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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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May 21, 2018 - 07:24am PT
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Warner, I wouldn't even be on this forum if it weren't for people like you and Richard to spar with.
Every time someone with an opposing view gets axed I feel something is lost here.
Richard points were made and are often made by demeaning the intellect of those he has contention- not to say he doesn't make solid points.
Do we need "Philosophers of Philosophy" with the intent to expose pervasive subjectivity and malpractice?
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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May 21, 2018 - 07:29am PT
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To your point- I was first addressing Richards post, which did not mention the question of a soul, then separately addressing the OP's question.
I didn't make that clear.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 21, 2018 - 08:32am PT
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Don Paul: If someone were trying to cure cancer, I doubt they could get very far with these methods.
As a person who’s had cancer, I can report to you that the medical community says that one doesn’t cure it. Everyone has cancer, except that for some it’s a bit more rampant.
There is no “cure” for life of any sort. Life has its own reasons which we can’t fathom.
It’s been surprising to me over the years here how many people here who work in technical fields have not actually practiced (and thus had detailed experience in) science and its methods.
Science is constructive; it does not “find” things.
The difference is large enough to drive the HMS Queen Mary through. In scientific research studies, one first starts with an idea, and tends to “find” instantiations of the idea after constructing theories, constructs, variables, operational designs, and metrics—all developed to “find” what’s being looked for. Viola, and it tends to do exactly that—sort of. Most all research studies rely upon statistics, and the power or extent of its findings is often quite poor. Look to the statistics and see what R-square is being claimed. A “success” (the R-square, the explained variation, the proof, a publication engendered) is often under .30 statistically.
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mooch
Trad climber
Tribal Base Camp (Riverkern Annex)
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May 21, 2018 - 08:48am PT
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Not for this empty shell.....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 21, 2018 - 09:15am PT
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Your writing a wall of text (WoT) is not surprising, and pushing you to make your arguments clearer by provoking your outrage (whether or not you admit you're outraged) a simple task.
When I read through your post in its entirety the core argument revolves around "truth" and the way that you see scientists interacting with society, you seem to single out theoretical physicists in particular (and please note that I am trained as an experimental physicists).
Jumping down to your summary you seem to be saying that science competes against other ideas about the "true" description of the universe (and even against itself in view of "contradictions" arising from scientific research). Your argument then becomes a challenge for science (and physics in particular) to provide a philosophical basis for the claim to "truth."
Perhaps you could provide a concise argument why there should be a "true" description of the universe.
Experimental observation provides a description of the physical universe. This description is quantitative, and the precision and accuracy of that quantitative description specified.
Theory describes the organization of these observations into a logical system that provides quantitative predictions, including the anticipated observations which experiments have not yet made.
The interplay is dynamical, but essential, to doing science absent a complete description of reality.
The lack of that "complete description" could categorize the entire scientific program as inductive, a proper deductive process would proceed from the given complete description of reality.
The scientific program proceeds by expanding our knowledge of the physical universe by observation and by prediction, comparable quantitatively with stated, quantitative, uncertainty.
The challenge for competing "true" descriptions must also account for the body of knowledge acquired regarding the physical universe within the quantitative uncertainty of the body of knowledge.
This turns out to be not so challenging, one can state that a super-physical entity has created all of the physical universe to be just the way it is, an unassailable assertion.
However, such an assertion lacks the ability to describe "what is." To science, "what is" becomes a central question, and how to provide answers a crucial component. But not just as a set of "observations," but a set of observations organized into relationships.
To the extent that this scientific program works and provides the "best" description of physical reality can be studied by philosophy. Scientists would criticize the philosophical activity as lacking precise questions, and so admitting a range of answers to broad as to render them "irrelevant," and not helpful for "progress."
We can go into cases elsewhere, you have built your argument on faulty understanding of a number of examples.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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May 21, 2018 - 09:30am PT
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May 20, 2018 - 09:22pm PT
Wayno: How do you define something that you are not sure exists?
I think you’ve made at least two errors here. (i) How can something not exist when you’ve brought it to mind? You seem to be saying that only certain characteristics count for existence. And what if those characteristics don't exist or are irrelevant? Then a thing cannot exist? Would you say that “trust” is a thing that exists? (ii) Definitions are’t really all that helpful sometimes. One cannot seem to choose one thing and define it so that nothing wiggles out.
Mike, I'm not trying to say anything, I'm asking. The OP asks does soul exist. The various replies seem to me to be talking about several different things that people call soul. Could they all be soul? I don't know. If I'm talking about one thing and call it soul and Werner is talking about something he calls soul but I would call spirit, well I would seek clarity. Like you,I am sure about less and less these days. Before I go off half-cocked I try to see if we are even talking about the same thing. Different experiences, different educations, different views, can we find common ground? If my education and vocabulary were not up to your standards could I elevate them to your level or would it be more practical for you to come down to my level of understanding? I am willing to admit that there are many here that have a better grasp of language and ideas than I do. Please don't try to read too much into what I say. I start to wonder, did I really say that?
