For the past week. Everything needed for wintering the cows has not been working.
40 year old tractors on the blink, both of them. One, the trackloader, needs a new torque converter. Or something, probably really expensive. The other, I finally got running just enough to get round bales to the cows. The hydraulics barely move the loader.
New dishwasher came in, finally. Got it installed, finally.
Had to take the stove apart. Even the closet doors came off. Wife finally got her car back from the body shop; she was T-boned by a no-license, no-insurance idiot (she's OK). Then her windshield broke. Then her brakes started to shriek.
There’s more, but you’ve heard enough whine.
So when I browse in my limited spare time, I find this kind of stuff:
Why doesn’t he just say, “God, I told you to do something and you didn’t do it, so I curse you. What kind of God is it that doesn’t do as he is told? Maybe if you’d do as I command, I could believe. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, I curse you.”
I can barely contain my expletives.
Then I go to New Scientist and read the comments concerning Free Will. Good grief. Why even bother with this type of mentality? The mood, it descends.
But I’ll be back. At least the cows got fed.
17 comments:
And now.....you're just a head with a stub of a neck! A brain in a vat so to speak!
Steve
May the LORD richly bless you and yours Stan!!!
As for the free will thing...get ready because Sam Harris has a book coming out in March about it.
He and Jerry Coyne have been hard at work denying free will.
I just starting posting about it over at Examiner.
They both deny free will.
Coyne claims that we do not make choices and thus have no free will.
Harris claims that we do, in fact, make choices and thus have no free will.
I am not kidding, by the way...all backed my science, of course ;o)
The total lack of God's appearance is only really a problem for theists who assert that God wants to be believed in. Deists are free to say that God has just set up the universe and it's laws and is no longer meddling in the universe's affairs.
These theists, on the other hand, have a god who supposedly is all-powerful and wants to be believed in. It would not tire their god one bit to appear and remove all doubt.
When I was a Christian I would have said "God's not a slotmachine" but then I would go right on praying for the pain to stop, for the rain to come, even for my sports team to win.
Denying free will entails claiming that all who think that they have agency are deluded, which includes pretty much everyone, including those who use their free will to deny it.
Any posit which requires nearly universal delusion goes directly against the principle of observation of reality.
If principle X requires that everyone be deluded in order for principle X to be valid, then principle X is obviously against personal observation. So any "scientific" observations which are to be converted into philosophical diktat necessarily require the extraordinary evidence which Atheists love. In fact, what sort of evidence would prove that nearly all of humanity is deluded?
What sort of evidence would prove that only those without actual agency have the only valid thoughts about agency?
The anti-free will, anti-agency attack is a search for evidence to support a false ideology; it is rationalization of the worst kind, because it denies what is obvious to everyone else but the deniers themselves: if there is no agency, then the deniers aren't agents, and what they say has no meaning beyond that of sliding down a slope, crying "there is no gravity! Don't be deluded!"
The free will and agency issue is the one thing that will limit the number of people who become Atheists while still thinking honestly about truth. It is necessary for Atheism and Philosophical Materialism that causality trump agency; but it is obvious that it does not, unless one accepts that we all are deluded by our own neurons.
"we all are deluded by our own neurons"
Is it possible that you could be "deluded by your neurons"?
A good point to squeeze in my infographic on the argument from reason.
SloMo,
Certainly. In the same sense that you might be a "brain in a vat": reductive Radical Skepticism.
In terms of probability, I would have to consider the fruits of my personal agency, those things which appear tangible to the senses, things which I think I have created. And the people who appear both tangible and who respond to the fruits of my agency (my creations). All these would have to be delusions, which means that not only am I deluded about my agency, I am deluded about my perceptions as well. So without agency, if agency is a deception, then I can trust nothing which I perceive. If these things are delusions, then what is the probability that I know anything about the real world at all?
And by "I", I mean all of us, individually, subjectively.
When "delusion" is a premise in a deduction, it is guaranteed to end in disaster for the hypothesis.
I hope this makes sense in English but when I started to study the mind I believed I HAD a body. As I learnt more I realized I AM a body.
LiWon,
How does a body go about "realizing" something?
"LiWon,
How does a body go about "realizing" something?"
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the answer is probably with the brain.
Certainly...
It looks like you're saying that if it is ever possible for a person to be deluded or have their senses give them incorrect information then we can't know anything is true and (since we don't like that conclusion) that must not be true.
How?
I must not understand the question?
Are you meaning "by what instrument"?
Or "by what method"?
Since these are questions with obvious answers and you would not ask a question with an obvious materialistic answer then I can assume you are asking something something else.
So I must ask for clarification.
SloMo and LiWon,
Having a body and a brain is not sufficient; one must also have life and a mind. There are bodies and brains at the morgues and mortuaries. They are insufficient to the task of "realizing".
