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#241 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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#242 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 3,220
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#243 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 30,018
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#244 |
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: The Biggest Little City in the World
Posts: 29,551
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If you have two beers, isn't that having the same beer twice? From that, I can conclude that six packs are impossible, and each time you reach into the fridge, a beer just appears out of nothing. You see, a fridge is just a receiver for beer, so beer is immortal.
So there. |
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"Oh god...What have you done, zooterkin? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?!" - Cleon |
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#245 |
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through a scribbled morning waving necessary ankles
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Cair Paravel, according to XKCD
Posts: 26,418
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Me: So what you're saying is that, if the load carrying ability of the lower structure is reduced to the point where it can no longer support the load above it, it will collapse without a jolt, right? Tony Szamboti: That is right |
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#246 |
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: The Biggest Little City in the World
Posts: 29,551
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"Oh god...What have you done, zooterkin? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?!" - Cleon |
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#247 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: High above Indianapolis
Posts: 1,834
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Congratulations, you have successfully failed to model something that you assert "isn't noticeable". -The Man Science is not hopelessly hobbled just because it knows the difference between fact and imagination. -JayUtah |
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#248 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Central Canada
Posts: 1,349
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The potential beer is the beer at the factory in the big vat (potential souls waiting for a body). the beer can is the body. So when the beer goes into the beer can, that's like being born. When you pee out the beer after, that's dying, the beer will be recycled (somehow) into another beer-soul just waiting for the can,
but..... ITS THE SAME BEER!!!!!!! |
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#249 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 20,989
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If you love life, you must accept the traces it leaves. |
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#250 |
Protected by Samurai Hedgehogs!
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 10,775
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"You're a sick SOB. You know that, Wollery?" - Roadtoad "Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider!" --George Carlin |
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#251 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 5,478
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"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski "Most good ideas don't work." Jabba "Se due argomenti sembrano altrettanto convincenti, il meno sarcastico è probabilmente corretto." Jabba's Razor |
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#252 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 5,478
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"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski "Most good ideas don't work." Jabba "Se due argomenti sembrano altrettanto convincenti, il meno sarcastico è probabilmente corretto." Jabba's Razor |
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#253 |
Great Dalmuti
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 8,264
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"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." - aggle-rithm |
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#254 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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There aren't until you prove there are. That's the whole point of this exercise. You say you think you can prove immortality mathematically. You vest the power of immortality in an immortal soul. None of that exists until you prove it does. Got it? There is a parsimonious explanation for the self in science. That explanation fits all the available facts. You can't do any better.
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#255 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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#256 |
Fiend God
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: In the details
Posts: 72,392
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Master of the Shining Darkness ![]() ![]() |
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#257 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 3,220
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#258 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Central Canada
Posts: 1,349
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#259 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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Indeed, which is why I listed audible programming as the emergent property of the combination of coherent radio waves and a working receiver. Neither the radio waves alone nor the radio alone results in audible programming. The waves and the apparatus work in concert and the result is an audible ... well, concert. That's the key concept of emergence -- it is a property of the whole that cannot be vested in any one component.
A working brain is composed of cells of different types. The properties of thought and consciousness are not exhibited by the individual cells; they emerge from the entire assembly working together. |
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#260 |
Muse
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 788
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That's a terrible analogy. The analogy that's used with brains and radios is that the radio or brain tunes into and picks up a signal/consciousness (or soul or whatever).
To say that the same thing happens to the running of an engine when it blows a gasket as happens when a radio is switched off, would mean that "running" is some thing that is independent of an engine that it picks up or tunes into and that continues to exist when the engine breaks down or is destroyed. Do you really believe that the same thing happens to the running of an engine when it breaks down or is switched off as happens to a radio signal when a radio is switched off? ![]() |
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#261 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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Good grief, yes, I have to agree. Especially since Jabba has already tried to use the oft-employed dualist analogy to which you allude: that the soul is like radio waves and the body or brain is like a radio, and that it takes the two together to make music.
