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I Challenge You To a Debate

Started by Casparov, April 18, 2014, 09:52:56 PM

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Hakurei Reimu

Quote from: Casparov on April 25, 2014, 03:05:25 PM
If the answer is yes, we can continue immediately to the meat of my argument, which is that Idealism is a better model than Materialism because it is more consistent with both philosophical and scientific evidence. I refute the idea that I am merely "adding unnecessary and invalidated complexity to a working model" because I don't believe that Materialism is a working model and hasn't been for the past 100 years or so.

I submit that Materialism does not explain the evidence, and clinging to it causes more problems than it resolves. In light of the evidence, the only real reasons I can see to hold to Materialism are 1) to keep reality limited according to our limited understanding, 2) because Materialism is a comfortable and familiar ideology, 3) because it keeps us from having to think about or seriously consider that so called "supernatural" phenomena may actually be "natural", 4) because it is easier to ignore facts than change preconceptions. In short, it is a form of dogmatism that makes challenging Materialism "blasphemy."
No. I'm sorry. I have to call Casparov out on this. To my knowledge, every piece of evidence we have fits quite comfortably under materialistic theories. No, despite what Depak Chopra and other woo-pushers would have you believe, quantum mechanics is a wholly materialistic theory.

Unless, of course, your definition of materialism is wildly different from the rest of us.

I would like to ask what you think materialism is, Casparov. You've built a strawman of materialism before, and I caution Mr. Obvious to nail this down with Casparov before getting too far into their debate.
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Hijiri Byakuren

But Reimu, it's got "quantum" in it, so it must be magical! Haven't you ever seen Star Trek: Voyager?
Speak when you have something to say, not when you have to say something.

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the_antithesis

Quote from: Casparov on April 23, 2014, 01:16:52 AM
If that were true that would mean that everything is nothing.
My overly-pithy post was a play on the phrase "saying everyone is special is the same as saying no one is special." This is true because being special is a rarity by definition, or else the term falls into meaninglessness.

I think we can agree that "god" is something special, or should be should such a thing exist. To say everything is god is like saying everything is special.

Also, things are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are. To say a specific thing is everything fails to define the specific thing, rendering it meaningless.

Solitary

 :wall: A debate can't ascertain what the facts or truth are. At best, it just shows who is better at debating, or using slick maneuvers. Even sound logic cannot ascertain what the facts are.  :blahblah: Solitary
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Hakurei Reimu

Indeed. But being the peanut gallery I shall enjoy myself from the sidelines.

Quote from: Casparov on April 26, 2014, 01:09:22 AM
So let’s say this debate ends and you say, “haha stupid Casparov. What a troll. He couldn’t prove to me god exists. Fail.” And you leave the debate with your disbelief in god firmly intact. What are the things you would walk away from the debate actively believing in? That evolution is true? That the Big Bang happened? That the universe is fundamentally matter and energy? That you have a material brain? It is these things, which you actively believe in that are positive assertions about the nature of reality, and they are subject to the burden of proof just like any other positive assertion about the nature of reality is.
Thing is, all these things have already met their burden of proof. They are proven to me to my satisfaction, and I dare say to the satisfaction of just about every one of your detractors. Each of these propositions had to go through their own hurdles and challenges, and these propositions have aced them all. They are now the default positions, no longer needing specific justification (even though their continued veracity offers it anyway). The only thing I ask is that your concept of God go through the same paces.

As such, your screams of "U BELIEF STUFF 2!" will elicit no more response than, "Fucking DUH!"
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Fidel_Castronaut

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on April 25, 2014, 11:47:56 PM
But Reimu, it's got "quantum" in it, so it must be magical! Haven't you ever seen Star Trek: Voyager?

It's simple, really. His phase coils are out of alignment, easy problem to rectify.

Now, the issue with his nacelles are going to require an entire engineering team several days to fix. 

On a side not, I  can't remember a time there was such a polite debate on here. Or a debate at all.
lol, marquee. HTML ROOLZ!

pioteir

Quote from: Harbinger on April 27, 2014, 03:25:00 AM
It's simple, really. His phase coils are out of alignment, easy problem to rectify.

