Where did the “mind is not real” come from?
Good. I’ll hope you can prove that. Besides, you prefixed “sometimes”, I wonder how you distinguish between what seems authentic and what doesn’t.
No. Science means tenable explanation and description. Science doesn’t know if gravity will exist ‘tomorrow’.
So, if you’re tripping on LSD, then are we to assume that red box on the table is a demon in disguise?
When was this ever disputed?
I was wondering that, although im guessing it is actually me at fault here 
The little i know tells me that Descartes speculated that everything could be an illousion apart from that bit of him which doing the doubting.
I assume that as analogous to “mind” essentially, but perhaps that is where im missing the point 
eh? What does Christianity have to do with this? Descartes thought he had a proof that materialism could not explain the mind, and the proof wouldn’t convince anyone now, but what does that have to do with Christianity?
What do you mean by the mind being an illusion and Descartes being the first to consider such a thing? Descartes never thought of the mind as an illusion. His “I think therefore I am” followed from considering all but the mind to be an illusion. Descartes’ “proof” that the mind could not be a manifestation of the merely material does presuppose that some believed in pure materialism. Are you talking about the mind being an “illusion” in the Bhramic sense? If so, some have argued that Plato must have at least learned of the Bhramic tradition, because of the similarities between Bhramic thought and his own. What is your meaning to “illusion”?
“If everything is an illusion, then what are we talking about? And who are ‘we’?”
A request for the immaterialists out there:
How do we go about discussing ideas about things beyond the physical realm? What are the standards of evidence? The rules of discussion and verification (or debunking)? How do we figure out which metaphysical claims are right? How do we decide between the conflicting claims of, say, an animist and a Methodist? Or, for that matter, between two Methodists sharing the same pew? Unless I missed a memo somewhere, there is no standard, no methodology by which we can objectively evaluate metaphysical claims.
For what it’s worth, here’s a stray thought that wandered though my noggin a few minutes ago: if the mind has some sort of existence apart from the physical brain, then why does it invariably lapse into “nothingness” every time the brain takes a nap? Kinda looks like the latter produces the former. Or as someone said some years back [I forget the source]: “The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.”
The thing about mind, if it doesn’t exist, is how on earth can a mind believe that it doesn’t exist if it doesn’t exist in the first place to disbelieve its own existence?
And the thing about memes is where do they come from? After all, according to memetic religion, we don’t actually have thoughts but are the helpless and passive receptacles of memes. So, is there this big meme-making thingie orbiting Planet Zarquahr? Does Santa Claus bring new memes? Is there some place where all memes that will ever be memed meme around from before eternity to after forever, occassionally popping out to meme things up in those helpless meme vessels? Which came first, the meme or the meme? How could a meme ever have initially come into existence to meme around if it is not possible for a mind to think but merely be a passive receptacle for the meme. What does a meme look at when one gets to one-angstrom or smaller resolution? What is the molecule of the meme? If no such thing exists, how do memes differ at all from demons and angels? Indeed, how do they differ from “body thetans”? Is memetics merely a way to backdoor in a bit of academic acceptability for body thetans and the rest of $cientology. How is memenetics/memetology different from any other religious speculation?
Why don’t I have a beer?
For myself, I’ll accept Materialism when someone can tell me the SI unit of justice and give its dimensions in mlt. (I’ll even allow temperature, angle, and electric charge, if it helps.)
There was a man in my town who murdered his wife, so he could run away with his secretary. Before killing her, however, he spent several hours torturing her for the sole and specific purpose of leaving misleading evidence for the police. I categorically refuse to believe that the statement, “This was an evil act,” is devoid of objective truth.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
So, if you’re tripping on LSD, then are we to assume that red box on the table is a demon in disguise?
Ummmm… That would be equating an hallucinogenic experience with empirical experience. I don’t think that argument floats.
My question is whether we really have free will? The meat of who you are as a person is not what you can prove, but what you believe in. There are things that you accept even though they have not been proven. You accept them because they are plausible and they have not been disproven. Fate is not something that you can prove or disprove, but many people believe in it. Do you believe in fate? Or do you believe that your God, or some higher power, has a preordained plan for you? Is what happens in your life part of God’s plan? Is God omniscient? If so, he knows everything, knows what you will do in the future. If any of these is so, you don’t really make choices. All your choices have already been made for you. You do not have free will. You just do what your memes tell you to do. It just seems like a free choice to you.
