(Yesterday at 12:38 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: @Jal

Quote:My axiom is that an intangible substance cannot physically impact a tangible one. 

That axiom is incoherent. Would you like me to tell you why or would you prefer to work it out for yourself?

Boru

Sure tell me why.

(Yesterday at 12:58 pm)Jal Wrote: Nice video.

 For example it strikes me as an insane theory (inconceivable) that brute particles suddenly become self-aware via cerebral organization. 

Clearly I am not alone here. This concern is the whole reason for panpsychism.

Pretty sure it's come up that we don't think it was sudden.

(Yesterday at 9:12 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(Yesterday at 2:00 am)Jal Wrote: I think I am using the term differently than you. I clarified my usage to someone else a few posts back.

That’s a running theme in our convo.  You use words like “atheist reductionism” and “epiphenomena” incorrectly - this leads to misunderstandings on your part and miscommunications between parties….like falling dominoes.

Quote:Ok is this an attempt to resolve the allegations of the OP? In a domino context, hunger is not going to "cause" satiation. Consider a stream of flowing water, and let's pretend it hungers to move in a particular direction. So turns out that it's in luck, because nature happens to flow that way consistently. There is no such consistency in food consumption. By day and hour, food availability varies in location, abundance, barriers, competition. The problem is that blind causality is indisposed to accommodate these aberrations on the consumer's behalf.

It’s an attempt to correct your misunderstandings about natural selection that appear to be informing your view of its insufficiency.  For example, here you cite precisely those conditions that make hunger a more fit homeostatic strategy than a simpler chemical trigger as though they were problems.  Not only are these not problems in a world where conscious experience is “more” than electrochemical response…they are -particularly and exclusively effective- when it isn’t.  When it’s just dominoes.  

Still, you touch on something that’s equally real in the world.  Whether hunger is some other x or electrochemical reactions….and regardless of whether it is effective to some extent in the world, there are still many occasions where hunger does not lead to satiation.  So our agency….if we have agency…whatever its nature may be, is still limited.  It remains true that the universe is seemingly indifferent to hunger.  Which is to say that it’s not by our hungering that food manifests itself in the world.  It only compels us to make the attempt.

Hunger as blind casualty is exactly why hunger works in a biological understanding of homeostatic response.  You’re hungry even when you don’t need food, and this compels you to look for it before you need it, which is very useful when food out in the world can be spotty.  Can you understand why…in a world with souls or without them (why pretend we’re talking about anything else, amiright?)….natural selection is a very good explanation for why we hunger?  Or if you prefer, can you see how positing a world positively brimming with soul but without natural selection…there really isn’t any obvious reason for us to feel hunger?

Leading to another fun bit of exploration.  Sometimes…because these processes are meaningfully blind regardless of what we believe about the nature of consciousness….they backfire.  Do souls just want to be fat…or do we find ourselves adapted for resource scarce environments living in an obesegenic world?  How come our souls…if that’s how we’re doing our thinking….have so much trouble with that?  Why do souls find it so difficult to resist the compelling nature of this particular homeostatic strategy?  Why can’t we will ourselves to be skinny, why can’t we will ourselves to not feel hunger….and why, if it’s a soul doing all of this…can chemical appetite suppressants do for us what souls cannot?  What is glp1…doing to souls….and how?

"It only compels us to make the attempt."   I don't think you're getting the point. Your words seem to imply:
1. We feel hunger.
2. Based on that hunger, we change our present course of direction. We INITIATE an attempt to procure food.

Again, that's like the third domino in a rightward fall saying, "I think I'll go left" - and than manages to do it!

The truth is, dominos do not INITIATE anything. Blind causality forces them to fall in a particular direction, whether they like it or not.

A  deterministic Natural Selection is doomed to failure.  I see no remedy for this problem. If you can't acknowledge this problem, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

More like if the domino happens to go left and there are more dominoes in that direction, dominoes will continue to fall.

(Yesterday at 1:07 pm)Jal Wrote:

(Yesterday at 9:12 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: That’s a running theme in our convo.  You use words like “atheist reductionism” and “epiphenomena” incorrectly - this leads to misunderstandings on your part and miscommunications between parties….like falling dominoes.

It’s an attempt to correct your misunderstandings about natural selection that appear to be informing your view of its insufficiency.  For example, here you cite precisely those conditions that make hunger a more fit homeostatic strategy than a simpler chemical trigger as though they were problems.  Not only are these not problems in a world where conscious experience is “more” than electrochemical response…they are -particularly and exclusively effective- when it isn’t.  When it’s just dominoes.  