Now, the issue with his nacelles are going to require an entire engineering team several days to fix. 

On a side not, I  can't remember a time there was such a polite debate on here. Or a debate at all.

About Star Trek... skip to 0:52 (or not) :))))))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG2EP-iPUro
Theology is unnecessary. - Stephen Hawking

Fidel_Castronaut

lol, marquee. HTML ROOLZ!

Hakurei Reimu

I admit it. I'm having a blast watching Casparov make a fool of himself.

Quote from: Casparov on April 28, 2014, 03:06:03 AM
We are in very much the same situation with regards to Realism/Materialism. If Idealism is true and Realism/Materialism false, it will have looked exactly the same as it does and has.
So, you deny that there is any evidence that we can observe about the world that will make you give up Idealism? Then the debate is de facto dead then, and there really is nothing more to discuss about your position. The only interesting discussion can only be between two positions that are empirically distinguishable. Otherwise, it's just philosophical nicities.

Quote from: Casparov on April 28, 2014, 03:06:03 AM
Now as far as the predictive capabilities of Methodological Materialism goes, it works for a great many things, don’t get me wrong, but it also is the cause of a great many paradoxes and it’s explanitory abilities are quite limited in certain areas, suggesting it is not the whole story. For instance, Materialism does not predict the existence of consciousness. There is no material fact or experiment that demonstrates or predicts the existence of consciousness, if it were not the case that our own consciousness is undeniable, there would be no reason to postulate it’s existence using a Materialist Model of reality.
Said as if the last 100 years of psychology and neurology never happened. Yes, we can empirically detect consciousness, and we can even correlate faults in that consciousness to specific alterations to the brain. No methodological method bound to empirical evidence confirms or denies a priori the existence of any phenomenon in a physical system. It seeks to explain what is observed, and that understanding is confirmed with prediction. We observe consciousness, and we use science to tease out the details by making predictions about it. Where we have made firm predictions about consciousness, we do indeed confirm.

Quote from: Casparov on April 28, 2014, 03:06:03 AM
This is the cause of what is known as “The Hard Problem of Consciousness.” The existence of consciousness is an "unsolvable problem" only because it is unsolvable using Methodological Materialism. Idealism by contrast, does not attempt to deny or explain away consciousness as an illusion, but instead embraces it as the one thing we know with absolute certainty exists and places it as the foundation of reality.
Idealism does not in fact explain the "hard problem" of consciousness â€" a problem which there is significant argument over whether or not it exists at all (that's how useless philosophy is). The only thing Idealism does is sweep the "hard problem" under the rug and hoping you won't ask the obvious question: "Okay, but how does it work to give consciousness to us but not to a rock (which is supposedly the same substance)?"

Quote from: Casparov on April 28, 2014, 03:06:03 AM
Further, the Realist/Materialist model of reality does not predict the effects observed in Quantum Mechanics, and in fact, the effects of Quantum Mechanics directly contradict the Realist/Materialist model.
Amazing that a complete nonprofessional in quantum physics has figured out what all the professionals who investigate that strange world missed for the last century. The only explanation you have is what is akin to dogma... in an institution where you get rewarded for successfully showing that the prevailing "dogma" is wrong.

Quote from: Casparov on April 28, 2014, 03:06:03 AM
The Realist/Materialist model is incompatible with the fact that one material object can pass through another material object. It is incompatible with the fact that one material object can be in several locations at the same time. It is incompatible with the fact that one material object can instantaneously effect another material object over a distance without physically interacting with it in any way. But most of all, it is incompatible with the idea that material objects disappear into a mathematical probability calculation when unobserved and reappear as material objects only when observed. And the Realist/Materialist model would never and could never have predicted these effects because they are impossible and incompatible the model.
I applaud Mr.Obvious for calling out this strawman for what it is. Quantum mechanics is materialist because it does not propose any roles for the immaterial. The probability calculations Casparov aludes to is a mathematical tool to get answers, not a stuff in and of itself. The form of the probabilities are wholly dictated by what the matter under consideration is doing. Indeed, anyone working with quantum electrodynamics with any depth will immediately recognize it as analytical mechanics with a probabilistic flavor. If the "Realist/Materialist model" would have a problem with QM, then it would have had a problem with Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics, and it did not.
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aitm

I only read Shol'va's responses cause the rest of this shit bores me. I am impressed with this one.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Hakurei Reimu

^ Well, someone needs to jeer from the sidelines provide blow-by-blow commentary.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
1) How Virtual Reality is a Falsifiable Hypothesis.
2) Why Quantum Mechanics conclusively disproves the statement, “The entities described by the scientific theory exist objectively and mind-independently.”
This again...

