(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: That's quite the lecture for someone in a philosophy thread who has appealed to evidence (or a lack of it) perhaps a dozen times, in order to shift the BOP. You keep bringing up evidence, and I keep saying that none if it is sufficient to prove the mind even exists.
As for not being able to "prove" things through evidence-- baloney. I can prove that people can fly in the air by showing you a plane. You wouldn't say, "Hrrrm. It appears the evidence supports the hypthesis that people can fly," because in this case, the evidence is sufficiently strong as to consitute proof. Similarly, I would take the observation of the act of someone sailing completely around the world as proof that it wasn't flat. Unless, of course, I was more interested in pedantic semantics than in talking about the subject at hand.
If you review the thread you'll find that my position is that both monist and dualist positions bear the burden of proof regarding their assertions. As a monist, I accept that it is upto them to provide evidence for mind's existence and to show that mind is a function of the brain. And they have done that. All the research into cognitive science and neuro-biology constitutes as evidence for the monist position.
Similarly, as a dualist, you have the burden of proof to provide evidence for your assertion. This is not shifting the burden, since these are two separate assertions entailing their separate burdens. Therefore, your repetitive argument that the evidence for the monist position is not sufficient to absolutely prove its accuracy is not evidence for your position.
Secondly, you are equivocating on the word "proof", which is why I specified distinct uses of the words proof and evidence. You have no excuse for this sloppy equivocation.
Scientific proof is simply evidence supporting the hypothesis. It doe not "prove" the hypothesis absolutely. Philosophical proof, on the other hand, uses logic and if the premises are true, then the conclusions are proven "absolutely". Therefore, within the scientific context, I would say that "evidence supports the hypothesis that people can fly" and that "observation supports the hypothesis that the world isn't flat" - but I cannot consider any amount of such evidence to be "proof" in the sense of philosophical proof.
(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Did it occur to you that since I've stated many times that accepting the existence of the subjective (i.e. actually experiencing) mind at all is a PHILOSOPHICAL position, that I'm refuting your repeated fall-back position of appealing to evidence when you can't provide a philosophical proof? That's why the post you just quoted used the word "you." I didn't mean that in the general sense of "one." I meant it as in "you, genkaus."
Both philosophy and science are tools for evaluating reality. "Subjective mind exists" is a statement regarding reality - therefore, it is neither uniquely philosophical nor uniquely scientific. Depending on which tool you use, it could be scientific, philosophical or both. Given my "appeal to evidence", it should've been obvious that I'm judging the existence of mind in a scientific context. If you want the philosophical proof of its existence, then you should stop asking nonsensical questions like "what observations would prove the existence of mind?".
(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Forget other animals, and let's start with people. As I've already said, the step from solipsism to accepting that other people exist and experience as I do is a philosophical assumption, and no empirical evidence is sufficient to constitute proof (yeah, I said it).
Its not an assumption since solipsism itself is an indefensible and incoherent position as indicated by the problem of other minds. Which is why, accepting the existence of other minds is a philosophically justified position. Besides, there is ample empirical evidence for the that position as well.
(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: And nobody will ever know the result, and be able either to confirm or disprove their scientific hypotheses.
The CyberScientist 3000 will know the result and the CyberScientist 4000 will be able to confirm or disprove the theory - which is the correct term for it now that it has evidence supporting it.
(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Again, call it "boobeldyboo" if you want. Absent the ability to actually experience things, rather than just process data, these entity words are meaningless.
Call what boobeldyboo? Given that experience itself is processing data, the entity words are entirely meaningful without it.
(August 13, 2013 at 3:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Right. So you are using the fact that we can observe some kinds of information as evidence that we can observe all kinds of information. The worm could do the same thing-- and he'd be wrong.
Can the worm observe any information beyond its perceptual limits? Because we can. Which is why the worm would be wrong and we'd be right.
