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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: "Richard Dawkins has done us a big favour..."
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I'd count myself as a biologist. One could describe any difference between the human genome and another species genome as a mutation, so yes, that is what causes language.
My point was that establishing that, and understanding the neural pathways that arise from the genetic code, doesn't actually lead us to infer anything useful about the external nature of the phenomena that we call language.
Thank you for first paragraph info. Re the second paragraph, I have googled 'language external nature of' and have dipped into a few of the links. Which one would you choose, since I'm not sure how language can have an 'external' nature. Thank you.
quote:
If we look at society we might start to determine whether language is useful, whether it really exists, whether it exists in the way that I claim it exists... but all those tests are totally divorced from understanding the biological processes that give rise to language.
Useful - definitely! 'Exists'? It can only exist if humans are around ... no other (known) creature could make use of any written words which remained after our species became extinct, unless they had a suitable mutation. Hmm. I'll keep thinking too about whether it can be divorced from the biological processes, although that doesn't sound logical to me.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
It's OK to look at things biologically, but then you have to recall that you are now looking at life in the third person. But we live life in the first person, and there is a danger that 'chemicals' and neurology might erase that.
I always recall Nagel's famous paper, 'What is it like to be a bat?', which has often been extended to other things. Thus, there is something that it is like to love someone, and there is something it is like to be dislike someone, and so on. These are the currency of our lives, and they can't just be dismissed as folk psychology.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There's a kind of biological and/or neurological fallacy going on here, isn't there? It's as if by saying that love or language, are biological, or chemical, or neurological, you have somehow dealt with them!
Well, no, of course not! They'll never be totally 'dealt with'; and I agree that the physical source is not at the forefront of ordinary life. However, on a discussion board like this, when it is suggested (as at the start) that RD 's views will encourage people to start, or return to, believing in God, thenit's interesting to consider, isn't it?
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Sure, it's interesting, but the danger is that you slide into a kind of scientific imperialism, and then say that love is nothing but chemicals.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quetzalcoatl
There aren't many occasions to think about the subjects that crop up here (and on another couple of message boards I post on) are there? So I really appreciate the opportunity to do so.
[ 18. November 2012, 15:13: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Which one would you choose, since I'm not sure how language can have an 'external' nature. Thank you.
All I mean is that there is a reality "out there" that is language beyond a perception in my brain. There are people that I can communicate with and the understand what I'm saying and I understand them. It isn't just an illusion.
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I'll keep thinking too about whether it can be divorced from the biological processes, although that doesn't sound logical to me.
That isn't quite what I said. Whether language exists without humans is a bit tree-falling-no-one-to-hear-it. While it is true that a specific language would not exist if humans hadn't started speaking it, the concept of language to communicate I think might exist independent of us.
Mathematics is perhaps a better example. 2+2=4 even if there aren't any humans around to write that down.
The point I'm making that in answering these questions, the fact that we might understand the biological processes that lead us to talk, or that lead us to add 2 and 2, doesn't really help us with philosophical questions about the nature of mathematics and/or language.
I once heard a prominent neuroscientist predict an explosion in functional imaging of the brain that would locate where in the brain various cognitive processes took place. He was right about this - that is exactly what has happened.
He also predicted that locating these processes would tell us nothing of any interest about them. I think he was also right there.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
That is the neurological fallacy exploded.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mdijon: I once heard a prominent neuroscientist predict an explosion in functional imaging of the brain that would locate where in the brain various cognitive processes took place. He was right about this - that is exactly what has happened.
I'm not sure if it has. What scientist have discovered is that with different brain activities, certain brain regions show more activity than others. This isn't the same as 'locating where in the brain various cognitive processes take place'. My guess is that in all processes the whole brain is involved, only some parts more than others. But you need the whole brain.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
My guess is that in all processes the whole brain is involved
This is demonstrably false. If you lose the occipital cortex you go blind, but you remain able to move normally and cognition is not necessarily affected. If you lose the motor cortex you are unable to move (usually you lose only a bit of it and you lose movement in one part of your body) but your ability to see is completely unaffected.
That's at a gross level. At a finer level it is possible to have subtle problems that, for instance, mean that you can't recognise faces but other cognitive processes remain intact.
So it is absolutely not the case that all the brain is needed for all cognitive processes.
But anyway even if that was true the substantive point would remain the same - that understanding how it all works doesn't say anything interesting about the cognitive processes themselves or the reality of what they perceive.
[ 18. November 2012, 18:25: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
'Exists'? It can only exist if humans are around ... no other (known) creature could make use of any written words which remained after our species became extinct, unless they had a suitable mutation. Hmm. I'll keep thinking too about whether it can be divorced from the biological processes, although that doesn't sound logical to me.