None of the experiments sited by Casparov ever demonstrate that entities do not exist objectively, nor that those entities do not exist mind-independently. In each experiment, the funny phenomena are never experienced directly, but by instruments. Furthermore, in each experiment, the funny phenomena never happen merely when one of the experimenters simply want it to happen. Some switch has to be thrown, some physical change to the system has to be effected in order for these strange things to happen. The phenomena are always experiment-dependent, not mind-dependent as Casparov claims.

As to objective... well, these entities are as objective as anything in science, like the inside of a brick. Radiation composed of any of those entities will kill you in high enough doses, whether you know about them or not. Also, if such phenomena were subjective, how come quantum physics surprises us so often?

Quote
Consciousness: The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of confusing consciousness with self-consciousness - to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.
Take note of the bolded statement. "To be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world." Not the internal world of your own consciousness, the external world. This flies in the face of Casparov's own previous statements to the effect that the first thing we are conscious of is our own consciousness, because your consciousness is internal and consciousness requires external awareness. According to Casparov's own reference, you cannot be conscious until you become aware of the external world.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
Consciousness is what necessarily exists in all worlds. To postulate anything at all, you must first postulate consciousness. Consciousness is what exists whether you are in a purely Solipsist World, an Idealist World, a purely Materialist World, an Idealist World, a Dream World, a Simulated World, a Virtual World, etc.
Note that we have access to at most one of these kinds of worlds. As such, this claim cannot be verified. Our kind of consciousness may only manifest in Materialist worlds (because it is an emergent phenomenon of matter), and cannot be sustained in Solipsist worlds, Idealist worlds, a Dream world, ect. Or such consciousnesses may only exist Simulated worlds because they are tailor made to test the limits of knowledge of an unknown species with their own form of "consciousness" incomparable to our own.

So the notion that consciousness exists in all of these worlds is just so much pure, unadulterated speculation.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
It exists whether you are hallucinating, dreaming, being fooled by an illusion, or directly experiencing an objective external reality.
Missing from this list:


  • Anesthesia.
  • Persistent vegitative states.
  • Death.

It also conveniently leaves out classes of psychoactive drugs other than pure hallucinogens â€" as if any psychoactive drug is purely a hallucinogen. Cocaine, for instance, causes a host of symptoms up to and including delusions. Not mere differences in perception, but actual changes to how one thinks and what one believes about the world.


Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
No matter what you postulate, you cannot get outside of, nor deny, consciousness. And this is precisely because, in my view at least, consciousness is primary.
Conscious beings cannot deny their own consciousness, but that does not entail that consciousness is in any way primary. Even if this were true, it does not entail that the base-level consciousness is in any way the same as the consciousness that we experience. Thus, this statement is a non-sequitor.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
Consciousness cannot be detected nor measured nor quantified in the same way we can detect measure and quantify that which we are conscious of. No one has ever seen consciousness. It has no pigment, no weight, no mass, no inertia, takes up no space, and has no size. Within the Materialist Model, we know consciousness exists only through ‘Philosophical Evidence’ rather than empirical.

Consciousness, or, that which has experiences, exists, and we know this only through a form of philosophical evidence, or philosophical proof. There is no material evidence that consciousness exists. zero, zilch, none, nada, zippo, zilcharoni, a big goose egg.
Again, said as if the last 100 years of psychology and neurology never happened.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
On the inside flap summary of Terrence Deacon’s seminole work on consciousness, “Incomplete Nature,” he says:
Small gripe here: you mean seminal, from the same root as semen.

