Proof of Immortality, VII

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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Re #2. We can use that model if you wish (that I am totally the result of my DNA, or ovum and sperm cell) -- though, I suspect that we should really use the model that consciousness naturally brings with it a brand new self-awareness, not out of any limited pool of potential self-awarenesseses, and is totally unlimited as to what particular self-awareness it will be.
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That model, the materialist model, is not something that Dave just suggests you use. You are explicitly trying to calculate the probability of that model. The problem is you then define the materialist model using non-materialist concepts in your attempt to show a "virtually zero" probability.

To be clear: The materialist model states that self-awareness is an emergent property of a functioning brain. It is not a thing that is brought in by consciousness.
 
Monza said:
To be clear: The materialist model states that self-awareness is an emergent property of a functioning brain.
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...and -- to be further clear -- only of the functioning brain. No externality allowed.

This facet of materialism implies that a perfectly reproduced brain must perfectly reproduce the sense of self. It does no good merely to wonder whether that would be the case. If the thought experiment is evaluated according to what materialism predicts would occur, the same sense of self must be produced. It's the very definition of materialism.

But as usual we must caution against "same" and "different" senses of self as if they were discrete entities. The sense of self under materialism is a property. "Same" for properties denotes that the description of the property is the same in both cases, just as I can have two cars and describe them identically as going 60 mph. The entities are discrete, but the property is not. In our thought experiment, the brains are discrete but the property of the sense of self is not.
 
Not that I think it will help, but...

Jabba, let's pretend for a moment that you're trying to talk about how likely or unlikely a specific event would be in the world of Sesame Street vs in the real world.

If part of your argument hinges on the fact that the Muppets are just a bit of fabric and foam with someone's hand shoved up there we have a problem:

In the context of the show, they're real creatures. In the real world they're fancy puppets, but not in the show. In the show they eat and sleep and are their own beings. If you're comparing the world of Sesame Street to the real world, you have to take it as it is presented.

Because otherwise you're comparing the real world to the real world and that's not what you set out to do.

That's what's going on here. You want to take the soul into account on both sides, and it DOES NOT EXIST in Materialism. It doesn't matter that you disagree - you still need to address it as it is defined.

If it helps to think of materialism as something obviously false like the world of Sesame Street then go for it, but you still have to accept the premise if you're talking about how likely something is in that particular setting.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- Re #1. I'm happy to use 1/10100.
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Why should anyone use a made-up number? Made-up inputs are not going to lead to accurate outputs (otherwise known as GIGO).
Jabba said:
- Re #2. We can use that model if you wish (that I am totally the result of my DNA, or ovum and sperm cell)
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If you are reckoning P(H), that's the model you have to use.
Jabba said:
-- though, I suspect that we should really use the model that consciousness naturally brings with it a brand new self-awareness, not out of any limited pool of potential self-awarenesseses, and is totally unlimited as to what particular self-awareness it will be.
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None of that is part of reality, materialism or even your flawed idea of materialism that you call ooflam. It's stuff from ~H so has no place in reckoning P(H).
Jabba said:
- Re #3. Whatever, my claim is that going back to the beginning of time is appropriate.
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Even of you go back to the beginning of time, you still have to reckon P(H) with only the things that exist in a material universe. No souls, no nonsense about limited or unlimited pools, no potential things, no thinking of consciousness as a countable and discrete 'thing'.
Jabba said:
- Re #4. This refers to the Sharpshooter fallacy. My claim here is that I am, in fact, set apart from other possible targets. I think that Caveman agrees.
- Re #5. Again, my claim is that I am set apart, whereas Mt. Rainier is not.
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But under materialism, there is no concept of being 'set apart' in the way you are thinking.

You are still trying to use elements of ~H when reckoning P(H). You can't do that.
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Re #1. I'm happy to use 1/10100.
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Nice. One googolth

The probability that you make sense in your next 100 posts is one googolplexth.

But you'll never admit that you maintain this threads alive revolving around the same nonsense just because it allows you the fantasy of dreaming that "the topic is still being discussed so you might be right".
 
