Re: Kent Hovinds doctoral dissertation

snex wrote:
On Dec 10, 1:30 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
snex wrote:
On Dec 10, 11:46 am, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 10, 4:59 pm, snex <x...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 10, 3:38 am, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
snex wrote:
On Dec 9, 8:12 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 10, 1:54 am, snex <x...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
Not really, no. It is an argument about the adequacy of
explanations. It is not a question of simply more possible
observations or improvements of existing theories, but the
type of thing that counts as an explanation. Nor do I say
that any specific scientific theory is wrong.
ID is exactly about "adequacy of explanations." dembski
thinks that law and chance are inadequate, therefore "magic"
is the default preferred explanation. "i dont know" never
enters his vocabulary.
You miss again the point, maybe you really should try to read
up a bit on the academic literature on the field that has been
cited to you by me and a couple of others first. Dembski's
analysis is purely about the quantity of data, not the nature
of adequate explanations. In the debate on philosophy of mind,
the issue is if a qualia can in principle be explained by
neurological data, and what that sort of explanation would
actually mean.
you should read up a bit on what IDers actually claim.
But you used Dembski in particular, and his issue is with
(misunderstood) probability theory
their issue is whether or not "naturalistic explanations" can in
principle account for (some feature). thats exactly the complaint
you are making. you think a "naturalistic explanation" cannot
account for qualia. alwaysaskingquestions thinks it is human
intelligence in general that cannot be accounted for. behe thinks
it is the bacterial flagellum. you are all making the same
argument, you are just replacing what feature you think it is
cannot be accounted for.
Behe concludes that therefore, the ToE is wrong, which is a
fallacy. I do no such thing with regards to any formulated theory.
no, what behe concludes is that magic was required. the same thing
you conclude.
Nope, I conclude that at present, assuming such a thing as "minds" is
the best available explanation we have. Tat we do not know exactly how
it works is as irrelevant as it was for Darwin not to know about gene
mutation. or do you think when he published origins, he to was evoking
magic? That is of course exactly what some creationists claim.

your claim was that *dualism* is true, not that "mind" is a currently
unknown black-box explanation.


What exactly do you think dualism is? I gave you already some references to read up on.

alwaysaskingquestions is plain wrong as there are existing theories
that explain the development that I referenced to him. All rather
different from an opinion widely held in the relevant academic
community that no _current_ . neurophysiological explanation is a
good contender for an explanation of qualia, and this due to some
deeper methodological issues.
which is all irrelevant.
Highly relevant. It means that my position is not inconsistent with any
specific bit of scientific knowledge we have.

your position is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics.

You mean like the ToE? You look more like a creationists by the day.

non-
material "souls" cannot interact with material brains in undetectable
ways.

if there is no known answer, then there is no> known answer. "magic" is not a suitable substitute for ignorance.

Labelling a concept you don't understand as "magic" while demonstrating
exactly zero knowledge of it on the other hand is what?

its magic because it is deliberately un-understandable. real
scientists attempt to understand things. religious people give them
magic labels like "souls" or "gods" and are done with it.

You are the only one suddenly talking of souls here.



You can read up on the problem e.g. here: Smythies, J. R.
and Beloff, J, (eds) (1989): The Case for Dualism,
University of Virginia Press Btw, even if you were right,
I'd not be particularly bothered. The "god of the gaps"
charge is really only a problem for people who think they
already have absolute truth and would therefore be nervous
about new insights that reduce the gap. It is not however
a logical fallacy, and since we have assumed ex hypothesis
willingness to see the gap closed in the light of new
research, it is really a non-issue here.
it absolutely is a logical fallacy. "i dont know, therefore i
do know" is a contradiction. if you dont know, then admit
you dont know. dont throw around magic and then demand
respect for your beliefs. nobody owes your willingness to
draw conclusions in the absence of evidence an ounce of
respect.
That results in the same epistemological nihilism that Adman
and fellow travellers espouse. I don't have perfect knowledge
now (or will ever have) so I make do with the best that its
available is not a logical fallacy.
admitting that you dont know results in epistemological nihilism?
bullshit. pretending you DO know is what results in it.
Requesting that you only form an opinion on the basis of data that
is not any longer subject to possible revision does. Had Darwin
followed your advice, he would not have published without having
been able to identify mutations as core mechanism of evolution.
i invite you to provide further data. but you know you cannot.
Well, I already opffered considerably more evidence than you of your
position, but anyway, that's why I label this specific belief as a
"faith based belief". otherwise I would have said it is part of my
preferred scientific theory. And I have lots of data that is sufficient
for me, though all introspective and hence not something I would offer
in a scientific debate.