Quote“As Physicists work toward a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The “Theory of Everything” that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are. These most immediate and incontrovertible phenomena are left unexplained by the natural sciences because they lack the physical properties - such as mass, momentum, charge, and location - that are assumed to be necessary for something to have physical consequences in the world. This is an unacceptable omission. We need a “theory of Everything” that does not leave it absurd that we exist.” - Terrence Deacon
The full title of that book is Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. Furthermore, here's a brief summary of its content:

Quote
His 2011 book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, explores the properties of life, the emergence of consciousness, and the relationship between evolutionary and semiotic processes. It was published by W. W. Norton in November 2011.[1] The book proposes a scientific theory of how properties, such as information, value, purpose, meaning, and end-directed behavior emerged from physics and chemistry.
How is it that you quote a person who seeks to establish exactly what you rail against, the emergence of consciousness from ordinary matter? I take away from your "inside flap" research that he seeks to complete what physicists and biologists leave out â€" because it's not really their job to figure out what makes us tick as conscious beings.

Typical of your ilk.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
The only evidence of consciousness is your direct experience of consciousness. But this is evidence that can never be ‘peer reviewed’ because no one else will ever be able to get inside your head and observe that you are conscious. You can only tell them you are, and they can either believe you, or not. Just because a computer can say “I am conscious,” does not empirically prove that that computer actually does have the same capacity to experience just as we do.
Which is why the Turing test involves more than just asking a computer whether or not its conscious. It's an extended interview with an entity that may or may not be a computer, where the computer is trying to convince you that it is a human and not a computer â€" a much tougher task, and basically requires something like consciousness to pull off successfully. If the computer passes the test, you are just as much assured of the computer's consciousness as you are of another person's.

It also begs the question: if the computer isn't conscious, yet consciousness is the primal stuff of the universe, how the heck did the computer miss out on it?

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
There is no way to prove that anyone else is consciousness, but you know with absolute certainty that consciousness exists, because it is a literal impossibility for you to deny your own consciousness. You are more intimately familiar with consciousness than you are with anything else that could possibly exist.
If neuropsychology can be believed (and I believe it can), you are actually far less familiar with your own consciousness than you think. No, your proximity does not help.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
In a purely mechanistic and Material world there is no room nor need for consciousness. There seems to be no evolutionary purpose for consciousness. A Material World would get along just as well if all creatures were truly just deterministic machines running around and doing things and following the rules of Natural Selection and saying things like “I am conscious” without actually having experiences at all. There is no evolutionary purpose nor physical necessity for consciousness to exist within a Materialist Model of the world.
There's no evolutionary advantage to being conscious (aware) of external dangers? Really? How are you so certain that deterministic machines can't and don't have experiences?

And you wonder why you get laughed at?

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
As Richard Dawkins states in his famous quote from “The Selfish Gene:
As much as I like like Richard Dawkins, he is an evolutionary biologist, and as such, speaking outside his field. The Selfish Gene is also a really old book, coming out in 1976. We've made so much progress in neuroscience since then that such statements are going to be horribly outdated.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
The best a Materialist Model can do as far as an explanation for consciousness goes is to state that consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of Material Processes that happen in the brain. But this is no less than a mystical explanation placed on top of a working model.
Nonsense. There's nothing 'mystical' about supposing that a system may exhibit extra properties that the components do not. We even have a logical fallacy where one improperly denies this principle: the fallacy of composition.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
One day all of these will be fully described within a Materialist Model, but consciousness itself will still remain unaccounted for.
So sure are you?

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
These are the things like “this part of the brain is for language” and “this part of the brain raises the right arm” etc. These are mechanisms which explain functions, but they do not explain consciousness.
Interesting that you leave out the seminal case of Phineas Gage and his own brain injury â€" an injury that changed his character so completely that his friends described him as "no longer Gage."

