(September 8, 2011 at 6:36 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(September 7, 2011 at 6:10 pm)Fred Wrote: I had a dream about a pony last night.

Can my pony dream be objectively proven?

In principle, yes, whether you had a dream about a pony last night can be proven or disproven.

Your dream is an artifact of your nerological activity.

Your perception of a pony is also an artifact of your neurological activity.

That's two artifacts right there. They come from physical activity. Check.

Quote:And no, whether it is proven that you dreamed a pony, we can prove a dreamt pony lack all attributes of physical existence.

If my dreamt pony doesn't have physical existence, then my pony doesn't exist.

I have two artifacts of physical activity coming up with "nothing." Where's my fucking pony Chuck? I just saw the damn thing last night.

You are saying that the physical produces two "artifacts," my dream and my perception. That's all physical. They, to hear you tell it, produced nothing. Somehow a physical process produces artifacts that produce "nothing," and yet out pops a pony that doesn't exist because it lacks all attributes of physical existence.

No, I'm not following that either, but that's the road you just walked down.

Nobody questioned the possibility of my having a dream about a pony because they've all had dreams and know what a pony is. Given a TF test as to whether it was possible to have a dream of a pony, you'd all insist the answer was T because everybody knows the drill about dreams and ponies.

But if pressed, not a single one of you can produce the smallest iota of objective proof that a dream pony exists, because, as you explained so well, it doesn't.

Hmm. People insisting to the possibility of the existence of something that cannot be objectively proven insisting that if something cannot be proven objectively it does not exist.

Something is wrong with this pony picture.

The evidence claim of materialism is broken and nobody at all plays by it's rules in their own existence, yet they claim it is the ultimate arbiter of what is really real.

Yet I'm the crazy one.

Quote:BTW, dreaming of pony? Are you gay or something?

Yo, Chuck. I just got here, dude. You don't even know me, and it's pretty fucking rude to hit on me right out of the box. Chill.

Words and words and words and...............The only thing that's broken here is the record you're playing.

That human beings lean on faulty logic and rough guesses (gasp even in the absence of evidence) in their day to day lives is well known. That we assume things for expedience or convenience is well known. That this sort of activity is scientifically unproductive is well known.

Waste....of....time.

The only way your dream ponies will ever be able to dent materialism is if you can remove them from the material world. Which would require evidence that there is more to dreams and dreaming than is observed. Do you have anything at all to add to our understanding of dreams?

Quote:

(September 8, 2011 at 7:08 pm)Rhythm Wrote: [quote]
Mine, yours, everyone's, you are correct because there can be none.

A claim to totality of knowledge,

No. A claim to the rules regarding objective evidence. If you want to play the promissory materialism card and maintain like Chuck that one day we will have equipment that can prove you had one, go for it. As things stand, there is no objective proof. Deal with it.

(September 8, 2011 at 10:54 pm)Fred Wrote: No. A claim to the rules regarding objective evidence. If you want to play the promissory materialism card and maintain like Chuck that one day we will have equipment that can prove you had one, go for it. As things stand, there is no objective proof. Deal with it.

Look at that, your statements are now in agreement with my own. I'm glad we've gone from "there can be none" to "as things stand". "As things stand" there is no proof for the immaterial, it cannot be said to exist (materialism right there). Was there anything else?

Fred, you are missing two rather important issues. First, whether or not Rhythm has objective evidence of your dream pony is entirely irrelevant to the existence of your dream pony. One is an epistemological issue regarding Rhythm, the other is a metaphysical issue regarding your dream pony—and throughout this thread (and consistently everywhere in these forums) these two issues are being conflated. For whatever it is worth, that is one of the most ironic things about metaphysical naturalists: they never hesitate to abandon the metaphysical question as quickly as possible. Whether or not your dream pony exists (metaphysics) is distinct from whether or not there is evidence for the existence of your dream pony (epistemology). Even if we were to suppose that there is zero evidence for it (as we seem to have done), what has that to do with the existence of it?

"Without that evidence, I have no reason to believe him," says John Q Materialist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but so what?

Second, while people have been making noise about the causal relationship between the neurological activity of your brain and the dream pony of your mind, have you noticed there has been zero evidence provided to substantiate that causal relationship? There is evidence of your neurological activity on the one hand, and your testimony about dreaming of a pony on the other, and a causal relationship between the former and the latter is concluded based on... err, wait, how do we know there is a causal relationship? Perhaps you might pursue that issue.

(P.S. It also seemed a little ironic that you were asking whether objective evidence could exist for a subjective object.)

The sun shines and light falls on the earth, but is there any cuasal relationship between the former and the latter? The reason that no one has bothered with this, is that it has already been touched upon in one of his other identical threads.

(September 8, 2011 at 11:20 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Look at that, your statements are now in agreement with my own.

I am truly gobsmacked Rhythm that you haven't seen Fred say that in every other post.

You can have evidence of a dream, but you don't have evidence of its content.

I'm surprised that you're surprised Frodo.

(September 8, 2011 at 2:46 pm)FaithNoMore Wrote: Materialists know that thoughts are electrical impulses between neurons, therefore they can be ordered.

Thats a very bold assertion, could you elaborate a little more? How are "thoughts" contained/consist of or in any way made up of electrical impulses? Can you explain how "electrical impulses" are interpreted as thoughts? Are you saying that thought has material existance?