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Started by wolf39us, February 20, 2013, 01:18:22 PM

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Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 10, 2018, 02:10:00 PM
What is the alternative to naturalism?

Un-naturalism.  Certainly the universe as a simulation, doesn't have to be natural.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Unbeliever

I don't assume the universe to be a simulation, and without methodological naturalism we'd all still be living short, nasty and brutal lives.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 11, 2018, 02:02:17 PM
I don't assume the universe to be a simulation, and without methodological naturalism we'd all still be living short, nasty and brutal lives.

If the universe were a simulation, would that make it un-natural?  I don't see how that would be necessarily so.

And yes we have short, nasty and brutal lives.  Just because you have Stockholm syndrome, doesn't mean the rest of us do.

Also it seems that you envision methodological naturalism so that you would deny psychology is a science, because minds are capable of thinking all kinds of irrational bullshit.  If we limit ourselves to Newtonian cars rolling down inclined planes ... then we can pretend that reductionism works.  It is the sub-personality type of "geek".  It also seems to me that people thinking about, or making, Newtonian cars ruling down inclined planes ... is an application of psychology.  I am holistic, not reductionist.  I see a forest, not trees.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

#468
To put into simpler terms than a Wiki article ... let me give a historical review of "natural" for other folks ...

If one has a "nature", what that means for example ... "human nature" ... is that there are aspects of your behavior (if that is what defines you) that arise independent of your individual personality.  In modern language, we would say that a human being has at least some aspect that is objective.  Every person in that circumstance would demonstrate that property.  And of course there is the un-natural bit, your individual personality.  Notice that the origin of this isn't physics, but psychology (back then called Socratic philosophy).  Eventually this was generalized to include biology (invented by Aristotle).  The pagan contemporaries would have claimed that what happened (human or non-human) was simply arbitrary and random.

But Greeks had the idea of Cosmos vs Chaos.  If reality is a Cosmos, then it has rules, it isn't completely arbitrary or completely random.  This was simple to see, if you had a rock and dropped it.  Every time you did that, that is what it did, it never did anything else.  And the experiment was repeatable and could be seen by anyone, and repeated by anyone.  The original explanation for why this was so, came from Aristotle, who summarized the physics of his day (throwing out atomic theory BTW because he didn't like Democritus) and gave simple qualitative explanations.  A pagan would have said that the rock fell, because the gods made it so.  Aristotle established a secular but biological and humanistic Cosmos, he solidified the notion that using gods to explain "nature" was unnecessary ... the fact that there were rules, and that reality obeyed these rules, was a sufficient explanation.  But he wasn't a materialist (like Thales and the rest), he would't have taught that all of reality is even objective, just the interesting bits are (because that is what he was interested in, being a polymath).  Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle, had gotten away from materialism, which withered on the vine for centuries yet.  Biology and anthropology (study of humans in particular) were  their own sciences ... biology being the more scientific (dissection of a squid of the same species, produced the same organs).

Anthropology was pretty much tied to philosophy until modern times.  The study of politics (something Aristotle also invented) was less objective, tied more closely to Greek chauvinism and Aristotle having compromised himself thru service to the Macedonian Kingdom.  Philosophy then and now, continued to struggle with even defining what terms to use.  Semantics.  By metaphor, and given the secularism, Aristotle extended the notion of "natural" to non-human, non-biological things.  He even invented part of logic (predicate logic) in order to try to get a grip on the "nature" of thinking.  But the "nature" of a rock, as to seek its proper place, which was imagined (on the basis of experiments with rocks in air or rocks in water) to "seek its proper place" which happened to be the center of the Earth (already known to be spherical).  All rocks would have travelled to the center of the Earth, if the other rocks weren't in the way.  He didn't have a further explanation for why this was so, anymore than we have an explanation for why QM is the way it is.  Of course it turned out, like any oversimplification we do, that he was only partly right.  A rock dropped down a long shaft would travel all the way to the center of the Earth .. but it wouldn't stop there as long as it was allowed further linear travel.

So if one is a geek, but not a polymath like Aristotle, then one can not only believe in a Cosmos, and secular at that, but a reductionist materialist one.  Which in simple terms is to say that the "nature" of biology and people too, is just rocks.  Or in modern language, that everything is just atoms.  But again, it is a willful choice to ignore the forest for the trees ... that this is all part of a historical and human process, and that we ignore our subjectivity at our peril.  For example, if one were an ancient Athenian, and you believed that a democracy (of adult male full citizens) will always come to the best choice ... and the democracy decides to invade Syracuse ... then you are in for a nasty shock.  Though of course, a committee of subject matter experts, using the latest knowledge and technique (scientific method) may come up with better answers than the PC of the Athenian assembly.  That is exactly Socrates/Plato's criticism of Athenian politics.  You need professional politicians, who do it full time, know what they are doing, and the hoi polloi (common people) need to get the hell out of their way and let them do their jobs.  And of course, there is no wisdom in letting these ignoramuses vote on anything, because they aren't qualified, though they may be qualified to make poetry, make pottery, make sculpture etc.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Blackleaf

Quote from: Baruch on April 11, 2018, 01:40:34 PM
Un-naturalism.  Certainly the universe as a simulation, doesn't have to be natural.

