So if you can't see it on a screen or in a test tube, it isn't "truly" verifiable?
So there's no truly verifiable evidence that you have thoughts, or a mind?
Why do people believe in god?
- Thread starter LuckAse
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So there's no truly verifiable evidence that you have thoughts, or a mind?
Belief != Knowledge
Knowledge > Belief
I do "believe" that people have thoughts and/or a mind... But this discussion with you is making me doubt that belief.
Presuming by that you weren't actually limiting us to those things mentioned then please explain how something can be verifiable if it can't be checked?
Define "mind".
Thoughts are verifiable in a number of ways.
Ok. A thing that thoughts occur in. A kind of abstract space. A part of consciousness.Dywddyr said:
So science has a way to verify your thoughts? Is that before, during, or after you think them?
But you don't "know" that's true, right?gmilam said:
At the very least since we can verify thoughts exist then mind (being the thing thoughts occur in) seems to necessary, no?
At the time, for one.
MRI
Oh fuck. Are you seriously claiming MRI can tell what you're thinking?
That's just not "true". I don't "believe" it. It might be able to tell that your brain is active, and so there might be thoughts in your mind.
Suppose you think some phrase repeatedly without revealing it. Can MRI "verify" what the phrase is?
No?
But as you've pointed out, this isn't something science can verify.
That's just not "true". I don't "believe" it. It might be able to tell that your brain is active, and so there might be thoughts in your mind.
Suppose you think some phrase repeatedly without revealing it. Can MRI "verify" what the phrase is?
No?
Don't you mean: since you can verify thoughts occur in your own mind, then your mind seems to be necessary to you personally?
But as you've pointed out, this isn't something science can verify.
To an extent.
Not so far. But it can tell that you are thinking, even if not what.
On the contrary, since YOU have defined mind as "where thoughts take place" then, since we know thoughts DO occur, it must exist.
It's an inference. A logical one. Of course there is other inferential evidence.
The problem with "mind" is that it's a "fuzzy concept" - hence one must decide what it is before deciding whether or not there is evidence for it.
example:
I don't believe i am on a date with such a hot women.
this crosses the line between know and believe as posited.
I don't believe i am on a date with such a hot women.
this crosses the line between know and believe as posited.
Next verification test: do you believe you have dreams, and can dreams be verified?
Or, do you know you have dreams, and can this be verified?
Can science tell you when you're dreaming, can it tell you what you're dreaming, or are dreams only verifiable by the dreamer, as they occur, in an "involuntary" way, unlike "conscious" thoughts?
But just a quick reality check:
Or, do you know you have dreams, and can this be verified?
Can science tell you when you're dreaming, can it tell you what you're dreaming, or are dreams only verifiable by the dreamer, as they occur, in an "involuntary" way, unlike "conscious" thoughts?
But just a quick reality check:
How would YOU define mind? How do YOU know thoughts occur? How does an MRI scan tell the difference between conscious thought, and "unconscious" thought, as in dreams?Dywddyr said:
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Again there are a number of ways. Common experience for one. REM and other effects for another.
When, but not what (so far - though it's been mooted [re the fMRI above] that we may be able to at some point).
Good question. I'd check Wiki
seems pretty good. It's where "I" am.
We're back to "what's your definition of thought?" The easiest way to express it would be "there's a "voice" in my head that goes on, works things out, finds solutions, makes estimates of what'll happen if I do this, or that".
I have no idea. Presumably they check to see if the patient's awake when they're scanning. :shrug:
I am intrigued, however by all of these questions from you, as opposed to, say, a presentation of the supposed evidence for god.
I strongly suspect that you're going to seize on the tentativeness of one or more the things I've written and then ask "If science says X is true on such flimsy evidence why doesn't it accept god on the same flimsy basis?" or some such.
What do you say?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
But to assert that I have dreams is not an extraordinary assertion, so the Rule of Laplace does not apply. Most people have dreams, so when someone else tells us that he too has dreams, we do not require extraordinary evidence to believe him.