And? Why should I abandon my own religion in favor of memeanetics or mementology? The whole meme thing looks like just another religious dogma. Likewise, we’re back to the fundamental question:
If it is not possible for a mind to come up with a thought on its own, then it is not possible for memes to exist at all. If it is possible for a mind to come up with a thought on its own, then a mind is not merely a passive vessel for memes, and memes are essentially not actually memes.
Ultimately, memes are merely a coward’s way to back out of moral responsibility. Free will requires personal responsibility for ones acts. Abolish free will and one abolishes all responsibility. “Don’t blame me, it’s all the memes. I had no choice!” “I can’t be held responsible for what I do, it’s all the memes. I had no choice!” Total copout, popular with criminals and cowards.
Ah, but if all reality is merely an illusion (Buddhist flavor, Plato’s cave, or other form), then there is no problem in equating a hallucinogenic experience with empirical experience–they would be fundamentally identical.
PS: It’s “a” before consonant sounds. Thus, it is “an honor” but “a hallucination”, unless you pronounce it “an 'allucination”.
[QUOTE=kulaid]
Your brain gives sense to what you call reality. There is no true “reality” to perceive. All observations involve interaction with the observer. A hypothetical person who regularly perceives in a LSD-like manner, and is given a drug to make him perceive the world as we humans regularly see, would call that drug experience a hallucinogenic experience.
And just how is any moral statement “objective.” To put it another way: on what objective basis, that everyone can agree to, do we decide which moral system is the right one? Is it your moral system? Mine? That of Herr Adolph Hitler?
Huh?? I guess this is a consequence of your assumption that your own views on justice are the “correct” ones. (Maybe they are, but you really should give some evidence for that.) Besides, it sounds like you’re insisting that, say, flowers must confrom to the standards regarding, say, nitroglycerine. What do ethical notions have to do with scientific investigation?
I’ll be the first to admit that nihilism, as a lifestyle, bites. Fortunately the usual routines of our brains is such that we don’t (and probably can’t) spend every waking moment declaiming, “Life is utterly meaningless!” even though it sure looks like it is.
What do you say to the proposition that, if I could slip you the right chemical, I could make you “catagorically believe” (or disbelieve) any particular idea? (Not, of course, that neurogists have the brain figured out that well yet. But they’re working on it.)
Ac ille respondens ait: tu dicis.
It is not nearly as clear cut as you claim. Just because I know what choices you make, doesn’t mean you didn’t make choices. A time traveller, for example, would not need to be omniscient to know what choices (at least major) you made. That in no way invalidates the fact that you made choices. More simply, I can present a set of things from which my children can choose. If I pick the set right, I know what they will choose, that doesn’t mean they do not have free will.
It’s not like this isn’t confusing. Augustine, who more or less invented the concept of free will, spent quite a bit of time on free will with an omniscient God, as did various other Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophers. However, it is not obvious that one invalidates the other.
Personally, I believe - but it is only a belief - that what I call free will is the unpredictibility of the physical system that is my brain and body interacting with my environment. I’m in no way going to claim that I can prove that.
Ya got me. My knowledge of Latin stops at post hoc, ergo propter hoc, so I must ask for a translation. Tho’ if I may hazard a guess, tu dicis kinda looks like “you decide.” If so, if ethics is what one chooses, how is that “objective”?
Course, if I misunderstood, just give me a swift kick in my chair interface device.
It’s pretty clear cut.
If I am omniscient, I know that you’re going to, say, pick up the telephone at 8:30 tonight. The there is no choice to be made, since choice implies that an alternative could have been chosen. Suppose you don’t pick up the telephone, then I’m not omniscient, since I didn’t know you would choose otherwise. Omniscience and free will don’t go together,
He most certainly did not. The Orthodox Church has no influence from Augustine (who wrote only in Latin, which meant that his writings never got any reading in the East), yet its theology requires free will.
There are certainly those who agree with you, but there are those who do not. Part of the problem is the definition of free will itself. To work around that, let us consider a truly random event, such as the radioactive decay of a single atom of uranium. Further, let us suppose there exists an omniscient being who is omniscient because he is simultaneously conscious of the whole space time continuum while existing outside of it, and knows the state of every particle. Perhaps the spacetime continuum is embedded in a 99 dimensional space in which the being makes his home. This being knows when the uranium underwent decay, before it happens. That doesn’t make the decay any less random from the point of view of a physicist embedded in spacetime.
I won’t argue that free will is different from random. But that’s because I’m not sure what free will is? The freedom to make suboptimal choices? For Augustine, it was the freedom to choose God, suboptimal choices were as to free will as stumbling is to walking.
Luke 23:3b