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
In 2004, 8 Neuroscientists published a book together called “Human Brain Function” which sought to update the world on current findings and understanding within the field of Neuroscience, on page 269 in chapter 16 "The Neural Correlates of Consciousness" they state:

Quote
"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers...” - Richard Frackowiak and 7 other neuroscientists
Interesting that you take a current statement about the limitations of our understanding of consciousness as a brain phenomenon as proof that there could not be such an understanding. One of the undeniable consensus findings of neuroscience is that brain phenomena and the consciousness are linked.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
The Hard Problem of Consciousness is described as the question, “How can unconscious material objects ever have a rich inner subjective experience.” There are unconscious atoms that form molecules, that form proteins, that form cells, that form a brain. Somewhere between “brain” and “atoms” a miracle happens that Materialists call an “epiphenomenon”. This explains nothing with regards to the question how unconscious material objects can have subjective experiences. It is no less than a mystical explanation that really does no explaining at all.
The non-acidic atoms form molecules, which form solutions with water, which in bulk produce corrosive bodies of liquid. Somewhere between "bodies of liquid" and "atoms" a miracle happens that Materialist call an "epiphenomenon". This explains nothing with regards to the question how material liquids can have corrosive properties. It is no less than a mystical explanation that really does no explaining at all.

The difference here is that we have the knowledge that bridges the gap between chemical structure and corrosive properties. Epiphenomona do in fact happen. They're all over the place in chemistry and physics. The very solidity of matter is itself an epiphenomenon â€" solidity is not inherent to matter, but rather it emerges when you gather it together in bulk. You can even overcome it if you crush it hard enough (as in a neutron star).

And, again, the Hard Problem of Consciousness boils down to the reason why we are conscious and rocks aren't. No amount of semantic juking can change this question.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
But what cannot be described is how all of these unconscious atoms and molecules can have rich subjective experiences as we so undeniably do.
Again, argument from ignorance.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
There is nothing more familiar and real then our own consciousness. And yet, the Materialist Model continues to leave it unexplained, or unsatisfactorily explained by complex “epiphenomena” models that do no actual explaining.
As if it's being left at that. We admit that our understanding is incomplete, but we're not stopping there. You only get to criticise that when we give up.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
There is absolutely no evidence that consciousness is reducible to matter. And further, there is no reason why consciousness should actually exist in a Materialist Model to begin with.
Just like there is no reason why sodium hydroxide should be basic in a Materialist Model, or the phenomenon of basic-ness should exist in the first place. Of course, we have evidence that basic-ness is reducible to matter.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
If we are debating the predictive capabilities of our competing models, then the inability of the Materialist Model to predict or explain consciousness is a resounding victory in favor of Idealism.
Except Idealism says, at its basic, that "consciousness exists." It does not "predict" consciousness in any scientific sense, because predictions mean that you haven't built them into your assumptions from the outset. In this case, ONLY Materialism can predict consciousness because it doesn't have the existence of consciousness built into its assumptions. You have it exactly backwards.

Quote from: Casparov on April 29, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
As an Idealist, by contrast, I regard consciousness in much the same way as Max Planck, one of the Founding Fathers of the field of Quantum Mechanics:

And presumably for the exact same reasons. Thank you.
So you're going to project your reasons for Plank's reasons for rejecting consciousness as being reducable to matter, as if Plank's word is any authority on the matter.
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Casparov

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on April 29, 2014, 11:58:35 PM
None of the experiments sited by Casparov ever demonstrate that entities do not exist objectively, nor that those entities do not exist mind-independently. In each experiment, the funny phenomena are never experienced directly, but by instruments. Furthermore, in each experiment, the funny phenomena never happen merely when one of the experimenters simply want it to happen. Some switch has to be thrown, some physical change to the system has to be effected in order for these strange things to happen. The phenomena are always experiment-dependent, not mind-dependent as Casparov claims.

“The Fanatical Atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures whoâ€"in their grudge against traditional religion as the "opium of the masses"â€"cannot hear the music of other spheres.” - Albert Einstein

Hakurei Reimu

^ We'll see, ghost-boy.

Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
Two points before I begin: Mr. Obvious, you say that consciousness has not been observed, “outside of the brain” but I contend that it has not been observed, “inside the brain”, either. The only things that have ever been observed “inside the brain” are cells, peptides, neurons, proteins, molecules and atoms etc., never has anyone observed “consciousness inside the brain” or out of it. Consciousness is simply not something that can be objectively observed. So I disagree with your statement.
Again, you are ignoring 100 years of psychology and neuroscience. What, exactly, would you expect to find if consciousness has a material basis? Some stuff within the brain that is identifiable "consciousness-plasm"? Consciousness is an activity, and as such, it is present in brains in the form of the activity of said neurons. As such, only operational tests can detect consciousness. What the material basis of consciousness sharply predicts is that if you interfere with the brain, you interfere with the brain's consciousness. And when there is interference and damage to the brain, there is interference and damage to consciousness.

We can detect gross cases of a person has a brain too damaged to ever regain consciousness, the so called persistent vegitative state. While in some marginal cases this can be difficult, in extreme cases we can definitely tell. If your hippocampus is damaged, you will have crippling anteriograde amnesia. Cut the corpus colosum, and you will have two consciousnesses whose awareness can be manpulated and tested under controlled conditions. You can induce delusions with drugs. You can destroy the visual cortex and the patient will be completely unaware that he cannot see, until he learns otherwise.

This is not anything you would expect if consciousness were really primal as you claim. Indeed, there is no need for a body at all, with all of its limitations and futility, if consciousness were primal. In short, you would have a hard time explaining why there is a real world at all.

And, of course, since consciousness is about experience, you can test for consciousness by simply interviewing the person and figuring out if their responses have the same veracity as yourself, like a reverse Turing test.


Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
Second, the theory you offered as to why consciousness may have evolved does not necessitate consciousness. A consciousness-less biological machine can accomplish all of the same feats and functions you described and the capacity to have subjective experience is in no sense ever necessary. A biological machine that lacks the capacity to have subjective experience can still evolve the full range of functions as you described.
This is the P-zombie argument, and it suffers from the same flaw. You are trying to draw a distinction between true experience and pseudo-experience, when there is no way to verify if there is an actual difference between the two. It is simply an assertion. You already admit that there is no functional difference, and that functional difference extends so deep that the two are in an isomorphism â€" that any difference at all is simply cosmetic.

Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
I should also note that the book I cited, “Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter,” I have read in full, from cover to cover. Deacon does an amazing job of setting up the problem which he seeks to solve in his opening chapters, which is why I refer to his introduction and introductory chapters quite often, but in trying to reconcile Materialism with Consciousness as an emergent property I believe he fails as all other attempts have failed before him. He even admits himself in the book that what he presents can only be considered, “a first hesitant effort to map an unfamiliar and poorly explored domain,” and does not pretend it to be a complete resolution to The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Instead he says, “I hope that by revealing the glaring presence of this fundamental incompleteness of nature, it will become impossible to ignore any longer.” And I do believe that his hope was warranted and achieved by his work.
You have a habit of reading what you want into what is actually there. You admit that Deacon tries and fails in your opinion to establish the materialist basis for consciousness. Unless Deacon explicitly admits that failure, you cannot therefore read into that statement that Deacon hopes that the immaterial basis of consciousness be discovered. Deacon admits that the domain is "poorly explored," in which case no one work can hope to forge the airtight case you clearly want.

I believe that further citation of his work by you would be a grave misrepresentation of that work, and as such would constitute cherry picking.

Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
It is my argument that Idealism is true, we exist within a virtual reality, and consciousness is the computer. God according to this view of reality is the summation of all consciousness viewed as one holistic entity, of which we are individuated parts. The purpose of this simulation is our evolution and in turn, the evolution of the whole towards lower and lower states of entropy.

Now I will offer my argument for the existence of god but it is intimately linked with the falsity of Realism. Make no mistake, my argument is not, “Realism is false, therefore god,” it is more like, “Realism is false and Idealism is true, therefore god is more likely.”
Note the bait and switch. First he was talking about materialism (capped, of course), and now he's talking about realism as if it were the same thing. He notes that scientists were using "realism" as a term, and he is equating that with his own realism, which he claims to be opposite of idealism... which is actually one of the alternatives to materialism, not realism â€" you can have a realistic idealism â€" and even then, idealism is not the opposite of materialism, because there are positions in between, like substance dualism.