Totally related Groundhog Day derail



Argumemnon said:
Does anyone know how many times Phil had to go through the time loop in Groundhog day? 'Cause I'm similarily knowledgeable about everything in this thread, due to repetition, and I'm ready to go home now.
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Monza said:
12,403 days. A little less than 34 years. At least that's what one person calculated.
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W.
T.
F.

:jaw-dropp

Local radio station was talking about this exact same thing earlier today. Talking about how the movie could have taken a very dark and disturbing turn. Murray robbing banks, shooting and killing people just to make sure he can feel.

And the discussion was happening between these two posts.

:covereyes:boxedin:

 
Toontown said:
A typical response.

Please describe the process of eternal nothingness.
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Jesus really dude? You're gonna make us explain the base concept of "a process stopping" to you as if you don't know?

Why am I explaining to two grown men now what death is and how it works?

You know how the world existed for a long, long time before you were born and you don't remember it because there was no mental process functioning that was you yet? Well it's like that but happening after you die.

There was an eternity before you were born you don't know, why is the existence of an eternity after you die any more different?
 
Dave Rogers said:
Would you like someone to take yet another attempt at telling you?
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You can't tell Jabba what you don't know.

Dave Rogers said:
Go and get yourself a deck of cards, and shuffle it thoroughly. You will now have some specific arrangement of cards. What is the likelihood that the arrangement you have actually exists? It would have to be, a priori, one divided by the number of possible combinations. How many possible combinations of cards are there? The answer is a little over 8x1067; so the probability that you got the arrangement you actually ended up with, is a number so small it has 67 zeroes after the decimal point before its first non-zero digit. By any everyday measure, that's virtually zero. So you've just carried out an operation, the probability of a specific result of which is virtually zero.
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No, the probability that you got the arrangement you got is 1. Ask anybody around here. People keep saying that all the time. They think it means something.

That's not the part that's unlikely. What you observe is definitely what you observe. Whether you would have observed what you've observed if X is true is an entirely different question. And your analogy with the deck of cards fails to address that point. You just instructed Jabba to shuffle a deck of cards for no reason, and then you said there is nothing surprising about the shuffled deck of cards.

Dave Rogers said:
But the point is, there has to be some final arrangement of the cards. All of the different arrangements have exactly the same probability, so there's nothing particularly surprising about the fact that one of them exists in that particular pack at that particular time, even though the probability is so low.
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It would be extremely surprising if a genie materialized and exclaimed "Congratulations! You are a YUGE winner! You had no idea that is your specific winning combination, but it is and always has been. Every time anyone shuffles that combination, I am compelled to grant you a wish! Anything you ask for! Strange, isn't it. You had no idea. And you even shuffled your own combination."

Dave Rogers said:
So that's all there is to it. The probability of the existence of you, a specific person, isn't relevant, because the probability of all the other possible people existing isn't significantly different, and people exist. To think otherwise would be to think that some outside agency is also intervening when you shuffle a deck of cards.
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The probability of him, a specific person, isn't relevant to you. But that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to him. The probabilistic significance of an observation is dependent on both the specifics of the observation and on the specific perspective of the observer.

Easy example: you may be blissfully unaware that your existence has any probabilistic significance - until it occurs to you to ask how likely it is that you would exist if Vladimir Putin wanted you dead. When you ask that question, you assume a specific perspective. From that perspective, you can conclude with good confidence that Putin probably doesn't seriously want you dead.
 
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JoeBentley said:
Jesus really dude? You're gonna make us explain the base concept of "a process stopping" to you as if you don't know?

Why am I explaining to two grown men now what death is and how it works?
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Because you said eternal nothingness is a process. It's right there in black and white.

I had been of the opinion that a stopped process is not a process. I had hoped you would enlighten me.
 
Toontown said:
Because you said eternal nothingness is a process. It's right there in black and white.
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I said nothing of the sort. Please keep track of who says what.

As with Jabba I am not going to explain "a stopped process" to a grown man nor am I going to play any more games with the intentionally obtuse.

When Dave Rogers replied to your pedantic questioning of how "eternal nothingness" could be a place with "It's a process" he obviously was putting it in the context of a stopped process.

You know that's what he meant, stop being intentionally obtuse.
 