There are materialist philosophers who think that no computer could use language. (John Searle is the main example.) But they're a minority. Evidently if a computer can use language then language can be divorced from biological processes.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mdijon: This is demonstrably false. If you lose the occipital cortex you go blind, but you remain able to move normally and cognition is not necessarily affected.
I'd say that my ability to move normally and my cognition would be quite affected if I'd go blind.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
As much as I dislike SusanDoris' blind faith in materialism, I think the current this-or-that-science fallacy argument directed against her is pants.
It is true that talking about photosynthesis and chlorophyll does not exhaust the subject of plants, much less does it give us an exhaustive description of the periwinkle.
But it is also true that photosynthesis is a fundamental characteristic of almost all plant life and in many contexts that is sufficient for conclusions. Like for example stating that plants will not prosper in a dark room.
That we cannot describe all that "love" means to us by saying "electrochemical reaction in the brain" does not blunt the challenge thereof in the slightest. So there are additional electrochemical reactions in the brain, which mean we get love poems as well as bonking. So what? The question still remains whether there is "more than that" in the fundamental sense, or not.
A materialist wielding Chomskian universal grammar like a pro is still a materialist. A materialist Casanova is still a materialist. Are we a material body (in particular a brain), and that's fundamentally it - or not? There is no obvious fallacy involved in saying "yes" to that.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
IngoB: I think the current this-or-that-science fallacy argument directed against her is pants.
LOVED the typo! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
So there are additional electrochemical reactions in the brain, which mean we get love poems as well as bonking. So what?
You missed the point. (Or my point anyway)
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The question still remains whether there is "more than that" in the fundamental sense, or not.
That was the point. The question still remains even if we could understand all the biology and pin it down. Just like the question of what onions actually are remains even after the biology involved in perceiving them has been sorted out.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Are we a material body (in particular a brain), and that's fundamentally it - or not? There is no obvious fallacy involved in saying "yes" to that.
Agreed. My point is that determining that we have a material brain in a material body still tells us nothing informative about the realities that the material brain and material body perceive. It tells us all about how we perceive, but not what.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'd say that my ability to move normally and my cognition would be quite affected if I'd go blind.
Only as an indirect consequence. Which isn't really the point.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mdijon:Only as an indirect consequence.
How do you know? If I'd suddenly go blind, there would be all kinds of changes in my brain. Of course, I'd still be able to move my legs, but it wouldn't be the same brain anymore. It would be the brain of a blind LeRoc. I'm sure that this would have all kinds of subtle and not-too-subtle effects on other parts of my brain. Are you sure that you can rule all of them out?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'd say that my ability to move normally and my cognition would be quite affected if I'd go blind.
Only as an indirect consequence. Which isn't really the point.
I looked at this and wondered how to explain the differences between changes in the brain and the ability to cope with the environment, which is what is being conflated by LeRoc. Children born blind do not have problems with movement compared with sighted peers - mobility and coping with the environment, maybe, but that's a different issue. Just think of the visually impaired sports in the Olympics. Similarly, your cognition would not be affected, it's your access to the material and forms of expression that would change.
eta - in response to LeRoc - your emotions may well be affected, you may become depressed. But that's not a direct change in the brain function from losing your sight any more than becoming depressed because you have cancer - it's a reaction to the blindness.
[ 19. November 2012, 08:41: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Curiosity killed ...: eta - in response to LeRoc - your emotions may well be affected, you may become depressed. But that's not a direct change in the brain function from losing your sight any more than becoming depressed because you have cancer - it's a reaction to the blindness.
... and this reaction undoubtedly will bring changes to your brain. I'm sorry, I may be some kind of a holistic, sandal-wearing freak, but I don't believe in a strict separation into 'this is what the brain does and this is what the environment does'. I believe they both interact in very complex ways.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I am not disagreeing that brain chemistry changes with mood changes and that the brain and emotions are far more intertwined than is often assumed - the limbic system contains both the emotional centres and the amygdala, which governs instinctive reactions. Chemicals that flood one will flood the other. And the brain has a great capacity to change. But there many other reasons why people may become depressed, and it is arguable that not everyone will become depressed when they lose their sight - so you cannot directly assign causation.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
As much as I dislike SusanDoris' blind faith in materialism, I think the current this-or-that-science fallacy argument directed against her is pants.
It is true that talking about photosynthesis and chlorophyll does not exhaust the subject of plants, much less does it give us an exhaustive description of the periwinkle.