Sure, he could be lying. He might be one of the tiny percentage of people who do not dream (although it's more likely that he simply doesn't remember them), and he's pretending to in order to not seem like an oddball to the rest of us.
Jungians have an entire dictionary of archetypes, motifs that occur in nearly all cultures and nearly all eras, presumably instincts caused by the way our neurons are wired by our DNA. When the average layman who knows nothing about archetypes or Jungian psychology describes his dreams to a therapist, and they're full of archetypes, it's pretty reasonable evidence that he's not lying. Especially if its an archetype that fits perfectly with whatever personal problem he came to have analyzed, e.g., flying (escaping from Mother Earth), which is a universal dream motif for trying to run away from one's mother.
Again, he could have taken a course in Jung and be lying, so we can't say with scientific certainty that his dreams are real, but in aggregate most of the thousands of people who report such dreams are so unlikely to be lying that the reality of dreams in general is true beyond a reasonable doubt. This makes the average dream with less universal symbology credible, and even though, once again, some or even many of those people may just be making up a story to entertain us (or to convince us that they're emotionally ill), it's likely beyond a reasonable doubt that most of them are telling the truth, which establishes the validity of dreaming, even to someone who doesn't dream.
They've identified the brain wave patterns of dreaming people, and have used this to detect dreams in people who don't remember theirs. (You can wake 'em up in the middle of one to prove to them that they do indeed have them, although I don't know who volunteers for such experiments.) All species of warm-blooded vertebrates that have been tested also exhibit these brain wave patterns, suggesting that dreaming is by no means a uniquely human experience.
As noted above, yes.
Stay tuned. Scientists have just begun to map the brain, using ever faster and more powerful computers and sensors. They've started to identify a few regions that are active when we feel basic emotions like fear and joy. They have also found those regions active during dreams that the subjects report as containing those feelings.
Considering how fast computing power increases (doubling every 18 months while the cost halves) you younger members may live to see a very intricate map of the human brain, and perhaps even maps that show the difference between two brains.
It's the part/parts of me where cognitive processes take place, such as perceiving and reasoning. I don't have to understand anatomy and know that I have a brain in order to have enough introspective ability (also a form of cognition) to realize that I have the power of cognition.
I suppose you're snickering in anticipation of leading us into a circular definition, in which the mind is the place where thoughts occur and thoughts are what occur in our mind. I hope you're proud of yourself. But seriously, if these are not "thoughts," then what would you like to call them?
I can do a pretty decent job of numbing my body, turning off the lights, damping out all sound, and lying motionless. At that point the only experience I am having is thinking. If it's not real, then how do you explain it? A figment of my imagination?
I'm not sure it's an MRI, but as I noted, the brain waves are different between waking and dreaming. I don't know if the unconscious part of our waking mind sends out different waves than the conscious part, and/or if they're the same as the brain waves that identify dreaming, but I suppose if that were true they would have told us by now.
Look, the argument is quite simple.
You can't verify that what occurs in your mind is the same kind of thing that occurs in another person's mind. All you can do is scan a person's brain and claim that the patterns of activity correspond to thought, conscious or otherwise. Or "we can't prove that we all think the same way".
You could try scanning an elephant's brain too, or any other animal that has a brain. Would the patterns of activity then correspond to thought, or dreams? Would brain scans verify that animals think and dream? If you see the same kinds of pattern that you see in human brains, is that "verification" that animals have thoughts and dreams?
If all you have is patterns from a scan, you can tell they are conscious, but you can't tell what they are thinking or feeling. You can't tell what an animal is thinking or feeling either.
What you have left is common experience. "I was thinking about so and so". "Really? So was I, maybe we should compare brain scans??"
Brain scans can't tell anyone what someone believes, or why they believe it. Where does that leave verification?
But for some reason, asserting that you know God exists is an extraordinary assertion, although a lot of people assert this.
You can't verify that what occurs in your mind is the same kind of thing that occurs in another person's mind. All you can do is scan a person's brain and claim that the patterns of activity correspond to thought, conscious or otherwise. Or "we can't prove that we all think the same way".
