[split] t-shirt to soul topic

[fr0d0]

@ Saerules: I disagree that thoughts are the physical transport. What I missed out was the cognitive process generating the thoughts. Which is the magic bit of course.

PS mods feel free to split these comments

[Violet]

Oh yes, they really aren't on topic.


PS @Darwinian: That circular logic surrounding the symbol is freaking awesome ^_^ I read around it twice before i figured out what you did thar <--Ditz ^_^

---

Oh no, that cognitive process is actually electricity The cool thing about the brain: it will light up a really small light bulb. While our brains are nowhere near as fast as computers are, we have a more advanced natural 'AI' than the computers we've developed are yet capable of.

An MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagine) is only possible because of the electromagnetic field that naturally surrounds our body (and especially our head). There is more electricity in certain areas of the brain at certain times, which generates more waste heat (in thermal imagery), and is naturally more potent (in an MRI)... which is my evidence that all of our thoughts are electricity.

[leo-rcc]

I've split the posts. Try and keep on topic while I am admiring the Swiss Alps for a few days more. Thank You.

[Kyuuketsuki]

The brain is the bus. It's never the passenger. The passenger is free to duplicate itself into other brains. Should there be a severe electrical storm it could kill a large number of passengers. If the brain is damaged then there may not be room for so many passengers as previously.

What you're talking about is ideas not thoughts (memes?), thoughts are entirely physical (completely reliant on thought-supporting infrastructure) ideas are abstract and can be carried on a variety of media (verbal, visual, books, TV etc.) but again they STILL cannot survive without infrastructure.

Kyu

[LukeMC]

The Soul is not imagined, it's an attempt to describe something real... human consciousness and personality.

I have no problem in agreeing with this. It would be like you saying "you have arms, you have legs, etc, these are the body". If the soul is just going to be used as a collective term for things we know exist in a naturalistic fashion, with no supernatural origin or upkeep, I'd be more than happy to call my consciousness and personality my "soul", as the label in this sense has no hidden meaning. Unless you wish to go one step further and say that these things will transcend the physical universe after I die... I'm sure EvF will tell you what you need to provide to back up such an assertion.

[Edwardo Piet]

I would but it would require me asking him for evidence, and that's to stay in the debate forum for now

(When it's between us).

I may respond once there today now, and then it will be early morning tomorrow but before I go to bed, (so IOW after my birthday) that I will then next respond there.

I will add Luke, that I'd be happy to call my consciousness my soul. Except for the fact that I think it has the possibility of being more misleading than simply saying "mind", etc. Because some people might think I mean it in some kind of supernatural way. For that same reason I won't accept pantheism. I won't use "God" as a metaphor for nature or the universe, because it has the potential of being grossly misleading.

EvF

[Tiberius]

Ppl here have suggested that thoughts are physically existent in themselves. Although I disagree and think whatever electro chemical composition masses together to form them, this doesn't represent the thought itself, much like documents on my computer... it's dead storage.

If I've understood this correctly, you are saying that the actual thought is all in the interpretation of the brain. It is made up of physical electrical signals, but is meaningless unless interpreted by the brain, at which point it becomes a "thought". Your analogy being that documents stored on a computer are all 0's and 1's and in that respect meaningless unless you open the document in a text editor.

Have I got that right? Hopefully so, because I think the point I'm trying to make here is that in this case, the brain itself is interpreting and giving meaning to the thoughts, which does mean they exist in some physical form. Documents on a computer exist in some physical form (as bit marks on a hdd), but it only has meaning when the physical forms are brought together and read properly.

[fr0d0]

Yes I'd agree with that Adrian. Your point that 'the brain' is interpreting & giving meaning is too general. The thoughts still do not demonstrably exist physically. They are still dependent upon the interpreter (brain matter) and the HDD (the memory, being possibly similar).

IOW, like 0's & 1's on a HDD, they are meaningless without interpretation. the interpretation process isn't the thought either. It only works out what the thought is, through cognition.

The computer interprets 1's & 0's and presents it as formalized. This isn't thought.

---

What you're talking about is ideas not thoughts (memes?), thoughts are entirely physical (completely reliant on thought-supporting infrastructure) ideas are abstract and can be carried on a variety of media (verbal, visual, books, TV etc.) but again they STILL cannot survive without infrastructure.