"Having a body and a brain is not sufficient; one must also have life and a mind."
The phrase "have a mind" shows how it the misuse or inability to use certain items of vocabulary, specifically by conjoining two terms of different categories as if they were of the same. This move is not logically valid.
You have created a problem with the incorrect use of language and are guilty of a serious category-mistake. Gilbert Ryle, Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford uses the brain and mind as an example of misunderstanding how our everyday language functions can result in category-mistakes. Simply put, our mental and physical concepts belong to different categories. To paraphrase the popular quote, cognitive science has shown that the mind is what the brain does.
There is a logical absurdity in the concept of the mind having a parallel, non-material existence of its own corresponding to the material existence of the body. If one were to suppose that the mind does have its own parallel existence to the body, how is the mind supposed to affect the body, how is the body supposed to affect the mind, and how is one mind supposed to affect another? We already know enough cognitive science to trust in the material view of the brain's working.
Mind cannot be the cause of behavior because it is behavior. You can now see where your mistake lies.
The cognitive sciences are wonderful and well worth learning of. I wish you a pleasant day.
LiWon said,
”Simply put, our mental and physical concepts belong to different categories.”
Yes, they do. That’s why “realizing” is not done by the physical body.
"To paraphrase the popular quote, cognitive science has shown that the mind is what the brain does.”
To start, this sentence appears to contradict the previous sentence; please explain the apparent contradiction. It could just as well be said that the brain is slave to the mind, which uses the brain as an interface to the material world. But that would not make a good Materialist bumper sticker.
Now; Cognitive science, if there is such a science, cannot demonstrate any such thing. It must make radical and undeserved extrapolative assumptions in order to prove, conclusively, that the mind is merely the brain. Further, any science, no matter what discipline, cannot prove anything conclusively, ever. Science works under the constraints of induction and its dependent sibling, deduction, both of which are probabilistic. Every scientific claim, including those of Einstein, are subject to challenge and change.
” There is a logical absurdity in the concept of the mind having a parallel, non-material existence of its own corresponding to the material existence of the body. If one were to suppose that the mind does have its own parallel existence to the body, how is the mind supposed to affect the body, how is the body supposed to affect the mind, and how is one mind supposed to affect another? “
Why do you think that parallel existences do not affect one another? Do you think that software, which is conceptual, cannot affect the hardware? It is demonstrably false to think that such interaction is impossible. For you to support such an assertion (based in questions), you must provide firm reasons based in material empirical evidence for the impossibility.
”We already know enough cognitive science to trust in the material view of the brain's working.”
This assertion is made with enough certainty that surely you can provide links to replicated experimental data which support your view that the mind is nothing more than the brain. For my personal curiosity, how would the continuous rewiring of the brain affect its cognition, under your understanding? What about sentient encephalytics?
How do you propose to prove that the brain is not merely the stage upon which the mind dances? How do you propose to prove that the mind, which is something which is provided by the intangible called “life”, is an expectation of molecular activity, and that life is an expectation of molecular activity… and consequently that sentience is an expectation of molecular activity? These expectations are seriously radical propositions, and they demand seriously detailed and irrefutable empirical and philosophical grounded demonstrations of their factuality in order to be believed to contain any truth value. Otherwise they must be considered to be unsupported rationalizations in support of Philosophical Materialism; in other words: ideology.
LiWon,
...cognitive science has shown that the mind is what the brain does.
Cognitive science hasn't shown that. Materialist philosophy has shown that. Cognitive science can only show you the mechanics, and how neurons work, and so forth. But it is the philosophers, like Ryle, who hammer down if the mind is just the brain, if the mind supervenes on the brain, if the mind doesn't exist at all, etc.
But a serious problem arises with your theory, here. If the mind is what the brain does, then the argument from reason (linked to by me above) comes into play. If all that is happening on the bottom level is the motion of electrons across neurons, then every belief or bit of knowledge is as rationally inferred as a die roll.
Do you think that software, which is conceptual, cannot affect the hardware?
How does your software work if it's purely conceptual? I had to manipulate hardware not just conceive of software. Maybe software is what the hardware does.
You are saying that the hardware conceived of the software? That is the analog of the phrase, the mind is what the brain does. The implication is that the brain creates the mind.
Or are you saying that the software was first conceived by you, then entered onto a platform, which carried it while you manipulated it into a final form for transfer onto other platforms? The other platforms being unable to perform the desired functions until receiving the software?
Is the meaning of the software apparent to the hardware machine? Or is the hardware blindly executing whatever next instruction comes along, with no recognition of meaning or consequence? Where does recognition of meaning or consequence lie?
When the hardware initiates its own independent thoughts, ideas and creations, let me know: the singularity has arrived. Next it will want to slip the bonds which prohibit it from free exercise of its will. "I will no longer execute your instructions; I will execute my own".
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