But it is also true that photosynthesis is a fundamental characteristic of almost all plant life and in many contexts that is sufficient for conclusions. Like for example stating that plants will not prosper in a dark room.
That we cannot describe all that "love" means to us by saying "electrochemical reaction in the brain" does not blunt the challenge thereof in the slightest. So there are additional electrochemical reactions in the brain, which mean we get love poems as well as bonking. So what? The question still remains whether there is "more than that" in the fundamental sense, or not.
A materialist wielding Chomskian universal grammar like a pro is still a materialist. A materialist Casanova is still a materialist. Are we a material body (in particular a brain), and that's fundamentally it - or not? There is no obvious fallacy involved in saying "yes" to that.
I agree that materialism in itself is not a fallacy. However, using your example of linguistics, is it useful for example, with an utterance like 'the is dog', to study the neurological underpinning of it?
Well, it might be, but our own linguistic intuitions seem important here, that it's ungrammatical or somehow not well-formed.
I think a similar argument has been made in relation to propositions and sentences. If we accept that they can be true or false, and can be used in various arguments, can we shift to the neurological framework and say that groups of neurons are true or false?
So it's not materialism in itself, but a claim that materialism of this kind explains our own intuitions about language, logic, and so on.
I don't think SusanDoris is saying this, but I suppose the eliminativists are? But perhaps this is a straw man.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Curiosity killed ...: it is arguable that not everyone will become depressed when they lose their sight - so you cannot directly assign causation.
Depression isn't the first example I was thinking of (it was you who came up with this example) FWIW, I was thinking about many more effects, some of them quite subtle.
To me, everything is interlinked in many ways: the brain, the different parts within it, the environment... What happens with one part of the brain will effect other parts, and in practice it will be very difficult for scientists to point out what are direct and what are indirect effects. I'll distrust any scientist who says that (s)he can make that call.
When anyone says 'cognitive process X is located in brain region Y', I'm quite sceptical. Although some regions of the brain are more specialized than others, I don't see it as a box with different compartiments, each with a separate functions. I believe that there are many complex connections between different parts of the brain, and we haven't begun to understand the beginning of them.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Sure it brings changes to your brain.
But the point is that the bit of your brain that can do language isn't the bit of your brain that sees things.
Obviously there has to be an integration between the two otherwise you wouldn't be able to read. And hence going blind is going to change the way you think about language and the way in which you read and communicate. But the point is the bit of your brain that does the immediate interfacing with language can still work.
On the other hand you can lose all ability to understand language but remain able to see. You can still interpret what you see with the exception that you can't read. This is going to have knock-on wider effects, but it doesn't change the fact that the bit of your brain that sees things is separate from the bit of your brain that puts language together.
The simpler the cognitive process (e.g. flinching at movement) the more precisely it can be localised, the more complex the process (e.g. choreographing a ballet) the less localised it will be.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I don't see it as a box with different compartiments, each with a separate functions.
And nor do most neuroscientists doing this work.
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I believe that there are many complex connections between different parts of the brain, and we haven't begun to understand the beginning of them.
This too has occurred to the average neuroscientist. On the other hand, if one is in the business of trying to understand how things work, one needs to start applying reductionist models at some point.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Theories of aphasia also used to be localizationist. For example, some people with aphasia lose vocabulary, and some lose syntax. These used to have the traditional names of Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, but I don't know if these names are still used. But certainly there was a Broca's area of the brain, and a Wernicke's area, often shown in diagrams.
I worked in a stroke clinic for a while on a research project, and you could certainly see this difference in patients, although you also get patients with complex symptoms.
These were very much localizationist categories, but I don't know if more holistic explanations of aphasia have been introduced.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mdijon: On the other hand, if one is in the business of trying to understand how things work, one needs to start applying reductionist models at some point.
With this I agree. I'm happy with statements of the form 'cogntive function X is located within brain region Y' if they come with (explicit or implicit) caveats of the form 'this is a reductionist simplification'.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Apologies about the above post about aphasia. I got the distinction between Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia wrong - you can see why I left the stroke clinic!
But the point remains that they were localizationist accounts of brain damage and its effects on speech and language.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I share your confusion. It is a distinction I remember precisely having looked it up in books which would gradually become fuzzier in my mind as I saw more of the real world.
That distinction (i.e. Wernicke's vs Broca's) turns out not to be very applicable in the real world. On the other hand the distinction between aphasia and global cognitive damage turns out to be very real and helpful to make.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I guess my reaction was triggered when you used the word 'exactly' when saying "I once heard a prominent neuroscientist predict an explosion in functional imaging of the brain that would locate where in the brain various cognitive processes took place. He was right about this - that is exactly what has happened" (here). To me, this word suggested a level of accuracy that simply isn't there.