You could try scanning an elephant's brain too, or any other animal that has a brain. Would the patterns of activity then correspond to thought, or dreams? Would brain scans verify that animals think and dream? If you see the same kinds of pattern that you see in human brains, is that "verification" that animals have thoughts and dreams?
If all you have is patterns from a scan, you can tell they are conscious, but you can't tell what they are thinking or feeling. You can't tell what an animal is thinking or feeling either.
What you have left is common experience. "I was thinking about so and so". "Really? So was I, maybe we should compare brain scans??"
Brain scans can't tell anyone what someone believes, or why they believe it. Where does that leave verification?
To assert that you can tell what someone is thinking or dreaming about is an extraordinary assertion, though.Fraggle Rocker said:
But for some reason, asserting that you know God exists is an extraordinary assertion, although a lot of people assert this.
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Your reasoning is facile and fallacious. The analogy to a person asserting that he dreams is a person asserting that he believes in God. To accept dreaming as fact says nothing about the truth of the dreams, and in fact dreams are almost universally accepted as metaphors rather than literal truth. Similarly, to accept belief in God as truth acknowledges the reality of the cognitive process of belief but says nothing about the existence of God. (Which, if I may point out the bloody obvious, is also a metaphor.)
When someone says that he dreams, he is not claiming to falsify 500 years of science.
But when someone says that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fanciful creatures and/or other forces periodically emerge, whimsically and often angrily, to violate the laws of nature and interfere with the operation of the natural universe, he is claiming exactly that.
The fundamental premise from which the scientific method is derived and upon which all science is based is that the natural universe is a closed system, whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical evidence of its present and past behavior.
Science is recursive, and this premise has been tested aggressively for half a millennium. We have consistently derived theories from empirical evidence that predict the natural universe's behavior, even though millions of people (hundreds of thousands of whom are scientists whose research would be difficult to challenge) would love to be on the cover of Time magazine over the caption, "The man/woman who overthrew the scientific method."
We have not once encountered a phenomenon that cannot be classified as natural. Indeed we have not yet found the explanations for all phenomena (since that effort will presumably be of infinite duration), but not one of them has caused us to throw up our hands in defeat and say, "Whatever this is, it clearly cannot be natural, so gods and leprechauns and the Highlander must be real." The worst that ever happens is that we have to go back and make lengthy, complicated revisions to theories that were developed with limitations of the more primitive instruments of the past, such as Einstein's revisions to Newton's laws of motion and the currently in-progress revision to Einstein's own theory. None of this invalidates the premise that the natural universe is a closed system and all of the natural laws, although they may become more complex, are still nonetheless completely natural.
To summarize, to claim that you believe God exists is a quite ordinary statement. But to claim that God exists is quite extraordinary, and the Rule of Laplace applies. Show us your evidence. This does not mean that you cannot possibly be correct. It just means that the burden of proof is on you.
This can also be subjected to Occam's Razor: test the simplest explanation first, because if it happens to be right you will have saved yourself a lot of time and effort.
The simplest explanation for the widespread belief in the supernatural is that it is an instinctive motif (an archetype), either one that was a survival trait in an era whose dangers we can't imagine, or a random mutation that happened to be passed down through a genetic bottleneck or by genetic drift--and has been reinforced by the not unreasonable analyses of hundreds of generations of people who did not have modern science and technology and could not dismiss the claim as easily as we can.
Now that we have this science and technology, this explanation has been tested and has been found to be the correct one. Of course the rules of science do not forbid anyone from going ahead and testing the alternative, more complicated and fanciful explanation: the existence of an invisible, illogical supernatural universe full of capricious and angry creatures. They simply say that until one of those tests turns up positive, the simpler explanation has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt and has been integrated into the canon of science--or in this unique case has become the premise upon which all science is based.
Yes (1) and (2) are quite different and the truth of (1) (that it is an extraordinary assertion) does NOT support there being any truth of (2) (That God exists).
The reason why (2) is an extraordinary assertion is it is an assertion about the existence of something for which there is no evidence and thus likely to be false. (Evidence could come in later, so we can not be sure it is false.)
