Free will Argument against Divine Providence

[bennyboy]

Yes, I would accept mental self-reflection as an act of empirical observation. And no, by "empirical" I do not exclusively refer to observations necessarily a part of mutual experience. This is just another strawman created by your failure to understand established concepts.

Great. If you accept mental self-reflection as one source of empirical observations, and you do not instist that "mental" must be read as "exclusively brain function," then we've finally agreed on something.

Yes. Yes. The confirmation of the assertion lies in its negation being self-refuting. And as long as these faculties are capable of comprehending the truth, their limitations are irrelevant.

The truth is a philosophical construct, that can ONLY be proven in context. So for the worm, substance X may taste bad. It is true that for worms, substance X tastes bad. In the worldview in which solipsism is assumed false, then it is true that my wife gave me breakfast and said "good morning." That's a description of my experience, unburdened by philosophical possibilities that would make that statement fail to represent reality. In the worldview in which the univere is physically monist, then it is true that the brain is the source of mind-- as we are limited to physical structures and processes in determining where mind comes from, and it would be goofy to choose any OTHER PHYSICAL structure.

However, it is not absolutely true that substance X tastes bad-- that truth is dependent on opinion. It is not provably absolutely true that my wife fed me, because I cannot poove using any experience at my disposal that anything exists outside my experience of it. It is not provably absolutely true the the mind is in the brain, because it is not provably true that all the experiences which minds have, including the experience of looking at brains through fMRI machines, come from outside those minds.

So be careful of "truthiness" masquerading as truth, when your truths are not provable. All you can do is say, "In a world view where X is assumed, Y seems true."

Any evidence for this assertion? Any evidence to show that the ability to ACTUALLY experience is something other than the ability to process information? What's the criteria of falsifiability in this? That is, what evidence do you require so that you may accept that sentience has been shown to exist?

BOP hot-potato game fails here. Subjective awareness exists; I will not move forward with any debate which doesn't accept this fact, since I can experience its truth on my own. You have specific ideas about the mind, i.e. that it is a property supervenient on the brain, and is therefore physical.

You can poke in the brain and find "evidence" in people saying "I smell smoke." You can also look out your window and see evidence that the world is flat. But neither of these pieces of evidence is sufficient to constitute proof. You must exhaust other possibilites.

Wrong. The unique quality of mind called "sentience" is a specific form of data-processing and its results cannot be mimicked by any other form of data-processing. So, if a mechanical process is to represent results specific to the quality of sentience, it'd need to be sentient itself.

You've stated this belief a couple times now, but I don't think you've shown it true. Pray tell, what specific form of data-processing are you referring to?

Evidence also shows that not every mind that is aware can actually communicate the fact of its awareness.

Not without begging the question, it doesn't. You're talking about a functional definition of mind, not about actual experience.

[Emphasis mine] Your words, not mine. You are the one starting with the position that the assumptiones we make about mind are neither proven nor provable. This is precisely the position I'm accusing you of - therefore, not a strawman.

I say it's not proven because it's not proven. I say it's not provable because the validity of all physical evidence requires philosophical assumptions that beg the question. For example, you must assume that the physical objects you gather evidence about are not products of your own mind (solipsism), or of the Matrix, or the Mind of God, or any other form of idealism. But you can't, because your only way of collecting information about anything is through experience.

Wrong. Again. Sentience is not necessary for engaging in science. I don't need to personally look through the microscope or the telescope - as a matter of fact, nowadays, we prefer to have machines that analyze the visual data and simply give us the results.

Right. You use your mind to generate ideas about the world, you program your tool to measure photons or temperature or whatever, and then you collect the results-- by experiencing a readout display. There is no case in which observations can be made without some experience. At best, you could have a kind of informational Schrodinger's Cat, where you set a machine to perform a particular function, and where the result must be TrueFalse until it is resolved by your experience of it.

Don't believe me? Then answer me this: is a tree, for example, more properly referred to as an object, or as an emergent property of particles completely lacking tree-ness?

An object.

Okay, and what are the properties of this object? Solidity? Green-ness? Show me how the constituent particles of a tree have either of those properties.

Now you are confusing comprehension for perception? What is wrong with you?

No. I'm saying an inability to perceive the truth is an inability to comprehend it.

The limitations on an entity's perceptual capacity does not intrinsically limit its capacity to comprehend the truth. The reason why a worm cannot comprehend the doppler shift is not because it cannot see, its because it lacks the requisite higher brain functions required for comprehension. Perceptual perfection is not necessary for comprehending the truth. The advances made by science are definitive evidence of that - we are quite capable of comprehending the truths that go way, way beyond our perceptual capacity.

No, we're not. We have shown, definitively, that we can use technology to refine and expand our ability to perceive. But in order to do this, we have to have some idea about what ability we want to refine. If there is some important property in the universe which we can neither comprehend nor even imagine, we will not be able to do this.