(March 20, 2015 at 7:33 pm)Mezmo! Wrote:

(March 20, 2015 at 6:11 pm)Pizz-atheist Wrote: @Chad
Here's my my question, how do you explain the larger percentage of people that didn't report anything? You seem to be just ignoring that larger percentage.

The same way that you explain the efficacy of a drug during trials. Sometimes only a very small percentage of people respond to a drug. For example, the effectiveness of aspirin to prevent heart disease only shows up in a small but significant portion of the subjects. Most people gain no measurable benefit.

That doesn't answer the question. To word my question better: How is it that most subjects did not report anything? What caused them not to have the same experiences as the few that did?

To use your drug analogy, a doctor saying, "the reason why aspirin doesn't prevent heart disease for most people is because it doesn't" is not an answer.

I still think the easy thing to do if they really want to prove "something" after death, would be to destroy the brain into unusable peaces, and then have the subject report. That would be a real test.

(March 20, 2015 at 7:49 pm)Surgenator Wrote:

(March 20, 2015 at 7:33 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: That stock objection is a straw man. Imagine a single sensible body like a boat. It has both a material of which it is made, say aluminum, and also partakes of a particular form. Anyone can see that the form 'acts' on the material by giving it properties, like buoyancy, and that the material allows the form to manifest. Form and material are inalienable and yet distinct, i.e. dualism.

The foam and the aluminum are allowed to interact because they're are both made out of material things. The mediator between them is the electromagnetic force between the atoms of the foam and the atoms of the aluminum. If the electromagnetic force didn't exist between the foam and aluminum, then those two would pass right through each other.

F-O-R-M

Oh, it's you Chad. Kindly accept the offer of 2 cacti. They are still new cacti, given the demand. You know what to do with them

(March 20, 2015 at 7:33 pm)Mezmo! Wrote: That stock objection is a straw man. Imagine a single sensible body like a boat. It has both a material of which it is made, say aluminum, and also partakes of a particular form. Anyone can see that the form 'acts' on the material by giving it properties, like buoyancy, and that the material allows the form to manifest. Form and material are inalienable and yet distinct, i.e. dualism.

Um, except that the properties of a boat aren't conferred upon the object once it gains boat form, they are interactions between the materials that make up the boat and the materials that make up the world around it that are pre-existing and predictable, allowing us to put our knowledge of those reactions to use constructing objects for certain purposes like, indeed, boats. Buoyancy is a property that all objects have in varying degrees, and by testing this we can determine which objects would best fit for the construction of a vessel; the components of a boat didn't gain buoyancy the moment they became boat-like, so this idea that the boat "form" acts upon the materials to grant them buoyancy is patently false... Unless you're asserting that all those materials contained within them components of the boat "form" that became whole once they became a boat?

(March 21, 2015 at 12:24 pm)Mezmo! Wrote:

(March 20, 2015 at 7:49 pm)Surgenator Wrote: The foam and the aluminum are allowed to interact because they're are both made out of material things. The mediator between them is the electromagnetic force between the atoms of the foam and the atoms of the aluminum. If the electromagnetic force didn't exist between the foam and aluminum, then those two would pass right through each other.

F-O-R-M

Read it too quickly. However your answer still doesn't explain why something would take the form of something that is completely different. How would object A know the form of object B? Something needs to tell object A what object B form is. That something needs to be able to communicate to object A and to object B. When object A is fundamentally different from object B, how can a communicator exist? A communicator requires to be made partly made out of object A and partly made out of object B, two fundamentally different things. If one object is composed of two fundamentally different things, are they really fundamentally different? Because the communicator cannot fall into object A stuff or object B stuff but somewhere in the middle.

(March 21, 2015 at 1:45 pm)Surgenator Wrote:

(March 21, 2015 at 12:24 pm)Mezmo! Wrote: F-O-R-M

Read it too quickly. However your answer still doesn't explain why something would take the form of something that is completely different. How would object A know the form of object B? Something needs to tell object A what object B form is. That something needs to be able to communicate to object A and to object B. When object A is fundamentally different from object B, how can a communicator exist? A communicator requires to be made partly made out of object A and partly made out of object B, two fundamentally different things. If one object is composed of two fundamentally different things, are they really fundamentally different? Because the communicator cannot fall into object A stuff or object B stuff but somewhere in the middle.

Well, obviously the answer is God but don't ask how God can exist outside space and time yet interact with it.
Honestly the more Chadwooter/Mezmo talks about mind the more I think it's just an inert abstraction like math or logic since it's a pattern. Maybe that's assuming too on my part but he gives us nothing to go on here. I'm agnostic(ignostic?) about his poorly defined formal explanation of what mind is. Pattern? Okay which pattern is mind? He sounds more like a Platoist than an Aristotelian since he seems to be saying a boat's patterns can exist without there being things exemplifying these patterns.

---

Also it's odd to say a particular wooden boat is made of wood but that "being wooden" is not part of the patterns that make up that particular wooden boat. It's odder still to say "being wooden" exists in actuality independent of things being wooden. This is all very confusing and sounds more like Platoism than Aristotelianism.

(March 21, 2015 at 5:03 pm)Pizz-atheist Wrote: Well, obviously the answer is God but don't ask how God can exist outside space and time yet interact with it.

Question.
When the theist says God is outside space and time, is that another way of saying God is nowhere, in nothing and never existed?

(March 21, 2015 at 5:56 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(March 21, 2015 at 5:03 pm)Pizz-atheist Wrote: Well, obviously the answer is God but don't ask how God can exist outside space and time yet interact with it.

Question.
When the theist says God is outside space and time, is that another way of saying God is nowhere, in nothing and never existed?

Haven't you ever heard of Transcendental Spacetime?

(March 21, 2015 at 6:04 pm)Nestor Wrote:

(March 21, 2015 at 5:56 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Question.
When the theist says God is outside space and time, is that another way of saying God is nowhere, in nothing and never existed?

Haven't you ever heard of Transcendental Spacetime?

You mean an idea from a philosopher and not a scientist? And one started in the 18th century?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_idealism