As such, even if Casparov is right that idealism would lead to God, simply negating materialism would not imply idealism. Again, he continues his argument by arguing evidence against materialism, albeit using "Realism" as a stealthily substituted synonym.

Idealism, in saying that what we think of as physical reality does not exist independent of observation, nonetheless makes a distinction between the system and the observation on that system. This is intuitively appealing because on the macroscale it seems true, but it is in contrast what QM actually implies: that every observation is a physical interaction with the system in question. This bears out in actual practice â€" every observation of a quantum system involves scattering of photons, absorption of particles, exchanges of momentum and energy. Observation in QM is subsumed into general interactions with the system, and since you are interacting with the system and not just "observing" it, the puzzlement of how different ways of observing the system changes how the system responds goes away.

This is a point often omitted or even forgotten by real experimenters, because our sense of the observer/observee distinction is so deeply ingraned in us.

Casparov goes on to mention scientific idealism (again, capped) as "The entities described by the scientific theory exist subjectively and are mind-dependent." Let me ask if either of these are true for quantum mechanics.

Is QM subjective? That is, does the answer you get depend on who asks or answers a question in quantum mechanics? No, because what comes out of the theory are measurable phenomena that are at best interpreted by people. While one scientist may argue with another over what their results mean, the fact that a particular experiment showed interference patterns or not is not under dispute â€" it is an objective result. Furthermore, QM in no way asks you to input your expectations of what you will find â€" the measurement operators used are interactions you are putting ON the system to get it to reveal something to you. So QM is objective. It wouldn't really be a scientific theory if it weren't.

Is QM mind-dependent? That is, does the answer you get depend on what real people are thinking but not putting into action? Again, no. Every phenomenon Casparov claims to prove mind-dependency is actually a case of experiment-dependency. In every case, a physical change is imposed on the system in order to effect that change in behavior; in no case does the system's behavior changes because one of the scientists involved simply wanted it to happen. It's always because the experiment had been purposefully set up in advance, and even if a choice is left to a scientist, it still requires the scientist to press a button â€" a physical action on the system. This is especially true in the quantum eraser experiment, where the choice to erase or measure a certain part of the system is made too fast to be made by a human â€" a thoughtless computer does it. And, again, there is no place to put experimenter desires and thought into any QM equation â€" and I challenge Casparov to come up with a single equation that does.

That's the other thing that is puzzling about Casparov's contention that QM implies nonmaterialism. We wouldn't even know where to begin writing down the particulars of someone's thoughts in a mathematical way, yet, QM itself is very much wedded to the maths of the theory â€" the theory is so intuition-breaking that math is our only recourse for figuring out what quantum systems will do. One would expect that if QM were mind-dependent, that any accurate prediction of the theory would depend sensitively upon an accurate description of what the minds around the system are doing â€" something we obviously cannot do... yet QM predictions are quite accurate regardless.

In the end, this is the deal-breaker for any claim that QM denies materialism and is in any way an idealistic theory: it makes accurate predictions of what will happen in quantum systems without referencing what is going on in the minds of the experimenters.

Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
While the scientists involved have been almost exclusively Realists and therefore have been attempting to prove that Realism is in fact compatible with Quantum Mechanics, they have at the very same time been testing the alternative hypothesis, which is that Idealism is true. Realism is of course the view that physical reality exists objectively and independent of observation. (the reverse claim of Idealism)
I'd like to point out that, under the criterion that Casparov uses for "realism" that nobody could realistically claim the title in the entire history of science. Scientists, even strict realists, have acknowledged that certain methods of observation will quite definitely affect the system in question â€" such observations are so pervasive that a term had to be invented for observations that didn't: "non-destructive testing." Pouring acid on a metal to figure out what it was more often than not involved physically destroying the sample (which itself had to be removed from the object for testing â€" whatever happened, the sample would be contaminated). What quantum mechanic does is deny that there is any such thing as a non-destructive test, even in principle â€" all tests will, to some degree, alter the thing under study. We have already established that QM is objective, and that "independent of observation" is an impossible ideal, but at the same time affirms the thing that "independent of observation" implied in Casparov's speil: mind-independence.

