of. But does the robot have qualitative experience? Is it capable of self awareness? It certainly wouldn’t need to be, in order to go on processing data. It’s this phenomenal consciousness, this subjective experience, which constitutes the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
That our experience and understanding of the world is always accessed through the prism of consciousness is a limitation, sure. In the same way time and space are limitations; but it’s part of the framework of our existence, and absolutely fundamental to our experience. And what do we learn by, if not experience? This comes down to an issue if separability, and exposes one of the limits of reductionism. That when you reduce reality down to it’s component parts, something vital is lost.
Separate reality from the consciousness of that reality, and you have an incomplete picture; a picture which resides in any case where all pictures reside - in the conscious mind. This is not to say that no mind independent reality exists, external to ourselves. But in trying to conceive of that reality from an imaginary ‘God’s eye’ perspective which is not available to us, and without accounting for for the limitations of our perspective, we are bound to have a misleading view of the world. Accounting for the limitations of our perspective, means accounting for consciousness; the object, the observer, and the act of observation are inextricably linked. There simply is no way of looking at the world as it would be, were we not here observing it.
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RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Which perfectly illustrates the role of the conscious observer, in defining reality.
We can only speculate what that reality is to a bee. We could paint a scene of a colourful flower meadow, see how many bees it attracts, and get some idea that way.
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mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yeah, here is a fact about knowledge for 3 versions of knowledge and truth.
Person 1. I know that truth as for facts is correspondence truth and there is not other way of actting in the world, as that is not doable.
Person 2: I know that you are wrong, since truth is coherence truth and it is a fact, that truth can't be done differently.
Me: Well, with logic it follows that one of the persons are in effect acting without knowledge of truth and thus it is a fact, that in at least one case, a human can act without truth and knowledge. So it may be that there is 3rd version of truth and knowledge.
The hiiden assumption in your model is that there is in effect only one version of truth, where as in practice there are several because truth is a human behavior and there are several human behaviours for different aspects of making sense of the world. And making sense of the world is a human behavior.
So for someone like me, there is on single universal class of truth or facts.
In effect there are at least 6 different kinds of truth, facts and knowledge.
-Objective, physical facts
-Objetive formal cogntion versus other cognition/feelings.
-Social facts relative to cogntion, culture and morality.
-Individual psychology for how to cope in practice.
-Existential psychology for how to cope for the fundamentals of being a human.
-What happens if you try to add up all 5 and make one version of truth, knowledge and facts.
So if you for all but the top one act differently than me and in effect claim it is the top one, I will just do the actual falsifiaction and act subjectivlely different than you.
PureX
Veteran Member
We don't know anything of the sort. It's like saying 'if I see it, it must exist, if I don't, it must not'.
At the moment, we suspect (mathematically) that the universe is made up mostly of a mysterious kind of matter and energy that we have no idea what it consists of or what it does. And that does not appear to interact with the universe that we know, at all. And yet it makes up a far greater portion of it.
So presuming that if we are not aware of mind occurring apart from brain matter then it must not occur apart from it is to be naively egocentric. There is so much we don't know about existence that we have no business proclaiming to know it's limits. All that "dark" matter and energy could embody an entire universe that we are as yet completely unaware of. A universe based on laws and possibilities that we are also completely unaware of.
How is that relevant? I would say that if it processes information in the same way as a conscious agent, then it is conscious.
Which I have never understood as being 'hard'. Yes, technically difficult to give specifics of how brain function gives rise to self-awareness, but not 'hard' in the philosophical sense that, say, Chalmers claims.
Of our experience, yes. Just like the fact that we cannot see ultraviolet. I don't see how that makes consciousness more 'fundamental'.
Yes, precisely. It is only relevant to our experiences. Those experiences are not something fundamental about the universe, but rather a consequence that complex brains can develop and process information in ways that models themselves.
Only in the sense that if we model a planet, forgetting to take into consideration the properties of a small hill will miss something. But I don't see how it misses anything fundamental.
Yes, we have an imperfect lens from which to view the world. Yes, we can only view the world through that lens. So it is, of course, important to learn how that lens distorts our view so we can get a more accurate understanding of the world. But I don't see how that lens is something fundamental about the world as opposed to a limitation we need to deal with.
Well, yes. That is why we make devices that help to extend our senses and detect things we cannot detect ourselves. The fact that we cannot see ultraviolet means we don't have a complete picture of the world. I'm not sure why consciousness is seen as such a big deal in this endeavor.
I don't think that is completely true. For example, we can detect ultraviolet light with various devices. We can use that information to build a more accurate model of the world around us. We don't need to see ultraviolet ourselves in order to know how it interacts and is relevant to various situations. The same is true for other 'invisible' sources of information, from neutrinos, to xrays, to gravity waves. We don't need to observe them ourselves to determine their properties and model the universe with that information.
Sure, there is the relvatively trivial aspect that when we observe something, we may disturb it. This is an aspect of quantum mechanics, but it isn't consciousness that is relevant, but rather the necessary strengths of interactions needed to acquire certain information. And this is true whether the information is obtained by a robot, a human, or a detector of any type.
Why would you assume something that is not evidenced? Why not admit that you don't know and won't take a position?
This is physical. None of this suggests what we call a mind can exist outside of a living brain.
Why would anyone presume a phenomenon exists outside of where it exists? The only minds we observe existing are with living brains. Why assume minds exist outside of living brains? Looking for a gap to shoe horn your god into? We know that trick.
Then take your own advice. So instead of assuming something you don't know, just admit you don;t know. You don't know that minds can exist outside of living brains because the evidence we have shows minds are ONLY existing with living brains, no where else.
What does dark matter have to do with what you think is true about minds existing outside of living brains? Nothing. Grasping at straws and trying to inflate mystery into evidence to believe. We know your tricks.
I see it as a perfect example of how the observer is irrelevant. The reality stays the same in all cases.
And we can model their vision system and learn what they can see (they can see ultraviolet, for example). We can then look at the field of flowers thorugh a filter corresponding to the properties of the visual system of bees and learn what information they have available to them. We can look at how their brains process that information and how that determines their behavior (as well as internal responses).
How is that *not* being able to determine reality from the perspective of a bee?
Actually, we do know at least *some* of what it does. For example, as you said, it does NOT interact with ordinary matter (at least not very strongly). From other data, it doesn't interact with itself very much either (otherwise it would clump more than the gravitational lensing data allows).
So the likelihood of minds being made of dark matter or dark energy is very low.
is there any reason to think otherwise? Until there is evidence of such, it is reasonable to suppose this is how things are.
Potentially, but not all that likely given what we do know about them.