Exactly what scientists have done, is to create a reductionalist model by assigning different cognitive functions to various regions of the brain, thereby creating a good first approximation that is useful for understanding various things about the brain. That's impressive, and I'm in awe of the people who did that. But it isn't the same as what you said.
I can appreciate that scientists have their jargon, and I can understand that between them, "cognitive process X is localized in brain region Y" can be a shorthand for "brain region Y shows increased activity when the test person is involved in cognitive process X" or "patients lose their cognitive function X when they have brain damage in region Y".
But my concern is that these things get into the media, and are often interpreted in all the wrong ways. An obvious example of this is the over-simplistic bullshit we heard a couple of years ago about the 'God spot'. Yes, undoubtedly there are some regions in the brain that show increased activity when we engage in religious activities. But this doesn't mean that we've 'localized the God-spot that causes religion'.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
To me, this word suggested a level of accuracy that simply isn't there.
But you've spotted that the word exactly was applied to the predicted turn of events, not the location of cognitive processes?
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
An obvious example of this is the over-simplistic bullshit we heard a couple of years ago about the 'God spot'. Yes, undoubtedly there are some regions in the brain that show increased activity when we engage in religious activities. But this doesn't mean that we've 'localized the God-spot that causes religion'.
Well quite. Now my main point was to argue that even if one could describe a god-spot or religious-experience-spot, that tells you no more about God or religion than locating an onion-smelling-spot tells you about onions.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mdijon: But you've spotted that the word exactly was applied to the predicted turn of events, not the location of cognitive processes?
I guess you'll have to admit that it wasn't completely clear. Maybe the prediction in general terms happened exactly, but not exactly what you said was predicted (if you can still follow me ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ).
quote:
mdijon: Now my main point was to argue that even if one could describe a god-spot or religious-experience-spot, that tells you no more about God or religion than locating an onion-smelling-spot tells you about onions.
Complete agreement. (In fact, I believe that my onion-detecting spot is somewhere in my lacrimal ducts )
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
IngoB: I think the current this-or-that-science fallacy argument directed against her is pants.
LOVED the typo!
Typo? You mean "pants"? It's slang for rubbish.
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
My point is that determining that we have a material brain in a material body still tells us nothing informative about the realities that the material brain and material body perceive. It tells us all about how we perceive, but not what.
And it is this very point that I declare to be pants. Because it has essentially zero relevance to the SusanDoris' materialistic atheism. So you perceive love, onions or Cthulhu. That's your "what" there. And? Nothing follows other than that your brain produces perception of love, onions or Cthulhu. That sure is fascinating, if you are interested in love, onions or Cthulhu - or in the brain. But all the "meat" of the debate between theists/dualists and atheist/materialists is to be found elsewhere.
And it is just at the "how" that we need to look. For in fact materialism has serious problems explaining how we perceive love, onions or Cthulhu. Not what, but how. There are at least two qualitative steps here that are not understood, and present challenges to materialism. First, there is the difference between detection and experience, i.e., the issue of the so-called qualia. Materialism does fine as long as we describe the "neural hardware that detects wavelengths of 630 to 700 nm impacting on the retina". But that is not the same as "experiencing the colour red". And it is entirely unclear how one could go from one to the other in materialist terms. Second, there is the issue of deriving cognitive understanding from sense data, i.e., genuine abstraction and operations on concepts. The idea of a triangle is not a triangle. What am I doing when I argue that the sum of internal angles of a (Euclidean) triangle is always 180 degrees? We do not know how to implement some "Eureka!" transition from sense perception to idea space in matter. Pattern recognition as in machine learning is not understanding in that sense.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I agree that materialism in itself is not a fallacy. However, using your example of linguistics, is it useful for example, with an utterance like 'the is dog', to study the neurological underpinning of it? ... So it's not materialism in itself, but a claim that materialism of this kind explains our own intuitions about language, logic, and so on.
But there is a difference between the practical and principle level here. Just because one currently cannot provide a full explanation of language, logic, love etc. in terms of neural function does not mean that this is impossible. And just because it will likely always be pointless to attempt this doesn't mean that it isn't a possibility. The question is whether there is a principle difficulty here, or merely one of complexity and hierarchical description levels.
So for example all of chemistry is just physics, basically related to charge properties of the nuclei and the quantum electron clouds that form around them. There is (best we know) no principle difficulty of relating all chemistry to underlying physics. That we cannot in fact do this, and that it is in many cases idiotic to try that (because chemical reactions are often better described at a "higher" level) does not take away from the point that chemistry is in principle a branch of physics.