(1) Is as you say also an extraordinary assertion and certainly false, at least for the foreseeable future, because of the fine scale and 3D nature of the electrical activity of the brain is impossible to record without disturbing it.
Plus the known fact that the same thought or belief can be held / made by different activity in different brains or even in the same brain at different stages in one's life. That is: Brain cells are dying all the time and the interconnections between cells (estimated to be more numerous than stars in the universe) are constantly changing.
Thus a thought / believe I held at age 5 (for example that the sun only appears to go around the world) is the same thought I hold 70 years later but very differently made by different brain cells by an entirely different implementations in my current set of fine, 3D synaptic interconnections.
Thus even if it were possible to record all this fine scale electrical and neuro-transmitter diffusion flows in the synaptic gaps, there would be no way to know to what thought they correspond as two very different patterns of these electrical and neuro-transmitter flows correspond to the same thought.
SUMMARY: For the well understood reasons just stated no educated person holds extraordinary assertion (1) to be true; however many do hold extraordinary assertion (2) to be true and that fact is what this thread is all about - I.e. why do many educated people assert (2) is true, assert God exists, despite total lack of any evidence that it is true?
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As thread is drifting away from the question, here is my direct answer (from two old posts) in hope of getting back to discussion of the tread's question. As I noted in bold text at end of post 714, it is strange, badly needs an explanation, as to why many well educated people believe God exists with zero evidence that is true :
Why >90% believe things they do is told in my post 445:
“… It is the history of man that he has believed in many things only because that is what the prior generation believed and taught him even though there was no supporting evidence. For example: “Sail too far from land and you will fall off the earth.” 5000 years ago, most believed that dozens of specialized gods existed, until the Jews consolidated all these gods into only one and for Christians reduced them to a "3 in 1" god. ..."
From my post 410:
“…Although the scientific method has provided an understanding of many mysteries of the past, there still exist significant things we don't understand so, just as our distant ancestors did, we eventually give up trying and assign cause. Now days this for many tends to be "It is God's will." that the baby was born without feet, that I got cancer, that my son died in a car crash, etc. ("The good God works in mysterious ways." - The idea that God might be evil is too scary to consider although that is the most simple explanation for the many misfortunes humans suffer, like Hitler, whom a "good, all knowing God" could have given a heart attack at age 25 without seeming to violate the natural laws.)
In an earlier era, there were in most societies many gods each with areas of responsibility, and needing some offerings to prevent mishaps:
The drought was because the god of rain was angry.
The flood was because the river god was angry. etc.
Most of these specialized gods had names - at least two dozen names from the Greek and Roman cultures are still known, but don't forget the Nordic Gods. It is very rare (probably non-existent) for a primitive culture not to have a multitude of Gods usually even a hierarchy of gods with a "chief God" especially if their society had a "chief". (Man always creates his gods in his own image.) ..."
And why many of these groundless beliefs still persist is also explained in my post 410:
"... Most of these earlier beliefs with zero supporting evidence have been dropped as man gained greater understanding of the world he lives in, but some old beliefs, (those with powerful self interested groups teaching these beliefs to children too young to critically think), about the existence of some non-worldly existence still are widely believed. As this activity collects a lot of money, there are many of these religious groups competing with each other and trying to spread their version of these beliefs in re-incarnation or after lives. ..."
IMHO, it is this commercial reason which keeps many religions strong today.
Why >90% believe things they do is told in my post 445:
“… It is the history of man that he has believed in many things only because that is what the prior generation believed and taught him even though there was no supporting evidence. For example: “Sail too far from land and you will fall off the earth.” 5000 years ago, most believed that dozens of specialized gods existed, until the Jews consolidated all these gods into only one and for Christians reduced them to a "3 in 1" god. ..."
From my post 410:
“…Although the scientific method has provided an understanding of many mysteries of the past, there still exist significant things we don't understand so, just as our distant ancestors did, we eventually give up trying and assign cause. Now days this for many tends to be "It is God's will." that the baby was born without feet, that I got cancer, that my son died in a car crash, etc. ("The good God works in mysterious ways." - The idea that God might be evil is too scary to consider although that is the most simple explanation for the many misfortunes humans suffer, like Hitler, whom a "good, all knowing God" could have given a heart attack at age 25 without seeming to violate the natural laws.)