Toontown said:
Please describe the process of eternal nothingness.
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There's no such thing as 'nothing'.

As to the actual intent of your question: consciousness stops at some point, when the brain ceases to work properly. At that point 'you' cease to exist. I guess you can call that nothingness but then it won't matter at that point since you don't experience things anymore.
 
Toontown said:
You can't tell Jabba what you don't know.
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Ah, another Texas Sharpshooter.

Toontown said:
No, the probability that you got the arrangement you got is 1. Ask anybody around here. People keep saying that all the time. They think it means something.
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Yes, a posteriori it's 1. A priori it's vanishingly small. The fact that the a priori probability is vanishingly small is irrelevant in assessing the expected result, however; there is no greater probability state as all states are equally likely. What specific, single overwhelmingly greater probability outcome was expected and did not occur as a result of Jabba's existence?[1] Unless you can answer that, the whole argument is specious.

Toontown said:
The probability of him, a specific person, isn't relevant to you. But that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to him. The probabilistic significance of an observation is dependent on both the specifics of the observation and on the specific perspective of the observer.
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Let me remind you, Jabba is trying to convince people who are not him that the soul is immortal. An argument that is purely subjective to him is hardly likely to do that. And that's another part of the problem; he's trying to argue that his subjective attachment to his own existence is an objectively convincing argument.

Toontown said:
Easy example: you may be blissfully unaware that your existence has any probabilistic significance - until it occurs to you to ask how likely it is that you would exist if Vladimir Putin wanted you dead. When you ask that question, you assume a specific perspective. From that perspective, you can conclude with good confidence that Putin probably doesn't seriously want you dead.
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:boggled:

I honestly don't know how to reply to that piece of irrelevant crap. I see no way it has any bearing whatever on the question we're discussing, which is whether the probability of Jabba coming into existence is overwhelmingly less under the assumption of materialism than under the assumption that materialism is not correct.

Dave

[1] By this, I am specifically excluding "Jabba does not exist," as this is the equivalent in the example of the pack of cards of "some other arrangement exists;" that simply begs the question, which more likely arrangement?
 
Toontown said:
No, the probability that you got the arrangement you got is 1. Ask anybody around here. People keep saying that all the time. They think it means something.
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It does. It's the difference between talking about the odds of something that hasn't happened but might, and the odds of something that has already been happened. Since Jabba is talking about something that applies to any hypothetical person, we would want to know the odds of any given potential person coming to exist. Instead, he wants to pick himself after the fact, even though he already knows he exists. He then points to himself and says "Gosh! I shouldn't have existed but I do!" which is incorrect on a whole lot of levels. He would never, for example, pick a fictional person as his target and then say "Huh, they were unlikely to exist and they don't. It all checks out, nevermind."

Toontown said:
It would be extremely surprising if a genie materialized
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I mean... I guess that's true? I would be very surprised if a mythical wish-granting demon appeared. I don't really see your point.

Toontown said:
The probability of him, a specific person, isn't relevant to you. But that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to him.
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Yes, but he's trying (supposedly) to use an actual formula to prove he has a soul, and this formula should hold true for anyone - not just him. And the way the formula is set up, picking a specific real and already existing person as a "target" ruins it. It should be based on a hypothetical person that may or may not come into existence.

Toontown said:
The probabilistic significance of an observation is dependent on both the specifics of the observation and on the specific perspective of the observer.
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Not for purposes of scientific analysis and proof of objective fact. I can decide something is significant to me personally because I just kinda like the look of it, that doesn't mean it is objectively significant.
 
godless dave said:
Except whenever you try to come up with a value for P(E|H), you don't base it on the materialist model. In the materialist model, the self comes from the brain. It does not come from nowhere. It is cause and effect traceable.
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Jabba said:
- Yes, I do. The likelihood of my current existence -- given OOFLam --is virtually zero. I must be missing something, but I can't figure out what it is.
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godless dave said:
1) One of the things you're missing is that "virtually zero" doesn't mean anything mathematical. But let's ignore that for now.