Yeah, but because thoughts rely on the infrastructure does not mean that thoughts are the infrastructure. Interpretation [CPU] and memory [HDD, RAM] doesn't produce thought. Thought is independent of both of those.

[Kyuuketsuki]

What you're talking about is ideas not thoughts (memes?), thoughts are entirely physical (completely reliant on thought-supporting infrastructure) ideas are abstract and can be carried on a variety of media (verbal, visual, books, TV etc.) but again they STILL cannot survive without infrastructure.

Yeah, but because thoughts rely on the infrastructure does not mean that thoughts are the infrastructure. Interpretation [CPU] and memory [HDD, RAM] doesn't produce thought. Thought is independent of both of those.

There's a problem and it's why your passenger bus analogy is inapplicable.

These ideas, memes if you like, are not actually ideas they are source code or recipes of a sort, they have no existence outside of a brain intelligent enough to compile them. I'll try to explain ... I have an idea which I think is worth recording or transmitting somewhere (written, spoken or otherwise done ... it doesn't matter) so I take that idea and I record it. To record it I effectively break that idea down into logical stages or components and store them in some fashion (in effect I decompile the idea). Someone else sees that decompiled idea and reads, hears or watches it effectively uploading that idea into their brain (their personal onboard computer) and in doing so they recompile that source code into an idea but here's the rub ... the idea in their head IS NOT and can probably NEVER BE the same as the idea in mine. This highlights 2 things ... first that ideas ARE NOT truly transferable except in a general sense and that whilst they are in transit or stored they have ABSOLUTELY NO EXISTENCE OF THEIR OWN because all they are is a set of instructions to create the basics of a given idea in someone else.

It also means that your analogy of thoughts as passe3ngers on a bus is inapplicable because it rapidly becomes evident that such ideas (when recompiled) change the person within whom they now exist and passenger son a bus are simply passengers ... they DO NOT change the bus.

Thought is entirely the product of the brain, it CANNOT exist elsewhere and CANNOT be transferred except in the decompiled state I mention above so thought cannot exist independent of the recognised neural infrastructure.

Kyu

[Edwardo Piet]

This post is about the burden of proof and the like, and whether it's established correctly or not - so therefore it is implicitly going to contain the subject of Evidence and Faith, but this post is not addressed at fr0d0l, but to whoever is interested. So I shall post it. (And I'm not going to argue with fr0d0 about it here).

For thought to be non-physical is the odd exception to the norm, and hence what the burden of proof is on here. Just as with evolution when an evolutionary explanation for an organism hasn't been found yet that does not mean that until it is 'then I guess it's irreducibly complex and there must be a God', that would be God of the gaps. So then, analogous to that, whether it has been pinpointed exactly if thoughts are physical or not - or whether it has been pinpointed exactly where they reside or not - since the whole notion of something existing and being 'non-physical' hasn't had any positive support yet, hasn't had any positive evidence - the burden of proof is still entirely on the notion of 'non-physical thought' before it is on physical.

There is a difference between 1.'so far we haven't had convincing positive evidence that this thing is physical' and 2.'This thing is non-physical [or in other words, positively not physical].'

1 doesn't equate to 2, absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence. Just because something hasn't necessarily been shown to be physical yet, or at least not fully and/or in every way...doesn't mean it is positively the opposite...this does not follow and is in fact the Argument from Ignorance...which ironically Purple Rabbit accused me of in the past, when I believe he was falling to it himself (In the end it seemed he was seemly defining 'not shown to be physical' as 'non-physical' - which is misleading, after all: What would be done if positive evidence actually was found for the non-physical, but something like 'thought' was already called it simply because it wasn't positively shown to be physical? What, would thought then be called 'non-physical 2.0'? Lol).

The burden of proof isn't always on the positive claim, it depends what the exception is.

To claim evolution would be a positive claim, but that has evidence, so to claim evolution to being wrong, false, and not existing - would be the exception and would need a great deal more support and evidence.

I'll try and sum up my thoughts, and I'd be interested in some feedback:

1. The burden of proof is on the exception, it starts by default on the positive, but it's always on the exception. 2. For sake of argument, lets say there's definitely no positive evidence either way: No positive evidence that thought is either physical or non-physical 3. Non-physical is the exception and so if there's no positive evidence for either side, the non-physical is what requires evidence.

There's a difference to the claim that X is not physical (whether true or not, the claim is different to the following -), and the claim that X doesn't have any positive evidence that it is physical.

EvF