In an earlier era, there were in most societies many gods each with areas of responsibility, and needing some offerings to prevent mishaps:
The drought was because the god of rain was angry.
The flood was because the river god was angry. etc.
Most of these specialized gods had names - at least two dozen names from the Greek and Roman cultures are still known, but don't forget the Nordic Gods. It is very rare (probably non-existent) for a primitive culture not to have a multitude of Gods usually even a hierarchy of gods with a "chief God" especially if their society had a "chief". (Man always creates his gods in his own image.) ..."
And why many of these groundless beliefs still persist is also explained in my post 410:
"... Most of these earlier beliefs with zero supporting evidence have been dropped as man gained greater understanding of the world he lives in, but some old beliefs, (those with powerful self interested groups teaching these beliefs to children too young to critically think), about the existence of some non-worldly existence still are widely believed. As this activity collects a lot of money, there are many of these religious groups competing with each other and trying to spread their version of these beliefs in re-incarnation or after lives. ..."
IMHO, it is this commercial reason which keeps many religions strong today.
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The epistemology of disagreement is a relatively recent development in philosophy.
One of its central concerns is looking into what to do when we disagree: are we obligated to accept the other's stance, why yes and why not.
The traditional approach to the theist/atheist debate is to take a particular epistemology of disagreement for granted, implicitly. Namely, that when there is disagreement, one party should take on the stance of the other party and abandon their own.
It is not clear though why this should be the case.
No, yours is. And I'm about to show why that's true.Fraggle Rocker said:
No, everyone has dreams when they're asleep, there's nothing metaphorical about having dreams. The analogy is that science cannot verify that dreams exist, and nor can science verify that God exists. Nor can it do the opposite.
What about knowing God exists and believing that you know? Much like believing that water exists, or elephants exist?
Nor am I. But I believe God exists.
But that isn't what I'm claiming. I haven't claimed any such thing.
Hence, you are resorting to fallacious reasoning and employing some kind of ready-made, but quite facile argument.
And God can't be natural, of course. It can't be something that doesn't "cause" you to throw your hands up in defeat because you can't explain it.
But we can't really explain why dreams exist. We can't really explain what consciousness is. And nobody is throwing their hands up in defeat about those yet-to-be-explained phenomena.
Translation: "to claim that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists" is extraordinary. But that's what you're saying I'm claiming, and I'm not claiming that.
The problem with your argument is that it has to invent something that isn't there, viz:
There isn't anything supernatural about what I know and believe exists, it's as natural as consciousness.
And what, then, is the reason why the assertion of the existence of a mind or of consciousness is extraordinary? Is it because a brain scan or encephalogram can't find either of these things?Billy T said:
The existence of my mind or consciousness is NOT extraordinary for me.
In fact I directly experience it. That is fundamental - from these experiences I infer the existence of an external world, but I can not be 100% sure they exist like I am that my directly experienced consciousness does.
This was pointed out more than 300 years ago by Bishop Berkeley. (or Descartes more recently but then, his “logic” led him to conclude about five pages later (in On Pure Reason) that Christ had to have died on the cross for our sins.)
Berkeley knew when to stop, but did in his book give a clever reason why the non-existent but perceived "external world" did normally obey the "physical laws" - If it did not then the greater spirit giving him his illusions of an external world could not make any miracles, as miracles are by definition a violation of the physical laws.
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Dreams and consciousness are directly experienced - no external proof of their existence required. They are not postulated to exist independent of the dreamer, but you (and many others) are postulating that god does exist independent of your belief in him/her/it. - That is an extraordinary claim, which should require extraordinary evidence, yet there is ZERO evidence for that claim!
I do agree that the total absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. Why I hold an agnostic POV on the existence or not of God just as I do on the existence or not of unicorns. They could indeed be pulling plows on some distant planet. But claiming to know that they or God exist is a totally unsupported claim.