A thing that cannot be empirically measured, or that does not have any effect on things that can be empirically measured, cannot be said to exist.
We can conclude that we will never encounter such a thing, because “encountering” it would constitute an interaction, and we’ve already defined it as not interacting with the physical world.
When is the last time you empirically measured a consciousness?
Well, I guess that doesn’t exist.
When is the last time you empirically measured a thought?
Well, I guess that doesn’t exist either.
Near death experiences happen in consciousness and greatly effect the physical body of the person who had it.
Ghosts sure do effect the physical mood of people, but I guess they don’t exist because you can’t measure them.
Whatever made you think memory can be measured or does anyone really know where it is, come on now, I think it exists.
People who make up rules and laws and such to cover all things in the universe are pretty foolish. No one knows much at all, save the egotism for something more solid than life. which itself can’t be measured either.
Love
Leroy
Yes, I forgot to mention that a “thought” can interact with “mind” and produce a “mood.” Oops, guess all those things can’t possible exist.
Oh, well, I tried.
Love
I’m asking you. Is that your position? If not, how not so?
-Last I spoke with another human being.
“Consciousness” is, among other things, a person’s ability to react with his or her environment. I spoke, they reacted, they spoke, I reacted.
-Last time I read a book, for one. Again a few moments ago when reading TVAAs post.
Those were thoughts transcribed by the author. I “measured” them as all people measure such things- besides the technical and grammatical quality, I subconsiously weighed it vs. my preconceptions, it’s place in this argument and put it on the scale of my opinion.
Not all measuring is done with a ruler.
-Certainly. One does not very nearly die and not be affected by the event. This leads back to the spirit/psychology synonym. Do you have a point in stating it?
-Ghosts? What ghosts?
You mean bad memories of traumatic events? Most certainly- some call it, not always accurately, “post traumatic stress disorder”. Can happen to anyone from a soldier who survived a battle, to a man who escaped a flaming car wreck.
Being thoughts, thoughts which influence emotion, they can be quanitified just the same as any human feeling. Please refer back to items one and two, above.
-Memory cannot be measured? That’s odd, I was under the impression that several game shows, such as Jeopardy and Who wants to be a Millionaire quantify a contestant’s memory every time they ask a question.
If your mother came up to you and asked if you remember what happened on your birthday two years ago, and you answered correctly, didn’t she just “measure” your memory?
-I’m sure I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say, but I believe you’re saying that ennumerating phyical laws, such as those for thermodynamics, is foolish.
If that’s the case, you don’t seem to understand that those laws are not “made up”, they’re descriptions of observed, repeatable, tested physical phenomena.
What is “foolish”, to me, is making up “laws” or dogma to somehow force reality to conform to the theistic viewpoint.
We can observe that the universe appears to be expanding, and from that, postulate that it must have at some point begun that expansion- the so-called “Big Bang”.
No, we’re told, by those going by a storybook, and not observed physical phenomena, God made the Universe.
But, we retort, from the red-shift of the light we can observe coming from that star, we can determine with a fair degree of precision that it is X million light years away.
No, comes the rebuttal, this book says the Universe is not that old. Therefore God must have created that light in transit, to give the appearance of age and distance.
But, we reply, that means God could have made the Universe at any time, and given it any apparant age. He could have made it all appear Last Thursday.
No, we’re told again, God would not decieve us in that manner, for he is Loving and Good.
But, comes the exasperated reply, is not creating a billion years’ worth of starlight in order to misrepresent the age of the Universe, itself a deception?
-Life cannot be measured either?
We cannot put a carefully-weighed petri dish of Escherichia coli under growth lights and gas spectrometers and measure food conversion vs. organism mass and expelled gasses?
We cannot put an electrocardiogram recorder on a terminal patient and record the exact second of his death?
We can’t compare respiration, map DNA, culture cells, transplant organs?
Or do you mean quantifying “life” itself, as in"the quality of life", an esoteric parameter defining how well an organism adapts, or even enjoys, it’s environment?
What about that can’t be quantified? I can tell you I’m happy with my life, you can tell me, at length if need be, how well you enjoy yours. From the outside, observers can watch our motions- do we take steps to improve our lives? Do we make motions to make those lives more pleasant?
Life, in any definition if the word, happens in what we call reality- the physical, natural world. Thus, we can interact with it, make attempts to quantify it, measure it.
Got any more straw men?
-I believe my position is well enumerated already. TVAA summed it up nicely thus:
Anything else you need to know?
Yes. Is this proposition falsifiable? If so, how?
Define ‘falsifiable’.
Is there any possible evidence that could prove this statement wrong?
Presumably, you’re referring to this statement, again presumably pulled from Randi’s article:
Well, you tell me. Just what sort of evidence would be needed to falsify that statement?
Try not to create a paradox when defining the evidence.
You got to be kidding?
You think you measured a thought by analyzing the symbol of it, words, the words were not the thought.
Neither is the spoken word a measure of consciousness.
What were the limits of the consciousness, how big was it?
And memory, you measured the man’s memory by asking one question?
No point you made had any sense to it.
Sorry.
No, I was referring to your statement, but I take it Randi’s view is more or less the same as your own.
I do not think it is falsifiable; it is an a priori statement of belief that excludes all possible refutation.
Do you disagree?
