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How do you know it is pure nonsense? We actually have no scientific evidence either way. There is a reason why discussing the "hard problem of consciousness" is

How do you know it is pure nonsense? We actually have no scientific evidence either way. There is a reason why discussing the "hard problem of consciousness" is so popular. There are many people now advocating for a universal consciousness, i.e. that all space time has intrinsically a mind-like element that is merely "tapped into" by physical bodies. It's foolish to pretend that it's a solved problem when it's not. At the present moment we don't actually have a solid idea either way.

IshKebab 5y ago
I think you're getting mixed up. Consciousness is obviously real (because we directly experience it) and is a hard problem because it's so weird. The soul is not obviously real. There's zero evidence for it. It's just some random hypothesis that doesn't even explain anything. It's like reincarnation. Just a nice idea that someone made up with zero evidence, no mechanism and no use. Clearly nonsense.
- joeberon 5y ago
  How do you know it is nonsense? I don’t understand how you’ve categorically decided this. I’m a Buddhist so I don’t believe in a soul but I do believe in non physical aspects of the mind and also rebirth. It is actually possible to verify these things by Buddhist practise. You have decided it definitely isn’t true, but you haven’t got any proof either way. How is it then obviously “clearly nonsense”? That is just your preconception. If you are a scientist you should at least be agnostic, since we do not have evidence either way.
colemannugent 5y ago
>We actually have no scientific evidence either way. That's how we know it's nonsense. When there's no evidence for something it doesn't mean that it's 50% Likely to be true. If I told you there's a dragon in my garage you should immediately think that I'm lying because you've never seen any prior evidence of dragons anywhere. Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist.
- joeberon 5y ago
  Right but the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre, it's a very reasonable and historically defended position. EDIT: Also not sure what this bizarre statement is: > Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist. 1. How is that related to mathematics? Can you provide a theorem or some definitions here? 2. How is evidence related to mathematics? 3. Why is mathematics relevant when talking about whether or not our mind has non-physical aspects?
  - colemannugent 5y ago
    >...the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre... That's where we disagree. Can you give me an example of anything that doesn't exist within this physical universe? I'm not familiar with the concept of a "thing" that isn't physical. Sorry about being confusing with the last sentence. I'll try and address your questions: 1. When we talk about the likelihood of something being true we are now discussing probabilities, which have a long and well proven track record of obeying the laws of statistics. Statistics are quite often counter-intuitive and our brains don't think in terms of the math that governs the actual outcomes A good example is the birthday problem [1]. Imagine we had a room full of people and we wanted to know what the odds are that two of those people in the room had the same birthday. Obviously the more people we have, the more likely we are to have a match, but how many people do you need to get to that point? It turns out that with just 23 people in the room there's a 50% chance of two people having the same birthday. Most people's intuition leads them to believe that for 50% you'd need 365/2 = 182.5 people, but once there's 70 people in a room, you're almost certain to have a match with a probability of 99.9%. This is a good example of a case where not knowing the math will lead your predictions of the world to be incorrect. 2. When we discuss evidence we are trying to figure out the probability of something, thus the rules of probabilities apply. One of the fundamental theorems of statistics is Bayes' Theorem [2], which at its core tells you how to calculate the probability of an event given another event. To motivate that, here's a more realistic example: "A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent reliability--that is, 99 percent of people who are sick test positive and 99 percent of the healthy people test negative. The doctor knows that only 1 percent of the people in the country are sick. Now the question is: if the patient tests positive, what are the chances the patient is sick?" If you answered 99% then you'd not only be wrong, but you'd have misdiagnosed your patient. The correct answer here is 50% [3]. 3. To bring it all together: to properly know things one must understand the laws of mathematics. This applies not just to problems that obviously involve probabilities, but everything in general. At it's core, I think our disagreement revolves around this idea of non-physicality and the belief that there are things that aren't governed by mathematics. Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem [3] https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/bs/bs704_probability/bs704_probability6.html https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/bs/bs704_probabi...

IshKebab 5y ago

I think you're getting mixed up. Consciousness is obviously real (because we directly experience it) and is a hard problem because it's so weird. The soul is not obviously real. There's zero evidence for it. It's just some random hypothesis that doesn't even explain anything. It's like reincarnation. Just a nice idea that someone made up with zero evidence, no mechanism and no use. Clearly nonsense.

joeberon 5y ago
How do you know it is nonsense? I don’t understand how you’ve categorically decided this. I’m a Buddhist so I don’t believe in a soul but I do believe in non physical aspects of the mind and also rebirth. It is actually possible to verify these things by Buddhist practise. You have decided it definitely isn’t true, but you haven’t got any proof either way. How is it then obviously “clearly nonsense”? That is just your preconception. If you are a scientist you should at least be agnostic, since we do not have evidence either way.

colemannugent 5y ago

>We actually have no scientific evidence either way. That's how we know it's nonsense. When there's no evidence for something it doesn't mean that it's 50% Likely to be true. If I told you there's a dragon in my garage you should immediately think that I'm lying because you've never seen any prior evidence of dragons anywhere. Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist.

joeberon 5y ago
Right but the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre, it's a very reasonable and historically defended position. EDIT: Also not sure what this bizarre statement is: > Mathematically, things with no evidence for their existence don't exist. 1. How is that related to mathematics? Can you provide a theorem or some definitions here? 2. How is evidence related to mathematics? 3. Why is mathematics relevant when talking about whether or not our mind has non-physical aspects?
- colemannugent 5y ago
  >...the idea that there are aspects of our minds that don't exist within this physical universe is not outlandish or bizarre... That's where we disagree. Can you give me an example of anything that doesn't exist within this physical universe? I'm not familiar with the concept of a "thing" that isn't physical. Sorry about being confusing with the last sentence. I'll try and address your questions: 1. When we talk about the likelihood of something being true we are now discussing probabilities, which have a long and well proven track record of obeying the laws of statistics. Statistics are quite often counter-intuitive and our brains don't think in terms of the math that governs the actual outcomes A good example is the birthday problem [1]. Imagine we had a room full of people and we wanted to know what the odds are that two of those people in the room had the same birthday. Obviously the more people we have, the more likely we are to have a match, but how many people do you need to get to that point? It turns out that with just 23 people in the room there's a 50% chance of two people having the same birthday. Most people's intuition leads them to believe that for 50% you'd need 365/2 = 182.5 people, but once there's 70 people in a room, you're almost certain to have a match with a probability of 99.9%. This is a good example of a case where not knowing the math will lead your predictions of the world to be incorrect. 2. When we discuss evidence we are trying to figure out the probability of something, thus the rules of probabilities apply. One of the fundamental theorems of statistics is Bayes' Theorem [2], which at its core tells you how to calculate the probability of an event given another event. To motivate that, here's a more realistic example: "A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent reliability--that is, 99 percent of people who are sick test positive and 99 percent of the healthy people test negative. The doctor knows that only 1 percent of the people in the country are sick. Now the question is: if the patient tests positive, what are the chances the patient is sick?" If you answered 99% then you'd not only be wrong, but you'd have misdiagnosed your patient. The correct answer here is 50% [3]. 3. To bring it all together: to properly know things one must understand the laws of mathematics. This applies not just to problems that obviously involve probabilities, but everything in general. At it's core, I think our disagreement revolves around this idea of non-physicality and the belief that there are things that aren't governed by mathematics. Everything is physical and obeys the laws of physics which themselves are governed by the laws of mathematics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem [3] https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/bs/bs704_probability/bs704_probability6.html https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/bs/bs704_probabi...