Even a computer simulation is made up of code, stored within the computer. That's still natural. No magic or supernatural forces are involved.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Baruch

Quote from: Blackleaf on April 11, 2018, 09:26:28 PM
Even a computer simulation is made up of code, stored within the computer. That's still natural. No magic or supernatural forces are involved.

But irrelevant.  In a simulation, things can fall up.  If we are a simulation, then everything is 1s and 0s.  But that doesn't tell you what your D&D powers of your character are.  If software is just 1s and 0s, where does the ... meaning ... of the code or data come from?  Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

This is a major problem with using computers in business and government ... you can make them say whatever you want them to say, like Bible interpretation.  This is well known to unscrupulous people, and not well known by the sheeple.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Blackleaf

Quote from: Baruch on April 11, 2018, 10:33:46 PM
But irrelevant.  In a simulation, things can fall up.  If we are a simulation, then everything is 1s and 0s.  But that doesn't tell you what your D&D powers of your character are.  If software is just 1s and 0s, where does the ... meaning ... of the code or data come from?  Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

This is a major problem with using computers in business and government ... you can make them say whatever you want them to say, like Bible interpretation.  This is well known to unscrupulous people, and not well known by the sheeple.

The "meaning" of code is determined by a combination of software and hardware, both natural entities. There is no ghost in the computer. Even the thoughts in your head can be broken down to a series of neurons firing in your brain.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Baruch

Quote from: Blackleaf on April 12, 2018, 01:32:05 PM
The "meaning" of code is determined by a combination of software and hardware, both natural entities. There is no ghost in the computer. Even the thoughts in your head can be broken down to a series of neurons firing in your brain.

Right, there is no ghost in the computer ... but there is in the human who wrote it and the human who uses it.  And neurons firing in an ape brain, are nearly random, in my experience.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Blackleaf

#473
Quote from: Baruch on April 12, 2018, 01:36:06 PM
Right, there is no ghost in the computer ... but there is in the human who wrote it and the human who uses it.  And neurons firing in an ape brain, are nearly random, in my experience.

Not exactly. It's not random. Unpredictable, yes, but not random. Each region of the brain has its own specializations, but no two brains are exactly alike. With hundreds of billions of neurons in each brain, there are bound to be countless differences from person to person, and the brain makes changes to cater to our experiences. If you learn a new skill, neurons branch off to form new connections. Those connections are essentially your new skill. When your brain rots away due to age or Alzheimer's disease, the neurons that die are your memories. There is no soul storing those memories in some permanent ethereal data bank. When neurons die, memories die with them. Hell, even in a healthy young brain, those memories aren't even stored accurately. Every time you remember something, your brain reconstructs that memory, creating new details that weren't there before and omitting some that were. The brain basically plays the game of Telephone with itself. There's nothing supernatural about any of that.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Baruch

#474
Quote from: Blackleaf on April 12, 2018, 07:33:20 PM
Not exactly. It's not random. Unpredictable, yes, but not random. Each region of the brain has its own specializations, but no two brains are exactly alike. With hundreds of billions of neurons in each brain, there are bound to be countless differences from person to person, and the brain makes changes to cater to our experiences. If you learn a new skill, neurons branch off to form new connections. Those connections are essentially your new skill. When your brain rots away due to age or Alzheimer's disease, the neurons that die are your memories. There is no soul storing those memories in some permanent ethereal data bank. When neurons die, memories die with them. Hell, even in a healthy young brain, those memories aren't even stored accurately. Every time you remember something, your brain reconstructs that memory, creating new details that were there before and omitting some that were. The brain basically plays the game of Telephone with itself. There's nothing supernatural about any of that.

A very complicated answer, which I can't see how anyone can validate.  A neural conspiracy theory of Jason Bourne depth.  If we have to take into account, the billions of cells in a brain, and their infinite (analog) interactions with each other (obviously requiring chaos theory aka turbulence), how can you do more than hand-wave an answer?

Physics only deals with simple artificial problems, chosen by people ... we arrange a physical simplicity, that we can write simple equations to calculate simple results to compare measurements with.  The people themselves are beyond any exact scientific description .. ghost in the machine aka an oracle (in terms of Turing machines).  Which is to say, reductionism ... arguing from atoms up to a person, is impossible to do in practice.  The human produces the physics, the physics doesn't produce the human (other than god like hand waving that would make a theologian blush).  We arrange things to be comprehensible, and then claim that everything is comprehensible from that narrow view (arguing from a part of an elephant in the dark).  A semi-empirical circular argument.

And we got away from the idea that since a computer can describe any function, we can easily produce a simulation where things fall up.  What you are claiming is that physical things can not produce non-physical results, but they obviously can (if we accept that the origin is physical in the first place).  I can use software to simulate any disallowed paradox ... not just a simple violation of gravity.  Computers produce inconsistent results all the time.  And people accept this, because garbage in, garbage out.  Well there really isn't a ghost in the machine, there are in fact men/women who produce the machine and the software ... and they are indirectly present.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.


Cavebear

Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!


Cavebear

Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman