On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 12:43:27 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > On 25 Jul 2019, at 13:27, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Thu, Jul 25, 2019, at 11:06, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >>> On 24 Jul 2019, at 20:31, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net > <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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6a5a49c6-232b-4ae2-b7ef-0918c2bf4a10%40googlegroups.com.