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J Wells
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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May 21, 2018 - 09:52am PT
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Does a soul have free will?
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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May 21, 2018 - 10:28am PT
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Will being the behavior and interactions with the real world around it, not really 'true' free will.
As I stated before, I can turn you into a raging psychopath with a milligram of the wrong stuff in your brain. Likewise if you were born stupid into a impoverished and violent community, you would likely behave the same as those around you. None of us are as free as we might delude ourselves into thinking.
As we progress, what happens to this immutable "soul" if your body is frozen in a way to suspend all biochemical activity until you're unfrozen 50 years hence? Does the soul hang out in the meantime in the Soul Bar?
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Don Paul
Social climber
Denver CO
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May 21, 2018 - 11:10am PT
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MikeL if you don't like my example of 'curing' cancer then pick any other. Let's say you want to study the role of an enzyme in a chemical reaction. Use any type of reasoning you want. I think you understood my point which was that people are actually studying consciousness as a scientific problem. It has been surprisingly difficult to understand.
Jwells- Daniel Dennett makes an interesting argument that free will, the ability to say NO and take an independent course of action, is one definition of consciousness. An entity incapable of acting according to its own beliefs and goals would not be conscious. Don't ask me to explain it from my phone lol, but his approach is always from viewpoint of outside observer.
Fear - where can I get a milligram of that stuff?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 21, 2018 - 11:51am PT
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Your writing a wall of text (WoT) is not surprising,
Whew! I wondered about that TLA.
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L
climber
Just livin' the dream on the California coast
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May 21, 2018 - 12:00pm PT
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^^^^Yes, I was wondering what WoT meant, too.
Thanks Ed!
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 21, 2018 - 12:21pm PT
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Richard, your lengthy commentaries are much easier reading than picking up a book by a famous philosopher like Kant and trying to understand their arguments. Thanks. (You, too, John).
"God made the natural numbers; all else is the work of man." -- Leopold Kronecker
We have ten fingers and ten toes, so it's no surprise we are addicted to base ten. As for whether the number "one" has a kind of reality apart from its descriptive character, Paul might give a more fluid reply (he's talked of the "divinity" of numbers), but I simply never ponder this question. It's irrelevant to my interests.
Mathematics, of course, grew over the years without the firm logical foundations developed in the last two centuries. A case in point, at one time the Masters, including Cauchy, argued that the sequence 1,0,1,0,1 ... had a limiting value.
My introduction to foundations through set theory in 1962 was an eye opener, and it was a delight to work through the elementary stages of development, starting with the empty set. But other aspects of the subject seemed bizarre, and I recall our professor joking "My advice: never take a course in the philosophy of mathematics."
And I never did.
When Weierstrass, Cauchy, and others developed a reasonable way to define convergence of infinite processes the branch of mathematics called Analysis began in earnest. In 1954 at Georgia Tech I quickly accepted their ideas, as did my classmates, and didn't give the subject another thought until, years later, I read of Non-standard Analysis - which solidified the notions of infinitesimals that Leibniz and Newton had entertained.
In short, the mathematics I enjoy works in a 100% predictive manner, unless I tinker with fundamentals - and I'm not likely to do that. What I write on a piece of paper or program on a computer is quite "real" to me.
A more intriguing question might be: Is there mathematics without symbols or figures?
edit: We've wandered far afield from the original question, but thankfully only one (minor) politard post.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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May 21, 2018 - 01:16pm PT
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Fear - where can I get a milligram of that stuff?
PM me. :)
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J Wells
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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May 21, 2018 - 02:02pm PT
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the ability to say NO and take an independent course of action, is one definition of consciousness.
What if every decision we think we made was simply a cumulative product of our genetics and life experience at the time of birth, things over which we had no control?
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WBraun
climber
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May 21, 2018 - 02:47pm PT
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No he didn't..
He's not even in the ball park.
He's in outer space floating aimlessly.......
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Trump
climber
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May 21, 2018 - 04:28pm PT
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“one might think this is somehow rocket science”
Whooa, dude, ... good move!
For the most part, I think, rocket science is not what humans are doing in our heads. 5,891 words in a post?! Maybe believing that understanding the complexity of taking a piss is beneath the awesome nature of what our evolved brain function status is doing, and we yearn for our rightful identity as masters of the universe.
4 billion years later, seems like it’s been working so far. Really, those flowers are objectively beautiful, and aren’t we magnificent for perceiving that?
“I am not compelled to participate in any of these discussions.”
Yea me neither. I just do it, for reasons that I believe are 100% of my own making. Yea me! But I do find I need to make up some facts just to get me started. And just so you know, of course I do temper that with my quantitative understanding of its uncertainty.