Casparov then goes on to chat about local realism and non-local realism (capitolized of course), and again, claiming all the way that it shows quantum mechanics to prove what it quite obviously cannot: that the reality we see is not there but an artifact of our perceptions. I think that the confusion stems from his use of "Realism" vs. the scientists' use of "realism."

See, physics is quite famous for appropriating common names for quite precise and intuition-breaking technical terms, like work, or action, or energy. I suspect that the same is happening here; there's a subtlety to what is being said that Casparov is simply too blunt to catch out of his eagerness to prove his case. In the rigamarole over 'realism', is what is being denied is the reality of everything... or only of certain things.

This is an important distinction. If only certain things are denied reality by these experiments â€" such as spin or position, then it's an indication that the reason quantum particles lack reality in those select attributes is because they are quite different beasts from those things that have them as well defined attributes. To give a mundane example, take the position of a ball. It seems obvious and unambiguous that the ball has a point position in space, but it isn't because the ball is an extended object â€" it takes up a volume and a literally infinite number of points, each of which could serve equally well as the position of the ball. Furthermore, if we know that the ball is normally perfectly spherical, but is now in a oblate elipsoid, we begin to suspect that the ball may be squished or vibrating. The ball's distortion may be so distorted that the center (the position of the ball by convention) may not even be occupied by the ball's matter. The position of the ball is not actually as well-defined as you expect. It is only because of the way we measure position that imposes an artificial attribute onto the object it doesn't actually have.

The same is true of quantum particles, such that even calling them "particles" is misleading, as that name implies that it has a well-defined position and momentum, when in fact it has neither. Calling such a thing a particle implies that it has a well-defined time and energy, when in fact it has neither. A quantum particle is neither a classical particle nor a classical wave, but a fundamentally new kind of thing that we haven't gotten our head around yet. Even the mass we measure is not an inherent attribute of the particle, but the result of the particle interacting with the Higgs field. Yet the interactions that create the particle mass, spin, ect. are governed in the theory by specific, well-defined calculations that do not involve any sort of woo, just cold, soulless mathematics and number crunching.

As such, Casparov still hasn't gotten around to proving idealism, his stated stepping stone to his god, and has yet to show how an idealistic world even strongly suggests the existance of a god. Even if everything he says is true, and that QM does deny materialism, he still has yet to disprove in-between theories like substance dualism â€" the seeming lack of reality in QM being due to the interference of unnamed woo-stuff, obfuscating and mucking around with the real particles' behavior.

Quote from: Casparov on May 01, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
I have now provided direct and conclusive evidence in favor of Idealism and in contradiction of Realism. That “reality is such that god is not only possible but necessary” becomes much more likely when Idealism is true, as is stated concisely by Professors Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist:

Quote
Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html
This paper was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is roundly critizised for being a woo-promotion rag, rather than a serious scientific journal. The other thing is that the two articles cited by Cas in Nature and Physicsworld are obviously meant for public consumption, and as such are trying to convey difficult subjects in ordinary language.
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stromboli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Scientific_Exploration

Quote:
"The Journal of Scientific Exploration is a quarterly peer-reviewed[1][2] academic journal of fringe science that was established in 1987.[3] The journal is currently edited by Stephen E. Braude and published by the Society for Scientific Exploration."

Quote:
"Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellow has suggested that:

"The JSE, while presented as neutral and objective, appears to hold a hidden agenda. They seem to be interested in promoting fringe topics as real mysteries and they tend to ignore most evidence to the contrary. They publish 'scholarly' articles promoting the reality of dowsing, neo-astrology, ESP, and psychokinesis. Most of the prominent and active members are strong believers in the reality of such phenomena."[12]
Clinical community psychologist and professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, Seth Kalichman regards the journal as a publisher of pseudoscience, with the journal serving as a "major outlet for UFOology, paranormal activity, extrasensory powers, alien abductions etc".[13]

So much for Casparov. That is more than enough for me to disregard him.

josephpalazzo

I like when people are talking about quantum mechanics and it's quite evident that they can't solve a high school algebra problem... :doh: