Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[Chas]

"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science, psi - that is ESP, remote viewing, all those things - is proven. That begs the question, do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?" Dr. Richard Wiseman, noted skeptic.

In other words, no matter how solid the proof, he will demand more because it challenges his belief about how the world should work. It just goes to show, Chas, that your commitment to science is just an argument of convenience. You're antiscience when it suits you.

You did not source your quote. You're not very good at this, are you.

He follows that statement, according to this blog, with:

According to this dailymail article, skeptic Richard Wiseman argues:
"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven,
but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.

But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.

Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world,
we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."

So, his opinion is not based on evidence. He has no proof, he cites no proof. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

[Anomalocaris]

This is a bit silly. Of course there are limits to what science can investigate, both because of categorical differences and practicality. Categorically, science isn't useful in discussing ethics, aside from providing information about the world..

In so far as ethics seem to consist mainly of a set of intermediate goals and rules of thumb that has been posited to advance a uncontraversial ultimate goal, science can investigate, and only science can reliably investigate, what effect the intermediate rules and goals really would likely have.

And in terms of reliability of results, both maths and logic have science beat...

Reliable for what? And how do you determine it is reliable?

If the thing that makes science supreme amongst other methods of knowing is its ability to verify its results, and in some hypothetical case it cannot do so, then how is it no worse?...

Where the result involves anything more than a pure abstract mental construct, Where science can not verify results, nothing else really can either.

Depends on what you mean by 'investigate'. I think I'd agree if you just mean in terms of empirical investigation..

All forms of investigation of anything that is not a purely closed astract mental system ultimately hinges on empirical investigation. Permanently devorced form empirical investigation, an investigation becomes nothing more than idle fantasy.

This would leave out maths, logic, ethics, political philosophy and the arts being bullshit, which I don't think you believe.

Math and logic is only of value because they support, and are verified by, empiral investigation. Ethics have no justification only empirical investigations can demonstrate it furthers an uncontraversial eventual goal. Political philosphy again demands empirical validation.

[Neo-Scholastic]

"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science, psi - that is ESP, remote viewing, all those things - is proven. That begs the question, do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?" Dr. Richard Wiseman, noted skeptic.

In other words, no matter how solid the proof, he will demand more because it challenges his belief about how the world should work. It just goes to show, Chas, that your commitment to science is just an argument of convenience. You're antiscience when it suits you.

You did not source your quote. You're not very good at this, are you.

He follows that statement, according to this blog, with:

According to this dailymail article, skeptic Richard Wiseman argues:
"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven,
but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.

But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.

Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world,
we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."

So, his opinion is not based on evidence. He has no proof, he cites no proof. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

His opinion is based on studies like those I mentioned earlier. The full quote only reinforces mery statement. After psi researchese have found positive results and satisfied the strict protocols required by skeptics, the skeptics like Wiseman raise the bar after the fact. Science is supposed to be objective. When you insert a very subjective judgment into the process, like calling some things ordinary and others extraordinary, then you lose all credibility as a neutral experimenter. It injects bias.

[Anomalocaris]

You did not source your quote. You're not very good at this, are you.

He follows that statement, according to this blog, with:


So, his opinion is not based on evidence. He has no proof, he cites no proof. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

His opinion is based on studies like those I mentioned earlier. The full quote only reinforces mery statement. After psi researchese have found positive results and satisfied the strict protocols required by skeptics, the skeptics like Wiseman raise the bar after the fact. Science is supposed to be objective. When you insert a very subjective judgment into the process, like calling some things ordinary and others extraordinary, then you lose all credibility as a neutral experimenter. It injects bias.

Ah No. There is no intrinsic bias in the concept of evaluating how closely a proposition conforms to the expected outcome of sufficiently validated process, and accepting with comparative less scrutiny those propositions that are less in conflict with the validated processes.

After all, this is the extra degree of freedom that the very concept of validation aimed to achieve in the first place.

[Angrboda]

"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science, psi - that is ESP, remote viewing, all those things - is proven. That begs the question, do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?" Dr. Richard Wiseman, noted skeptic.

In other words, no matter how solid the proof, he will demand more because it challenges his belief about how the world should work. It just goes to show, Chas, that your commitment to science is just an argument of convenience. You're antiscience when it suits you.

before the quote, you conveniently left out:
Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, refuses to believe in remote viewing.

and then after the quote:
"If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.
"But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.
"Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/v...ba6b#p4724

[bennyboy]

I have no problem whatsoever with the universe ticking along without any conscious beings, and I don't accept any kind of universal consciousness as no credible mechanism has ever been proposed.

I'm sure that a credible mechanism has never been proposed for the experience of qualia at all. There's a lot of narrative about how useful awareness is to an evolving species, etc., but that's just a two-step, because it's not the kind of causation that people are interested in.

I definitely view consciousness/mind as emergent from brain, with the definition of 'brain' being either wetware or hardware. Therefore, I don't discount the possibility of strong AI.

I think it's clear that the brain is very important to human consciousness. But there are some aspects of the brain which are unique only to brians, and some which are much more universal. The particular chemistry of the brian may be unique in all the universe, for example. However, the ability to receive and process photons is intrinsic to all matter-- on some level.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The one question materialists never answer is this: "What does consciousness actually do?"

[MindForgedManacle]

In so far as ethics seem to consist mainly of a set of intermediate goals and rules of thumb that has been posited to advance a uncontraversial ultimate goal, science can investigate, and only science can reliably investigate, what effect the intermediate rules and goals really would likely have.

This is something like a red herring, and at best can refer to strictly consequentialist ethics. Neither deontological nor virtue ethics are amenable to such.

But the more fundamental issue, which you completely ignored, was that science can give you the information about the world. But that's only a precursor to ethics, as ethics are what is to be done in the world given what one is. In other words, to move from the "is" to the "ought to". To claim science can give you this has been rejected in moral philosophy for something like 300 years thanks to Hume's discussion of the is-ought problem.

Reliable for what? And how do you determine it is reliable?

Deriving identical results from the same starting point, basically. Science, just by necessity, must in most cases accept some degree of error.

Where the result involves anything more than a pure abstract mental construct, Where science can not verify results, nothing else really can either.

So you are talking about empirically accessible phenomenon. While I would mostly agree, this is actually not entirely true. After all, neuroscience isn't at a point where my exact inner thoughts can be gleaned externally, and yet I can do so at a whim.

All forms of investigation of anything that is not a purely closed astract mental system ultimately hinges on empirical investigation. Permanently devorced form empirical investigation, an investigation becomes nothing more than idle fantasy.

Again, this is false (for the most part), unless you're saying something trivially true like "Science, which works via empirical investigation, can empirically investigate things".
It seems to me that epistemology's investigation into the foundations of human knowledge, our conceptions of truth, and our means of justification have been going rather well throughout the ages.

And I'd like to see your example of a system of thought or field which is entirely empirically driven, to the last detail. People are very blind to the fact that they have much conceptual baggage which guides what they think about the world, and this includes science (which is not a knock against it, mind you).

Math and logic is only of value because they support, and are verified by, empiral investigation.

I'd like to see where Fermat's last theorem was empirically verified. Or modal logic. Or paraconsistent logics. None of these are even remotely empirically in nature of how they were verified; it was in abstraction.

Ethics have no justification only empirical investigations can demonstrate it furthers an uncontraversial eventual goal.

Refer to my earlier rebuttal of that at the beginning of this post. Saying science does, or even could do, this is patently false, and couldn't even apply to any but 1 type of ethical theory even if the is-ought problem didn't exist.

Political philosphy again demands empirical validation.

How so? As political philosophy is largely bound up in ethics, it ends up being about how we should structure society with other biologically comparable beings. But the obvious problem with trying to interject science here is that how we would want society's infrastructure to be set is going to depend on our own, collective values, not by just looking at the results of actions.

Otherwise I'd like to see your purely empirical analysis of why a Communistic government is to be shunned in favor of a more socially-democratic one, and in which you do not ultimately fall back on saying something like "Well, we just value that more", or "That violates some moral axiom.", because then you've gotten squarely into ethics.

[Rampant.A.I.]

"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science, psi - that is ESP, remote viewing, all those things - is proven. That begs the question, do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?" Dr. Richard Wiseman, noted skeptic.

In other words, no matter how solid the proof, he will demand more because it challenges his belief about how the world should work. It just goes to show, Chas, that your commitment to science is just an argument of convenience. You're antiscience when it suits you.

You did not source your quote. You're not very good at this, are you.

He follows that statement, according to this blog, with:

According to this dailymail article, skeptic Richard Wiseman argues:
"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven,
but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.

But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.

Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world,
we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."

So, his opinion is not based on evidence. He has no proof, he cites no proof. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

Chad, stop being such a such a Chad.

---

The one question materialists never answer is this: "What does consciousness actually do?"

Probably because your question makes no sense.

Consciousness is an evolved mechanism of problem solving for survival.

Contrary to your holy book, it is shown to exist in animals, possibly to a greater extent than previously thought.

Or in your case, the ability to Google and demand other people "prove the worldview" you've decided they have, when the most accurate term for the worldview of most here would be "abullshitist," because there's simply no way to prove the wild metaphysical claims about the world you keep repeating without evidence, while demanding proof from everyone else for their worldview, while bouncing back and forth between monism, dualism and pluralism whenever it supports whatever crap you're spouting at a given time.

[bennyboy]

The one question materialists never answer is this: "What does consciousness actually do?"

Probably because your question makes no sense.

Consciousness is an evolved mechanism of problem solving for survival.

No. The brain is an evolved mechanism of problem solving for survival. It takes in physical input, processes it through an algorithm, and outputs behaviors. You haven't explained why it is necessary for a person's brain to ACTUALLY experience its environment as a sentient agent, rather than just processing its inputs and dutifully outputting its behaviors.