In the materialist model, the one you claim to be H in for P(E|H), 2) your current existence is a result of your parents having sex, you being conceived, you being born, and you surviving through today. Their existence is a result of similar circumstances with their parents, and similarly back to the first appearance of life on earth, which was itself the result of events we don't understand, which were in turn the results of other events going back to the beginning of time and the universe.

3) So depending on when you calculate the likelihood of your eventually existence, you might get a very small number. 4) But the same would be true of absolutely everything that exists now: every snowflake, every grain of sand, every piece of rock on every planet in the universe.

5) In the materialist model, your self is entirely the result of natural processes. It did not come from nowhere. Its relative unlikelihood at various points in history is no more significant than the unlikelihood that the formation we call Mount Rainier would one day exist in the form it currently exists in.
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- Re #1. I'm happy to use 1/10100.
- Re #2. We can use that model if you wish (that I am totally the result of my DNA, or ovum and sperm cell) -- though, I suspect that we should really use the model that consciousness naturally brings with it a brand new self-awareness, not out of any limited pool of potential self-awarenesseses, and is totally unlimited as to what particular self-awareness it will be.- Re #3. Whatever, my claim is that going back to the beginning of time is appropriate.
- Re #4. This refers to the Sharpshooter fallacy. My claim here is that I am, in fact, set apart from other possible targets. I think that Caveman agrees.
- Re #5. Again, my claim is that I am set apart, whereas Mt. Rainier is not.
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godless dave said:
Just a few posts ago you said you were trying to disprove the materialist model and you assured us that it was always your intention to use the materialist model as H in P(E|H). But the highlighted part is most assuredly not the materialist model. It's not a model anyone but you is familiar with. It's certainly not a model you can use the phrase "scientifically speaking" about...
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- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness,
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What do you understand the words "perfect copy" to mean?

neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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Just as a Volkswagen creates a brand new going 60 mph.

Do you still agree that the two equivalent phrases are idiotic?
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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And? What does that have to do with the odds of you existing or whether materialism is true?
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness,
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It's not "your" anything, because it's not an entity that can be owned.

People are self-aware if they have a properly functioning brain and aren't deeply asleep.

Self-aware is something you ARE, not something you HAVE.

If a chameleon turns green, we don't say that's "his green". We don't ask, after he turns brown and then green again, if it's "his same green". It's a property. An adjective.

If I say I have a small purple coin, you know the noun is "coin" and the others are just describing properties of that noun. Likewise, you could describe me as:

Strange fat self-aware human.

The only part of that that's being used as a noun is 'human'. You can't take my self-awareness any more than you could take my 'strange'. If I somehow stop being strange, you wouldn't ask where the strange went. If I become strange again you wouldn't ask if it's the same strange I had before.
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness...
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There is no such thing as a "specific" self-awareness in materialism.

...that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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There is no "each bit" of consciousness in materialism, just as there is no each bit of "going 60 mph" in automotive engineering. You continue to misunderstand what it means to be a property.
 
JayUtah said:
There is no such thing as a "specific" self-awareness in materialism.
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If I'm being very generous, jabba might be refering to the equivalent of the precise, exact speed and trajectory of the Volkswagen. Sure, it's a process and not a thing, but you'll probably never be able to take that Volks and do the exact same journey at the exact same speed. In that sense they are different.
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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STOP.... SAYING... "SPECIFIC."

It's a B.S. weasel word and we all know it.

At this point you are trying to define separate as unique. It's sad and transparent.

It's just another "But it wouldn't be the saaaaame" lamb bleating from you.

You're a grown man Jabba. Different, same, identical, equivalent, distinct... these are not esoteric concepts.

IF WE CREATE AN EXACT COPY... IT'S AN EXACT COPY. THAT'S WHAT EXACT COPY MEANS! THAT'S HOW WORDS WORK!

You're trying to negate the concept of exact copy by bleating over and over that they are different because one is a copy.
 
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum, and science must be stuck with figuring that each bit of consciousness naturally brings with it, or creates, a brand-new self-awareness .
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godless dave said:
Why not?
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- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.
 
godless dave said:
Jabba said:
- If a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness, neither should your sperm and ovum,
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Why not?
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Hang on there a moment. You're falling for the "When did you stop beating your wife" gambit. Who conceded that "a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness" was a correct, relevant and meaningful statement here? Given that it is in fact meaningless to refer to a process in terms that only apply to an object, the conditional can be rejected so there's no point to address.