"lots of data sufficient for me" is a phrase that indicates that your
personal standards for forming a belief are lower than the standards
that following science would require.

Yep, that's why we were talking about faith

so how exactly is faith
compatible with science again?

by using its criteria for those fields of lief where they are appropriate. My introspective knowledge that I prefer Bach over Beethoven is also not scientific.



you

have formed your beliefs in the absence of all data whatsoever.
BTw, may I remark that your own posts are as usual totally
evidence free?
i havent made any claims which require evidence.
Yep, I figured that you believe your are exempted from that rule,
just as Ray and Adman believe they are exempted from the 9th
commandment
yes, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claims.
thats theists. do you have a good reason why this rule should be
ignored when it comes to theism?
The burden of proof lies with the person who wants to convince the other
of their point of view. Nothing is further from me as to convince you of
theism. you are the one who tries to convince everybody of (your
personal branch of) atheism. your burden.

wrong.

bald assertions etc....

it has nothing to do with who is trying to convince anybody of
anything.

That is how the term is used in its original context.
once again, you show why faith is incompatible with science.
science places the burden of proof on the person making an unsupported
claim.

Says who? Burden of proof is not a scientific concept, but a legal one. Some philosophers of science find it helpful as a heuristical device. you might want to read Hahn, U. & Oaksford, M. (2007). The burden of proof and its role in argumentation. Argumentation.21, 39-61.

My approach is not only closest to the original use of the term, but also with any Bayesian theory of science. see e.g. Patrick MaherAcceptance in Bayesian Philosophy of Science PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1992, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1992), pp. 153-160

and more or less the entire literature on paradigm changes in science, from Kuhn following


atheists are not making any unsupported claims. theists are.

its the theists that
insist on doing so.
So your evidence for a purely physicalistic explanation of qualia
is?
my evidence is the fact that after thousands of years of human
history, nobody has ever demonstrated the existence of even one non-
naturalistic entity.
Over the course of the century, what counts as "non-naturalistic"
changed dramatically. newton's gravity, working at a distance, was
considered by many contemporaries as supernatural and magical.

by whom and under what definitions of "supernatural/magical?" gravity
only references natural objects and interactions between them.

Invisible interaction at a distance - considered magical for many of Newton's contemporaries who insisted that proper physicalism requires objects in physical contact. of course, we are no so sued to gravity that we do not realise it any longer.

this is
neither magical nor supernatural, no matter how mysterious it may be.
your idea of dualism introduces non-material objects. that is most
certainly magic.

even people who agree with you will state that

the demonstration of such a thing is impossible in principle.
For the non-scientific criteria of "demonstration" that you presuppose
without evidence, possibly true. Good that science does not work this way.

demonstrate it with scientific criteria. oh wait, you cant. thats why
dualism is not a part of science.

Never claimed it was. Though many scientific theories have dualist theories, like most of sociology etc.

your> type of hypothesis has exactly zero successes and an infinity of
failures to back it up.
so i will continue to ask for that evidence. and
of course, they will continue to evade as best they can.
And then I'm toying around with a quasi-darwinian
argument that I suggested on TO before: it explains
better the convergence, for "old" behavioral patterns,
between what is experienced as pleasant and what is
advantageous (from an evo-fitness perspective) , and
what is experienced as unpleasant and disadvantageous
(we had a bit of a discussion on this recently in one
of Nando's threads, you can look the full argument up
there)
how does magic explain anything?
You are of course really committing the fallacy you accuse
me of committing above. Just because we don't have _yet_ an
adequate theory of dualism does not mean it needs to be
magic or nonexistent.
there are no theories of dualism that arent equivalent to
magic. anything that wasnt magic wouldnt be dualism.
Only if you think the theory of gravity, particle physics etc
are magic too.
how are natural theories magic? you are proposing a non-natural
"theory."
It actually helps to read a paragraph in total before posting, the
answer is in the next sentence.
I observe a specific correlation (between things that are
experienced as pleasant and that are evolutionary advantageous)
I posit an abstract concept, mind, that explains this
correlation.
your concept explains nothing. it is nothing but assertion.
I see a correlation between objects falling and the speed they
fall, I postulate an theoretical concept "gravity" that explains
it. I observe a correlation between evolutionary usefulness and
subjective pleasure. IF our mind is capable to act on the feeling
of pleasure, that is what we would predict to find. If subjective
feelings are not causally efective and a mere epiphenomenon as
reductionist claim, this is not what we predict to find. That
means it explains that correlation Nothing more required for a
theoretical term.
nothing in your paragraph necessitates the magic required by dualism.
Yes. We make an observation. This observation is predicted from a
dualist theory of the world, not from a monist world.

bald assertion is not evidence.

I have explained exactly why this is the case, and referred you for a longer exposition to another thread. If qualia like "pain" were to causally efficient, we woudl not expect a correlation between painful and evolutionary harmful.


I further find tat a large number of theories operates with the
same concept (from psychology to history to sociology) That
makes it a perfectly acceptable theoretical assumption unless,
as always in science, something better comes along. Your crure
metaphysical physicalism by contrast has to deny a
considerable body of human knowledge from a variety of
disciplines with the "jam tomorrow" hope that one day science
will come up with a reductionist explanation of equal
explanatory power.
no, it merely requires the humility to admit that I DONT KNOW. go
ahead, say it to yourself a few times first. you dont know shit,
and you have no explanations for anything. magic is not an
answer.
Sure, if you go to all academic sociologists, psychologists,
historians, economists etc and tell them they should stop
publishing research until the neuroscience people have figured out
precisely how motivation and other mind talk can be reduced to
neurons.
no, what they should do though, is stop publishing bullshit about
requiring magic to explain things.
The value of any abstract scientific concept lies solely in the role it
plays in a theory. Our theories on sociology, psychology, history etc do
just fine at present. We can analyse what made Napoleon tick without
having his brain readings.

and we never reference his "soul" when doing so. why is that?
because we call it mind theses days? Again, read up what dualism actually says.



You criticise established scientific practice on the basis of an
unsupported metaphysical believe in physicalism, for which you have
provided exactly zero evidence


no established scientific practice involves invoking magic as an
explanation when none is currently available.


Which is why your strawman is so pathetic, of course.

oh wait, they dont do that. you do it.
They talk about motives, intentions desires as causal factors. What you
(but few other sane people) call magic.

no, YOU brought up *dualism.* motives, intentions, and desires do not
require dualism.

Read up what dualism is.

dualism is magic.
says you, without giving evidence.

it explains nothing.

theists do it. i dont see

scientists doing it within the context of science, and thats because
silly religious speculation is not compatible with doing science.
It just shows that your understanding of how science formulates
theories is as piss poor as your understanding of religion.
science does not insert "magic" when it doesnt know an answer,
thats what religion does. and thats why religion and science are
not compatible.
Science introduces tentative theoretical concepts that do the work,
and then wait if necessary until later if people can find out more
about the details. Often, these theoretical concepts are far
removed from direct evidence and highly speculative. Your version
of sciences is a discarded early 20th century positivism that no
working scientist takes serious.
and when have any of those new theoretical concepts gone BACKWARDS by
latching onto ancient religious nonsense?
And what is your point?

that this is what you are doing, and what creationists do. you think
that science's incompleteness leaves room that ancient superstitions
may be true. while logically possible, its extremely unlikely. science
marches *forward,* not backwards.

You still fail to make any point

. Anyhow, you asked me about the religious beliefs I hold,
not the scientific theories I subscribe to, and if they
could be subject to change.
you are in the camp that asserts that faith and science are
compatible. yet you are using faith to arrive at conclusions
that you know science may one day prove wrong.
Because you asked specifically for parts of my belief that can
be changed in the light of new insights. Now you seem to be
complaining about the fact that there are some. Make up your
mind.
im not "complaining," im pointing out how science and faith are
incompatible. faith invents answers without having to rely on
evidence.
I just gave you several examples where something I currently hold
as faith may be in need to be changed as new science comes in. Just
as you requested. that you _claim_ , without evidence, that this
is impossible is the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ear
and singing nananan
i didnt claim it was impossible, just that people who do it are not
behaving scientifically.
People who change their believes in the light of new scientific insights
don't behave scientifically? Do tell!

no, people who form silly beliefs in the first place are not behaving
scientifically. try to pay attention.

I said: "I just gave you several examples where something I currently hold as faith may be in need to be changed as new science comes in (...) something you said is impossible.

You said: i didnt claim IT was impossible, just that people who do IT are not behaving scientifically.

The "it" grammatically refers to "currently hold as faith my be in need of change as new science comes in".

So the only one not paying attention or being able to read for comprehension is you.


You said:

<snip>


.

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