Still, you touch on something that’s equally real in the world.  Whether hunger is some other x or electrochemical reactions….and regardless of whether it is effective to some extent in the world, there are still many occasions where hunger does not lead to satiation.  So our agency….if we have agency…whatever its nature may be, is still limited.  It remains true that the universe is seemingly indifferent to hunger.  Which is to say that it’s not by our hungering that food manifests itself in the world.  It only compels us to make the attempt.

Hunger as blind casualty is exactly why hunger works in a biological understanding of homeostatic response.  You’re hungry even when you don’t need food, and this compels you to look for it before you need it, which is very useful when food out in the world can be spotty.  Can you understand why…in a world with souls or without them (why pretend we’re talking about anything else, amiright?)….natural selection is a very good explanation for why we hunger?  Or if you prefer, can you see how positing a world positively brimming with soul but without natural selection…there really isn’t any obvious reason for us to feel hunger?

Leading to another fun bit of exploration.  Sometimes…because these processes are meaningfully blind regardless of what we believe about the nature of consciousness….they backfire.  Do souls just want to be fat…or do we find ourselves adapted for resource scarce environments living in an obesegenic world?  How come our souls…if that’s how we’re doing our thinking….have so much trouble with that?  Why do souls find it so difficult to resist the compelling nature of this particular homeostatic strategy?  Why can’t we will ourselves to be skinny, why can’t we will ourselves to not feel hunger….and why, if it’s a soul doing all of this…can chemical appetite suppressants do for us what souls cannot?  What is glp1…doing to souls….and how?

"It only compels us to make the attempt."   I don't think you're getting the point. Your words seem to imply:
1. We feel hunger.
2. Based on that hunger, we change our present course of direction. We INITIATE an attempt to procure food.

Again, that's like the third domino in a rightward fall saying, "I think I'll go left" - and than manages to do it!

The truth is, dominos do not INITIATE anything. Blind causality forces them to fall in a particular direction, whether they like it or not.

A  deterministic Natural Selection is doomed to failure.  I see no remedy for this problem. If you can't acknowledge this problem, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

As opposed to "our hunger initiates a food seeking behavior?" What informs your preference for one over the other?

It sounds like you have a definition of initiate that requires that initiating an action requires incompatibilist free will, aka libertarian free will. There is no such implication in the word. That's a you problem. I scheduled a cron job to run some SMART tests on my NAS. At 12:00 A.M. this morning, my NAS initiated those tests. No free will required. It seems that a great deal of your beliefs and errors are self-caused by you assuming meanings or principles which weren't necessitated by anything other than your own predilections and mistakes. Instead of being open-minded enough to realize that there are perfectly acceptable choices that differ from yours, you have dug yourself in under the ostensible rule of my way or the highway. This is the closed-mindedness you are infected with.

(Yesterday at 11:01 am)Angrboda Wrote: @Jal :

You've said that in philosophy you learned the principle that the immaterial cannot affect the material.  What fact or reason would prevent one from assuming the contrary?  This just seems like an arbitrary principle that you've adopted for no particularly good reason.  They say that oil and water don't mix.  But they do influence each other.  A liquid and a gas may minimally interact, but they aren't immutable towards each other.  Philosophers discuss 'substance' which is a term of art which refers to the basic, atomic materials that make up our world.  Thus what are described as different forms of matter all live under the umbrella of substance, with nothing preventing their interaction.   So why can't substance subsume both the material and the immaterial?  This just seems to be you deciding, here, but no further, for arbitrary, read: defenseless, reasons.  What reasons do you have for adopting this principle and can a reasonable man differ on this principle?

Axiom: the intangible cannot impact the tangible.   

Why is everyone acting like this is unrealistic? Suppose I want to hit a golf but not too far. Turns out I have a machine that can soften my club, to soften the blow.

So I try this out, but the ball went too far. I soften the club some more. Still a little too far - still a little too much IMPACT. 

Eventually I achieve the limits of the machine - it softs the club to the absolute, making it as intangible as Casper the Ghost. How much impact NOW? Zero.  None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

If you think I need to disabuse myself of this conclusion, fine, but  I don't see how to do it.

(Yesterday at 1:05 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(Yesterday at 12:58 pm)Jal Wrote: Nice video.

 For example it strikes me as an insane theory (inconceivable) that brute particles suddenly become self-aware via cerebral organization. 

Clearly I am not alone here. This concern is the whole reason for panpsychism.

Pretty sure it's come up that we don't think it was sudden.

There must be a ("sudden") moment of transition from absolute non-sentience to the barest degree of primordial consciousness/ awareness. But I just don't see that happening if matter is defined in terms of mechanistic properties alone. Therefore it seems vastly more plausible to define all matter as innately sentient from the get-go.

