Free will Argument against Divine Providence

[genkaus]

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.

Hold yer horses. Here, the only statement I made is that mental self-reflection is a source of empirical observation. And while I do not insist that "mental" must be read as "exclusively brain function", I do read mental as "only brain function", since you've not proven that there is anything more to it.

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."

That's the coherence theory of truth. Try out the correspondence theory of truth for size.

Truth is a philosophical construct that indicates how well a statement corresponds to objective reality. So, when we say that for worms, substance X tastes bad, the truth of the statement is determined by the fact of whether or not there is actually a "bad taste" sensation produced in the worms. According to this theory, your worldview itself is subject to true/false evaluation. So, here it doesn't matter if your beliefs are "true" within the context of your worldview - if your worldview is false, i.e. it does not accurately represent reality, then the truth-value of your statement is invalid.

Within this context, the term "absolutely" is meaningless, but the true/false value of a statement is provable.

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.

So, you accept that subjective awareness exists and yet you are not willing to accept any proof of that it exists? You sound curiously like a theist: "God exists and I have experienced this truth on my own, but it is not possible to prove that he exists."

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.

Maybe you missed the memo, but there are no proofs in science - only evidence. The hypothesis with the most amount of evidence for it wins out and it does not need to disprove all the other positions out there. And right now, my hypothesis has the evidence.

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?

I've told you already - try remembering it this time. Self-referential data-processing.

A system (mind) receives data from external sources (sense data) and processes it leading to specific results.

If the same system receives the above event, i.e. the reception and processing, as data and processes that as well, then that phenomena is called "experience". A collection of such multiple experiences give result in "sentience".

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

Ever heard of the locked-in syndrome? Anesthesia awareness? These are examples that show that communication is not the only way to detect awareness.

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.

Except for the fact that the validity of those philosophical assumptions is subject to judgment as well. Which is why, assumptions based on objective reality do not beg the question. You should be able to justify your philosophical assumptions as well.

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.

Wrong again. The existence of a readout display indicates that observation has already been made without there being any experience involved. In fact, I can write a program to automatically calibrate the tool according to the raw data received, I can create another program to receive the result from the display and yet another program to analyze those results according to specific concepts and report the conclusions and the whole scientific process after formulating the hypothesis has taken place without any experiential involvement. In fact, once I can write programs capable of formulating concepts instead of simply working by them, we can get rid of human experience in science altogether.

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.

Solidity more than green-ness. However, constituent particles don't need a particular property for that property to be present in whole. But that is not the same concept as "emergentism".

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

You can't perceive the truth - you perceive reality, you comprehend truth.

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.

You say that you are not confusing comprehension with perception, but your arguments suggest otherwise. There are many important properties of universe that are beyond our perception, but we comprehend them. Even properties which seem counter-intuitive or incomprehensible - we comprehend them as well. So, there is simply no evidence to suggest there being some incomprehensible/unimaginab;e property of the universe.

Also, we are not limited to simply expanding our basic modes of perception either. For example, we don't have the ability to perceive the chemical make-up of an object. That hasn't stopped us from building something capable of such perception.