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There's nothing brilliant about atheism. It's just as scientifically dishonest as religion.

by tsally 18y ago

amichail 18y ago
What I find scientifically dishonest is when scientists leave open the possibility that science may one day shed light on subjective experience. It never will, because subjective experience by definition lies outside the boundary of what scientific experiments can detect.
- banned_man 18y ago
  Science contains the reduction that two physically identical objects are equivalent: a kilogram of pure iron is the same as any other kilogram of iron (if such a thing existed). For the purposes of physics and biology, it's a valid reduction, and a necessary one, since it'd be impossible to reason about organic chemistry probvlems if individual carbon atoms had "personality" or "identity" that needed to be taken into account. Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact physical clone of oneself would hold a different consciousness, even at the zero moment when they were physically identical. This isn't a discrepancy that can be reduced through better equipment and more complex models. It's a fundamental gap.
  - joeyo 18y ago
    > Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property > for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact > physical clone of oneself would hold a different > consciousness, even at the zero moment when they were > physically identical. This is a nice assertion to make but it is by no means proven. Perhaps an exact physical copy of myself shares a consciousness with me, or has no consciousness at all. And even if it told me that it had it's own consciousness, why should I believe it anyway? ;-)
    - ericb 18y ago
      As you sit at your desk, I clone you using advanced alien technology. Your clone appears in the middle of the room. I whisper a secret to the clone. At this point, do you know what I said to the clone? If your consciousness is the same, shouldn't you? Maybe not "experimentally proven" but seems clear to me nonetheless.
      - joeyo 18y ago
        Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. I don't know if my "alien clone" would share a consciousness with me and you don't know either. It's not even clear if split brain patients (people with brain hemispheres that do not communicate or very inefficiently communicate with each-other) can be said to have a single consciousness or two consciousnesses or something else entirely.
        ericb 18y ago
        >> Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. That isn't much of a counter-argument. Can you give me something better?
      - banned_man 18y ago
        My anticipation of the counterargument (which is not a bad one): As soon as you whisper something to the clone, the physical state of the clone is different from his. The counter-counter-argument is that if consciousness is a product of one physical state, rather than a range of states, then a person harbors an entirely different consciousness from one moment to the next, which is utterly contrary to our notion of consciousness. The upshot of hardcore materialism is that if it's true, the notion of consciousness is an illusion. Then there's no reason to be upset over death, since the thing that will be annihilated doesn't exist. It really is some other person in the distant future who will die.
        joeyo 18y ago
        Excellent points. Even sleep is problematic-- if I go to sleep and wake up after a nice nap, does the post-nap me share the same consciousness as the pre-nap me? Now while you were asleep I create a clone of you. Which one do you wake up as? Why? It's to bad the story went dead, this is just starting to get fun.
- neilc 18y ago
  "Never" is a very strong word. "Subjective" experiences ultimately manifest as a series of electrical / chemical state changes in the brain; both the brain and those state changes are well within the realm of scientific understanding, so it seems quite plausible that science could explain subjective experience.
  - amichail 18y ago
    The point is you cannot distinguish between something that has subjective experience and something that appears to have subjective experience.
    - banned_man 18y ago
      The assumption of materialism is as superstitious and silly as most religious assertions. It's scientism, not science. Science treats physical matter as first-class citizens; mind is not one. A large subset of Buddhism (especially Tibetan) takes the opposite approach-- mind is the first-class citizen, and physical matter is "an appearance to the mind"; it exists only because we (and trillions of other beings) experience it, and it's no more or less real than the world in a dream. These approaches seem diametrically opposite and yet, interesting enough, it seems that Buddhism is (of the major religions) the one most quick to embrace science, because of the mutual recognition that these two approaches (matter first vs. mind first) are just that: merely approaches, none of which have a monopoly on the generation of useful knowledge.

There's nothing brilliant about atheism. It's just as scientifically dishonest as religion.

by tsally 18y ago

There's nothing brilliant about atheism. It's just as scientifically dishonest as religion.

What I find scientifically dishonest is when scientists leave open the possibility that science may one day shed light on subjective experience. It never will, because subjective experience by definition lies outside the boundary of what scientific experiments can detect.

banned_man 18y ago
Science contains the reduction that two physically identical objects are equivalent: a kilogram of pure iron is the same as any other kilogram of iron (if such a thing existed). For the purposes of physics and biology, it's a valid reduction, and a necessary one, since it'd be impossible to reason about organic chemistry probvlems if individual carbon atoms had "personality" or "identity" that needed to be taken into account. Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact physical clone of oneself would hold a different consciousness, even at the zero moment when they were physically identical. This isn't a discrepancy that can be reduced through better equipment and more complex models. It's a fundamental gap.
- joeyo 18y ago
  > Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property > for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact > physical clone of oneself would hold a different > consciousness, even at the zero moment when they were > physically identical. This is a nice assertion to make but it is by no means proven. Perhaps an exact physical copy of myself shares a consciousness with me, or has no consciousness at all. And even if it told me that it had it's own consciousness, why should I believe it anyway? ;-)
  - ericb 18y ago
    As you sit at your desk, I clone you using advanced alien technology. Your clone appears in the middle of the room. I whisper a secret to the clone. At this point, do you know what I said to the clone? If your consciousness is the same, shouldn't you? Maybe not "experimentally proven" but seems clear to me nonetheless.
    - joeyo 18y ago
      Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. I don't know if my "alien clone" would share a consciousness with me and you don't know either. It's not even clear if split brain patients (people with brain hemispheres that do not communicate or very inefficiently communicate with each-other) can be said to have a single consciousness or two consciousnesses or something else entirely.
      - ericb 18y ago
        >> Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. That isn't much of a counter-argument. Can you give me something better?
    - banned_man 18y ago
      My anticipation of the counterargument (which is not a bad one): As soon as you whisper something to the clone, the physical state of the clone is different from his. The counter-counter-argument is that if consciousness is a product of one physical state, rather than a range of states, then a person harbors an entirely different consciousness from one moment to the next, which is utterly contrary to our notion of consciousness. The upshot of hardcore materialism is that if it's true, the notion of consciousness is an illusion. Then there's no reason to be upset over death, since the thing that will be annihilated doesn't exist. It really is some other person in the distant future who will die.
      - joeyo 18y ago
        Excellent points. Even sleep is problematic-- if I go to sleep and wake up after a nice nap, does the post-nap me share the same consciousness as the pre-nap me? Now while you were asleep I create a clone of you. Which one do you wake up as? Why? It's to bad the story went dead, this is just starting to get fun.
neilc 18y ago
"Never" is a very strong word. "Subjective" experiences ultimately manifest as a series of electrical / chemical state changes in the brain; both the brain and those state changes are well within the realm of scientific understanding, so it seems quite plausible that science could explain subjective experience.
- amichail 18y ago
  The point is you cannot distinguish between something that has subjective experience and something that appears to have subjective experience.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    The assumption of materialism is as superstitious and silly as most religious assertions. It's scientism, not science. Science treats physical matter as first-class citizens; mind is not one. A large subset of Buddhism (especially Tibetan) takes the opposite approach-- mind is the first-class citizen, and physical matter is "an appearance to the mind"; it exists only because we (and trillions of other beings) experience it, and it's no more or less real than the world in a dream. These approaches seem diametrically opposite and yet, interesting enough, it seems that Buddhism is (of the major religions) the one most quick to embrace science, because of the mutual recognition that these two approaches (matter first vs. mind first) are just that: merely approaches, none of which have a monopoly on the generation of useful knowledge.