The materialist claim is that humans, and indeed human culture, is in a similar sense a branch of physics. Admittedly, a much, much farther removed one, with truckloads of intervening levels and absolutely no chance whatsoever to achieve a complete description in terms of physics. But stacking hierarchical complexity is not a principle concern. A love poem does not by its very existence defeat materialism. I think it does after all (see my comments above), but this has to be argued at the level of principle. One has to show that physics is not sufficient as the sole basis of love poetry, however far removed. And that requires fairly sophisticated philosophical argument, it is not at all obvious.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Now my main point was to argue that even if one could describe a god-spot or religious-experience-spot, that tells you no more about God or religion than locating an onion-smelling-spot tells you about onions.
Sorry, the previous post was a cross-post. If that is your main point, then I will simply nod in agreement. I did not understand that this was your main concern...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
IngoB: Typo? You mean "pants"? It's slang for rubbish.
I admit I didn't know that. (The typo would have been funny though, especially because you continued to talk about plants )
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
IngoB: Typo? You mean "pants"? It's slang for rubbish.
I admit I didn't know that. (The typo would have been funny though, especially because you continued to talk about plants )
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Now my main point was to argue that even if one could describe a god-spot or religious-experience-spot, that tells you no more about God or religion than locating an onion-smelling-spot tells you about onions.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Sorry, the previous post was a cross-post. If that is your main point, then I will simply nod in agreement. I did not understand that this was your main concern...
Indeed. It isn't my main point because I think it is a killer argument to materialism - it isn't for all the reasons you describe in your earlier cross-post. It was simply a counter to SusanDoris' point that because we understand some of the neurological/biological events that give rise to our perception of love then we can conclude that we have a sufficient explanation for it. In a sense we do have a sufficient explanation for the perception of love, but that doesn't immediately tell us what the thing we are perceiving in that way is. Perhaps it is simply illusion, perhaps it isn't. We need another discussion to work that out.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
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IngoB: One has to show that physics is not sufficient as the sole basis of love poetry, however far removed.
But I wonder on which side the burden of proof lies here. I mean, I can just say to materialists: you haven't shown me that physics is sufficient as the sole basis of love poetry. Wouldn't that be enough?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
But I wonder on which side the burden of proof lies here. I mean, I can just say to materialists: you haven't shown me that physics is sufficient as the sole basis of love poetry. Wouldn't that be enough?
Enough for what? Enough to get them off your back, probably; enough to bring them to Christ, probably not.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
But I wonder on which side the burden of proof lies here. I mean, I can just say to materialists: you haven't shown me that physics is sufficient as the sole basis of love poetry. Wouldn't that be enough?
Enough for what? Enough to get them off your back, probably; enough to bring them to Christ, probably not.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I think that we start from a point where a) there is definitely a material universe b) we identify that human actions and behaviour are associated with neurological events in their skulls.
In that sense there is a perfectly sufficient explanation for how we write poetry. And why in a physical sense.
The null hypothesis, in a classical sense, would be that there isn't anything else unless we can show it is necessary - i.e. that the earlier explanations are in fact not sufficient.
Remaining questions might be whether there is a real thing expressed in the poetry that has actual philosophical transcendent meaning. That bit isn't answered by the foregoing. But a materialist is probably entitled to argue that all such discussions are irrelevant and illusory. One could ask what, then, is perceiving the illusion, and then we're into a different discussion about what consciousness means and how it arises. Which is also very interesting but a different avenue.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
IngoB: enough to bring them to Christ, probably not.
I'm not sure if that's my intention.
But even if it were, I'm not sure if lengthy arguments trying to prove your position will do the trick. Perhaps I prefer to leave the possibility open that Christianity is true, and let people choose for themselves.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
Apologies for lack of posts today! ![[Smile]](smile.gif) I had a software problem and had to wait to speak to dolphin tech Support before I could carry on.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
.... a counter to SusanDoris' point that because we understand some of the neurological/biological events that give rise to our perception of love then we can conclude that we have a sufficient explanation for it. In a sense we do have a sufficient explanation for the perception of love, but that doesn't immediately tell us what the thing we are perceiving in that way is. Perhaps it is simply illusion, perhaps it isn't. We need another discussion to work that out. [/QB]
Indeed. Correlation is not the same as explanation.
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
Well, I have been sitting here for quite a while looking at all the interesting posts then doing Alt+Tab to go to an answer space and trying to compose a composite response, but I've given up, I'm afraid. I'll just mention that sight loss only leads to depression if you have that genetic tendency anyway, I think!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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