I think the soul of a man encompasses more than the merely physical. Firing synapses are part of the picture, but only part. **
I don’t believe I ever said you should. I’m not looking to convert anybody. The OP asked for opinions on Randi’s article. I gave mine: I disagree with it because I disagree with one of Randi’s premises, namely that only the empirically measurable is real. **
I don’t think that’s a classic appeal to authority. I’m not saying you should believe in God because a bunch of smart guys also believe. I’m saying the characterization of a belief in God as “stupid” might be inadvisable because plenty of deep thinkers have come to the opposite conclusion. **
Define “respect.” If by “respect” you mean an expectation that others agree with an idea, or even find it credible, then I disagree: I’ve been pretty consistent in saying I cannot prove the spiritual empirically. If by “respect” you mean not suggesting that religious folks are less than bright, as Randi does, then yes, I do expect respect. I don’t think that expectation makes me arrogant or otherwise non-humble. **
What position? Did you read what you’re responding to? I simply said that a belief in faith does not mean (as you and Randi claim) blithely accepting all faith-based justifications for a given set of actions, and noted that much of the history of human philosophy is dedicated to discerning when such justifications are acceptable.
** So human beings are partly physical, but partly not… yet this “non-physical” part must interact with the physical part. Then what reason is there to regard this part as non-physical?
** No one has ever managed to produce a logical demonstration that God should be believed in. There have been plenty of deep thinkers that have come up with dumb conclusions… so what’s your point?
Logically, you must accept all positions that are equally well supported as a position that you do accept.
Plenty of people discuss and are aware of their spiritual side. I know you want to reduce that to a series of brain synapses firing. That’s your prerogative. I disagree. I think our concious selves are more than mere brain chemistry.**
**Generally speaking, no. I say “generally” only because I hold out the possibility of God interacting with the physical in a micromanager kind of way. I do not believe that God does this in the ordinary course.
-Randi once wrote of a woman who thought as you do. She came up to him and demanded to know what the chemical formula of the soul was.
Which is, like yours, a nonsensical question, like asking what the letter B tastes like.
As I noted above, if you fervently desire to see magic and miracles and an overseeing God, then I’m sure your mind will find some way to interpret the world so it fits your view.
-No, I simply inferred the existence of thought. For those words to appear, in that context, in response to previous inquiries, insinuated the presence of thought, cognition, analysis.
Like the X-ray particle we cannot see or feel directly, we must infer it’s existence by it’s effect. I cannot hear your thoughts directly, but I can accurately assume you are, indeed thinking, by noting the pattern of your response.
Do you have an alternate explanation as to where your response came from?
-But it is an indicator. It is very difficult to converse with someone who is unconscious, or an object with no consciousness.
-What color is the number three? What does your name smell like?
We can determine something exists without knowing it’s entire parameters. We know there’s iron in the core of this planet- do you know the exact volume of that iron, in cubic feet?
-You didn’t ask for the limits or extent of memory, you simply stated that memory could not be measured.
Do you recall your birthday two years ago? Yes? Then I just measured a small bit of your memory. With time and careful questioning, I could determine additional parameters.
To say that I can’t measure the entire depth and breadth of one person’s memory in a single forum posting is akin to those mentioned in another thread that point to every space in the fossil record as an insurmountable gap, disproving evolution.
-If you wish, like Dewey, to remain wilfully ignorant of reality, that’s fine by me. I think you’re visiting the wrong board for it, though.
** You are completely missing the point.
You think consciousness is more complex than brain chemistry? Fine. But whatever you think consciousness is, what gives you the idea that it’s non-physical? If the mind interacts with the body (which we must logically assume it does), then what grounds are there to consider it non-physical?
**
So do you claim that God can interact with the physical universe. Then God is also a part of the physical universe.
No, I predict that that’s what you’re going to say about the soul and thus elect to skip ahead to the next stage of the argument. I just figured I’d save us all a little time. **
It would indeed be sad and tiny if I had actually said that. Fortunately for me, I did not. Do you by any chance own shares in a straw company?
What I did say is that reducing things like love and beauty to mere chemical processes in the brain is cold and sterile.
That assertion does not mean that man is incapable of creating beauty or majesty, or that his devices are not fascinatingly complex, or that he is incapable of great things.
I do note the irony of you using NASA photographs of the planets in your “Did God do this?” litany. Sure, God had nothing to do with the creation of the equipment that took the photograps, but I’d argue that he might well have had something to do with the subject matter of those photographs. **
This is insulting to every serious theologan or philosopher who has ever considered the question of the divine. The question has been contemplated, carefully and thoughtfully. That some have reached different conclusions about the way the world operates does not make them wilfully ignorant. It only means that they think empiricism is not the only road to human enlightenment.**
Who is “we?”
Because by definition it is nonphysical. Just because A interacts with B does not necessarily transform A into B. **
One of humility, which you accuse me of lacking but which you yourself lack in spades. When a substantial number of intelligent, serious-minded people say X, it does not necessarily mean X is true, but it does mean that X should be treated as a real possibility. Humility is, in part, recognizing the possibility that you might be wrong. **
It’s a huge leap from finding faith to be a valid concept to finding that anything can be properly justified by recourse to faith. No serious-minded person believes that. It is silly to suggest otherwise.
My own sense of things. Again, for the umpteenth time, I can’t logically prove the existence of God or the human soul. It is folly to try. But I, like many others, have an inherent sense that the divine exists and that I am more than the sum of my body parts. I know that is not empirical proof. I do not pretend it is. I do not expect anyone to be swayed by that. I think it real nevertheless. **
I never claimed otherwise; God transcends all things, from the physical to the spiritual. But I believe that God elects to refrain from interaction with the physical world (outside of designing the darned thing), being more interested in the spiritual side of things.