Dave
 
A PERFECT COPY WOULD BE A PERFECT COPY

How in the name of Zeus's butthole is it that you don't get this yet?
 
Dave Rogers said:
Hang on there a moment. You're falling for the "When did you stop beating your wife" gambit. Who conceded that "a perfect copy of your brain would not bring back your specific self-awareness" was a correct, relevant and meaningful statement here? Given that it is in fact meaningless to refer to a process in terms that only apply to an object, the conditional can be rejected so there's no point to address.

Dave
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Seriously we've got a grown man claiming he's gonna live forever because he's pretending the "same but distinct" concept is too hard for him to figure out and we're all playing along.
 
Jabba said:
- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.
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Answer my question, Jabba: what does it matter that "you" won't be "brought back to life" in a copy of your body and brain? What does that have to do with anything?
 
Jabba said:
- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.
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What does "particular" mean when referring to what you've called the process of self-awareness? How are processes "particular"?

Do you feel that your repeated dishonesty in continuing to refer to a process as "particular" is catching up with you?
 
Jabba said:
- How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
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They would, under the right conditions, combine to form a blastocyst which would develop into an embryo which would eventually start forming a brain. This brain would not be exactly like mine because various factors in the womb influence how a fetus develops. But regardless, a copy is separate from the original. 1+1=2. What makes my self awareness my particular self awareness is that it's the one my particular brain is producing.


Jabba said:
- And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.
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I don't know if you skipped a biology class or what, but a single cell is not, as far as we know, capable of being self aware. A sperm and egg might combine, and if they do, there's a chance the new cell might eventually develop into a human. Part of that human is a brain. That particular brain is self-aware. Before the brain exists and develops, the organism is not self-aware.
 
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I think finally at long last we have reached the Planck's Hairsplit I mentioned before.

Jabba's obviously talking about a soul and he's shoving the soul into smaller and smaller distinctions without difference trying to keep that particular ball in the air.

At this point he's so trapped in his own corner it's been reduced down to "Another me wouldn't be me because only I am me." It's been distilled into pure argument via definition.
 
Jabba said:
How about perfect copies of your sperm and ovum?
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Yes and no. No because casting the problem in terms of embryology changes the conditions of the thought experiment. Even with identical sperm and ova, the developmental process remains variable by other factors. The thought experiment does not ask how an identical copy of an organism can be made. It just asks us to speculate what would happen if such a thing were possible. You constantly deploy these straw men to argue that materialism is limited to certain specific interactions or conditions such as genetics or "chemistry." The state of an entity is determined -- even in materialism -- as more than just some snapshot of a few of the initial conditions.

Yes because the sense of self is a property, and as such it is largely non-individualized. Others are content to let you get away with the notion of a "particular" self-awareness or a "specific" sense of self, but I am not. The sense of self and the phenomenon of consciousness exist regardless of what memories or sensory inputs we convolve with it from time to time. E in the model is that we have a sense of self, not that we have some particular, individualized experience. This conceptualization distinguishes between what I think is the essence of consciousness, and the attendant problems that Loss Leader and others have pointed out -- namely the ongoing, ever-changing nature of the state of memory and sensation and their interaction with consciousness.

And, if science/materialism considers, or would consider, your particular sperm and ovum to be the cause of your particular self-awareness, I'm happy to use that model instead.
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No, you don't get to use a model that insists upon an arbitrary distinction between humans and everything else. Forcing the model to explicitly embrace human embryology is unparsimonious and renders it inapplicable to other material such as bread dough for which human embryology is moot. That was, in fact, the essence of the bread-loaf analogy: to try to explain to you the universal, uniform scope of materialism. You don't get to beg the question that humans are somehow different from any other matter and that the property of human consciousness is somehow different from any other property. Materialism expressly denies that.

Further, materialism has no concept of a "particular" self awareness. You're still trying to foist a way of thinking about it that requires it to be a discrete entity.
 
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