As a side note, among our awesomely evolved populace, made up facts seem to be coming into greater vogue nowadays. Yea me! Huh, let me think about that some, in between my rocket science calculations.
“Well that experiment didn’t falsify the theory.” But it is a formal fallacy to then slip into the very tempting supposed corollary: “The theory is correct.”
Sure, free will is what I do, and I haven’t been proven wrong yet!
Rocket science is trivial compared to what we formally logical rational human thinkers believe we do. The answers to these non rocket science questions seem to come all too easily to us.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 21, 2018 - 06:21pm PT
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Wayno.
You’re right. I’ll back up. As you point out, I probably mis-understood your writing. I thought I was reading an assertion. You were indeed asking a question rather than posing an assertion as a question. My error.
Yeah, I don’t know, either. One of the problems IMO with analysis is that it cuts things down into small pieces for observation, but in doing so it destroys what was interesting because the distinctions are not really that salient. If there is such a thing as a single reality, then bracketing it may be destroying what we find of interest. A leaf, let’s say, is interesting to us, but we can’t hardly look at it in isolation alone, it seems to me. No leaf seems to exist independently all on its own. It has a support group, and that support group appears to be the rest of reality.
Don Paul,
The above writing to Wayno would be my response to any other so-called problem that you're looking for (other than cancer). I honestly don’t know much about soul other than what I’ve gleaned from aesthetics from the practice of art, and from depth psychologists who talk about archetypes and the collective unconscious. Many of those folk see soul as the salt (blood, sweat, tears) that comes from everyday living, rather than the rarified air of ascetic spirituality. Werner has other ideas.
Don, here’s what I’d say. If people are really attempting to study consciousness, then they would be well-served to start making systematic observations of it. Forget the brain and cognitive science theories for just a minute or two. Mediative disciplines that go back for a few thousand years have looking at consciousness. Start with that data.
I’m no expert, simply an advanced novice, but I think I can report confidently that all spiritual meditative traditions find or highlight the very same things, although they use different metaphors and technical terms. If one “does the work” (practice and study), one begins to see the threads of commonality among those different spiritual traditions (yoga, buddhism, kashmiri saivism, dzogchen, bon, etc.). Sure, they disagree (as Werner points out strongly) about some issues, but overall, they are all pointing to and saying the same things. Why ignore or dismiss that “data?” It's systematic, it's consistent, it's very long-standing, and it appears to have generated outcomes (liberation) that have been strikingly noteworthy.
As an ex-academic (and probably a poor one), why eschew data that tends to resonate among different approaches about consciousness and awareness? Because it’s not “scientific?” I’d say it’s far more scientific than what I read in the journals because it had far more data to work with. But, you tell me.
Trump: . . . we formally logical rational human thinkers . . . .
Bloody hell. Read Kahneman or Tversky, and then tell me where these “formally logical people” are. You’re caught up in the myth of modernism. You're trolling.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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May 21, 2018 - 08:10pm PT
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it used to be common to accuse someone of irrationality by calling them 'bird brained'
you don't hear that criticism any more since people started trying to emulate bird flight with hang gliders, para-gliders, and wing suits; and discovering birds to be quite brilliant in ways that are incredibly complex to analyze in CFD models of flexible airfoils in turbulent air
this is similar to characterizing complex rationalizations as 'it's not rocket science'
that phrase would also go out of vogue if people had personal experience as i do with how rockets and space craft are really designed
appropriate terms include cascading fault trees, FMEA failure modes and effects analysis, unanticipated emergent effects, systems resonance stress factors, proximity crosstalk between theoretically isolated systems, mutually interdependent variables transcending analytical modeling capabilities (aka combinatorial explosion), and behaving nominally in highly unusual ways
these are academically sanitized descriptions of how its really done ... through having a good imagination about forces and moments and properties of materials and thus developing a feel for it guided by expensive and spectacular trial and error
most of the brilliant math modeling is done after the fact in attempts to understand what happened, using computational fluid dynamics, structural engineering analysis, and orbital dynamics; all of which were pioneered the hard way long before all the 'rocket science' attempted to explain it properly
for example the technical aspects of the Apollo program are very well and thoroughly documented and most of that documentation was generated after Nixon was briefed on the real stuff and ordered all those brilliant NASA 'rocket scientists' on hold for a number of years
attempts to do the science and design requirements proactively as i was involved at NASA with the International Space Station and Constellation Programs just proved the point as we spent years developing unworkable paper requirements while SpaceX just charged ahead and built rockets
it seems to me that there are similarities here to the challenges of science attempting to understand the spiritual/material universe
meanwhile i'm looking across my desk into the dense green forest of the spring season and listening to frogs, squirrels, ravens and woodpeckers
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