(Yesterday at 1:00 pm)Jal Wrote:

(Yesterday at 12:38 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: @Jal


That axiom is incoherent. Would you like me to tell you why or would you prefer to work it out for yourself?

Boru

Sure tell me why.

The axiom is making a testable, scientific claim - not a philosophic one. In science, there is no such thing as an ‘intangible substance.’ It’s a contradiction in terms.

Boru

(Yesterday at 1:17 pm)Jal Wrote:

(Yesterday at 11:01 am)Angrboda Wrote: @Jal :

You've said that in philosophy you learned the principle that the immaterial cannot affect the material.  What fact or reason would prevent one from assuming the contrary?  This just seems like an arbitrary principle that you've adopted for no particularly good reason.  They say that oil and water don't mix.  But they do influence each other.  A liquid and a gas may minimally interact, but they aren't immutable towards each other.  Philosophers discuss 'substance' which is a term of art which refers to the basic, atomic materials that make up our world.  Thus what are described as different forms of matter all live under the umbrella of substance, with nothing preventing their interaction.   So why can't substance subsume both the material and the immaterial?  This just seems to be you deciding, here, but no further, for arbitrary, read: defenseless, reasons.  What reasons do you have for adopting this principle and can a reasonable man differ on this principle?

Axiom: the intangible cannot impact the tangible.   

Why is everyone acting like this is unrealistic? Suppose I want to hit a golf but not too far. Turns out I have a machine that can soften my club, to soften the blow.

So I try this out, but the ball went too far. I soften the club some more. Still a little too far - still a little too much IMPACT. 

Eventually I achieve the limits of the machine - it softs the club to the absolute, making it as intangible as Casper the Ghost. How much impact NOW? Zero.  None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

If you think I need to disabuse myself of this conclusion, fine, but  I don't see how to do it.

I didn't say it was unreasonable, I asked if the contrary was equally as reasonable. It seems you have answered with yet another worthless analogy. Are you even capable of abstract thought, or must everything in your world be imagined in terms of concrete things?

Let's put some tread on the rubber. A mathematician says that if a particular mathematical theorem is true, he will celebrate with a steak dinner. This intangible theory leads to him having steak dinner. How is this not the intangible influencing the tangible? And try to resist the urge to make more stupid and pointless analogies.

(Yesterday at 1:11 pm)Angrboda Wrote:

(Yesterday at 1:07 pm)Jal Wrote: "It only compels us to make the attempt."   I don't think you're getting the point. Your words seem to imply:
1. We feel hunger.
2. Based on that hunger, we change our present course of direction. We INITIATE an attempt to procure food.

Again, that's like the third domino in a rightward fall saying, "I think I'll go left" - and than manages to do it!

The truth is, dominos do not INITIATE anything. Blind causality forces them to fall in a particular direction, whether they like it or not.

A  deterministic Natural Selection is doomed to failure.  I see no remedy for this problem. If you can't acknowledge this problem, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

As opposed to "our hunger initiates a food seeking behavior?"  What informs your preference for one over the other?  

It sounds like you have a definition of initiate that requires that initiating an action requires incompatibilist free will, aka libertarian free will.  There is no such implication in the word.  That's a you problem.  I scheduled a cron job to run some SMART tests on my NAS.  At 12:00 A.M. this morning, my NAS initiated those tests.  No free will required.  It seems that a great deal of your beliefs and errors are self-caused by you assuming meanings or principles which weren't necessitated by anything other than your own predilections and mistakes.  Instead of being open-minded enough to realize that there are perfectly acceptable choices that differ from yours, you have dug yourself in under the ostensible rule of my way or the highway.  This is the closed-mindedness you are infected with.

Points 1 and 2 that I wrote about, do indeed describe the real world:
1. We feel hunger.
2. Based on that hunger, we change our present course of direction. We INITIATE an attempt to procure food.

Yes, correct, I read this as an act of libertarian free will.  Now let's compare this with your scheduled cron job. You observed:
"At 12:00 A.M. this morning, my NAS initiated those tests.  No free will required."

Yes no free will required. Nor hunger!  Those tests ran due to a domino effect, unregulated by hunger.
Hunger is superfluous. Even if your NAS felt hunger, it wouldn't change the outcome of those tests.

That's the nature of a deterministiic system - hunger is irrelevant.

In real life, hunger IS relevant and DOES influence/ change/ impact our direction and the outcome of our activities.

Therefore my libertarian summary above is the correct view of the world.

No one is denying that deterministic processes (i.e. chains of dominos) transpire. But if that's ALL that transpires, mammals would have died of starvation long ago.