In that analogy there's no proof "radio waves" (i.e., the soul) exists. Second, radio waves can be detected by instruments other than radios, and in a manner that doesn't produce music. Dualists can present no other evidence for the operation of the alleged soul than through its purported interaction with the body. Jabba has frankly told us science can't possibly detect the soul, for ... reasons. That's where the dualist claim runs afoul of parsimony. In order to have the property they want -- immortality -- they have to invent a phenomenon that magically has the property of immortality yet has no other observable properties that aren't connected with causes science already knows produces the other purported effects of the soul: the sense of self. That is, we can already explain the sense of self by means of causes for which there is already evidence, and we can strongly correlate the observations to the presence or absence of those causes alone. Since we don't need there to be a soul to explain observations, it's not a component of the model. I frequently see non-scientists struggle with parsimony. It's an important requirement of a scientific model to include no more than what is required to explain the observations, because to do otherwise purports causality for which there is no evidence and which would lead to incorrect predictions. Non-scientists, and especially the fringe, translate this into a belief that science cannot allow extraneous causes for some particular effect, and they argue this is irrational. A parsimonious model is sufficient. That is, if the goal is to explain some phenomenon such as the sense of self, a parsimonious model contains all the causes that are necessary to explain the entire phenomenon. If a newcomer argues that a new cause should be added to the mix, then he has to show the existing model is insufficient without it. He has to show phenomena that the model doesn't explain. Then, in a following step, he has to show that his purported cause explains the missing phenomena, and therefore that the model is sufficient only if it includes his proffered cause. Without that exercise it's useless for a fringe claimant to beg skeptics to stipulate arguendo that a soul exists. So what if it does? The goal is to show that it exists and that it explains some phenomena. You can't do that to an already-sufficient model.
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#262 |
Fiend God
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: In the details
Posts: 72,392
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Master of the Shining Darkness ![]() ![]() |
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#263 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 30,018
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[Nothing to see here. Move along.]
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#264 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 30,018
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__________________
"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#265 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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Indeed, many fringe claimants fall back to a position where, unable to prove their claims, they assert their critics similarly cannot dispute or disprove them. They search for an elusive position in which they say the evidence can only prove them right, never prove them wrong. And yes, to this end Jabba has said science doesn't have the power to study the soul. He has also said you need a particular mode of thinking in order to understand the nature of the soul -- a mode of thinking he just happens to excel at and which his critics lack (according to him).
If all this sounds like a litany of excuses for why he can present no evidence of a soul, that's because it is. |
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#266 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 30,018
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He actually, at one point, defined the soul as having no characteristics of its own, all the characteristics of the living individual's personality being produced by the body. Where's William of Ockham when you need him?
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#267 |
Ovis ex Machina
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 6,854
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I’d rather be a rising ape than a falling angel. - Sir Terry Pratchett |
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#268 |
Winking at the Moon
Moderator Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 12,372
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Why can't you be more like Agatha? - Loss Leader |
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#269 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 15,200
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No doubt to deny science a means of testing for their presence or absence. If you can't study it, you can't say it doesn't exist. And that leaves Jabba with the thin shred of hope to which he's been clinging lo these four years and counting.
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#270 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 30,018
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#271 |
Self Employed
Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Florida
Posts: 10,435
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I've said it before but understanding something as a process and not a "thing" is not that hard.
When you blow a candle out you don't have a crisis of faith over where the fire "went." When you park your car you don't have a crisis of faith over where the "driving" went. When I'm playing a game of Fallout and turn off my Xbox I don't have a crisis of faith over where the game went. |
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"Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset, Se7en |
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#272 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 26,234
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#273 |
Featherless biped
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Aporia
Posts: 18,639
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A vinaigrette, or other emulsion, only exists when it is in motion.
http://historyofphilosophy.net/mccabe-on-heraclitus |
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'The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.' - Richard Feynman |
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#274 |
Schrödinger's cat
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Malmesbury, UK
Posts: 10,235
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Where does the wave go after it hits the shore, that's what I want to know. It might have travelled for days and hundreds of miles, still the same wave even though its shape and the molecules of water that constitute it are constantly changing, then it hits the shore and poof it's gone.
Still at least the wave got to exist. Just think of all those potential waves that never will. |
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"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett |
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#275 |
Membership Drive
Co-Ordinator, Russell's Antinomy Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...
Posts: 17,348
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"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest "The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David "Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze |
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#276 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 5,478
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Dave,
- For one thing, while the brain is made up of emergent properties, the brain is not an emergent property in itself (like Mt Rainier is not). But then, the self is. - For another thing, the brain was not created out of nowhere -- the self was. |
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"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski "Most good ideas don't work." Jabba "Se due argomenti sembrano altrettanto convincenti, il meno sarcastico è probabilmente corretto." Jabba's Razor |
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#277 |
Great Dalmuti
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 8,264
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__________________
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." - aggle-rithm |
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#278 |
Fiend God
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: In the details
Posts: 72,392
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Master of the Shining Darkness ![]() ![]() |
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#279 |
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: The Biggest Little City in the World
Posts: 29,551
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__________________
"Oh god...What have you done, zooterkin? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?!" - Cleon |
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#280 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Iowa USA
Posts: 12,131
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