He seems to be completely ignoring his own body of work–where does it enter the picture in the interview?–and instead spouting the same old tired skeptical bromides. Also, the 'tude: there are atheists that feel that atheism is something the average person can grasp and benefit from. But then there are atheists that enjoy perceiving something the poor average fool can’t grasp and gloating over him. Dawkins is leaning toward the dark side in this interview.
Also, Sentient et al., I don’t know enough about memetics to argue any further about it, so I will confess my ignorance of the topic and cease and desist re it. Thanks for your explanations.
I could be wrong, but it seems like the one looking for an argument here is you. Like I said, many of the statements Dawkins makes in the interview are not some form of generic atheist pablum. They’re rather well-worn Dawkinisms that, unfortunately, don’t do as well as they might for the abbreviation. However, there’s absolutely nothing new here, and I can’t see how he could be expected within the confines of this interview of saying anything deeper. I regard this terse delivery as, at worse, impatience. And, quite frankly, evolutionists have got a lot to be impatient over these days.
Cripes. I wrote that while simultaneously conversing with my wife, and then hit “sumit” instead of preview. Hopefully you can translate what I was attempting to say in that last post. Sorry for the butchery of English.
You know, Gorsnak might be genuinely misunderstanding your post, and not deliberatly distorting it. I only say this because I interpreted what you wrote in precisely the same way he did, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any ill intent when I did so.
I think you’re reading far too much into Dawkins’ use of the term “delusional.” I admit that it’s a loaded term, and Dawkins in using it specifically to be confrontational, but you are freighting it with a lot of excess baggage. For starters, the jump you are making between “delusional” and “institutionalized” is not warranted. Even assuming Dawkins meant “delusional” in a clinical sense, merely having a delusion is not enough to get you locked up. If you believe that the CIA is beaming radio transmissions to you through your fillings, you’re not going to wind up in a padded cell unless you further conclude that you’ve got to blow up a Federal building to stop them. If you just walk around wearing tin foil on your head, nobody is going to lock you up. No, it’s still not a flattering comparison for believers, but let’s cut to the bone of the matter: if you profess to have had a personal experience with God, any atheist is going to think you saw/heard/felt something that does not exsist. They may have enough manners not to refer to it as a “delusion,” but that doesn’t mean that the word doesn’t fit. It’s a necessary extention of conflict between your two world views. His word choice may be insulting, but it does not contain any connotations of institutionalization, dehumanization, of human experimentation.
None of your arguments are against our being in a computer simulation. They are demonstrations that such a hypothesis is untestable and irrelevant, which is slightly different.
Agreed. But since by your own argument the point is moot, may I ask why you are a Pantheist?
I appreciate the civility of your tone, Miller. I must admit that it is rather discouraging to be called delusional on the one hand by an accomplished scientist and then crazy for taking offense on the other hand by people defending him. I also appreciate that you have carved out for us a sort of special delusion in which we are not dangerous to society but which is insulting to us, and which nevertheless we should take in stride with a good natured smile, owing to a sort of special inoffensive rudeness on the part of the atheists who call us these names. However, you can easily Google for court cases in which defendants were committed to mental institutions for observation and treatment on account of the finding that they were delusional. If Dawkins is equivocating, that’s not my fault. And I hope you’ll pardon me that I’m not going to stand still while he merges the meanings together, and while other atheists ponder their amazement over my offense. If I were in here pointing out that atheists suffered from some sort of mental disturbance or delusion because of their inability to connect with God, I would be mauled by the ensuing pile-on. Would you be there to tell them that I meant no harm, and that my insult should not offend them?
I’m afraid Kant and the cognitive science of the last century have so little in common that, indeed, we cannot really have the same conversation. Frankly, I’m surprised anyone takes him seriously at all any more: I’d agree with Dennett that idealism is just a massive “failure of imagination” given the developments of the past several decades.
Not if we deny the metaphysical, we can’t. My position is that ontology is rather a bunch of hooey since it deals with things which aren’t physical. I say there is nothing non-physical, and you would, if honest, admit the possibility that I’m right (just as I admit it’s possible that I’m wrong).
“Averse” is hardly the right word: they consider “transcendental truth” to be a category error, since “truth” is ultimately a physical state wherein a cognitive apparatus encodes the universe how it is rather than how it is not, according to some (arbitrary) criteria. Positing a truth which transcends this physical nature is, to an atheist, unnecessary.
And again, we might be wrong.
Agreed, which is why I don’t believe so myself. But you said you could prove it, ie. that there is no possibility of it.
Ah, but the simulation need not be supernatural. It can be as computational and physical as Sonic the Hedgehog, which is why certain formulations are so convincing in the first place, to everyone (theist or not).
Agreed: the simulation could be that good. However, that is irrelevant to whether or not we are actually in one. You ‘proving that we are not in a simulation’ would require you to show that simulations that good are impossible.
Again, so what? Whether they are in another doesn’t have a bearing on whether we are in theirs.
Hmm, maybe. But not that, nor God’s existence. We cannot disprove them, merely ascribe low (if inexact) probabilities to them, just as Dawkins says.
You admit to misrepresenting the atheist position so that it’s easier to argue with?
“Dead” is an inaccurate or melodramatic description of a corpse? “Forever” is an inaccurate or melodramatic term for all of time from the moment of cephalic necrosis onwards? Would you prefer “temporarily vitally challenged”?
The word in all of this which sticks in your, and others’, craw is “delusion”. I’ll agree that this is an overly inflammatory and insulting term, which I have never to my knowledge used myself when setting forth my atheistic position no matter how bizarre my opponents position appeared (I think “wishful thinking” is the furthest I go.) There clearly are some things which could be said to be “religious delusions” even by theists, such as the schizophrenic’s claims that God told him to do it or the rabid sectarian preacher telling his flock that God commands righteous anger and hatred. Dawkins’ error, in this interview, is to characterise all religious belief in this way, even the simple conviction of a “higher significance” which many people say they experience (and Aeschines’ OP commits the same error in characterising atheism by reference to PETA and mass-murder). But note that these things always get heavily edited. Dawkins’ own work sets forth his position rather less controversially and in far greater detail:
Nobody’s calling you crazy for taking offense. We’re calling you crazy for comparing Dawkins to Mengele. Even if calling you delusional is “the first step in dehumanizing” you (which I dispute - I think it’s no more than labelling your belief irrational, and irrational beliefs are perfectly human), it’s still no more Mengelian than jogging three steps is a marathon.
Well, let me try to put your hijack to bed. What I actually said was that his declaration (not him personally) was almost Mengelean, and I explained (twice) in exactly what limited way I thought it was thus so. If you have a problem with that, I recommend you swallow your own medicine — treat it as though you personally have been called delusional, and just shrug it off as you advise me to do.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take offense, if for no other reason than offense was clearly meant to be given. I just think your reaction is out of proportion to the insult. I mean, if a Christian tells me I’m going to burn in hell for not believing in Jesus, I’m going to be insulted, sure, but I’m not going to start equating (or nearly equating, per the clarification in your latest post) that person with Torquemada. To do so would be disrespectful to the people who died, slowly and terribly, because of that man’s action. But it would also distract from the point I wanted to communicate, because people are going to seize on the absurd comparison I’ve made, and ignore the substance of my post. Which, you may have noticed, is exactly what’s happened to you in this thread. Calling people who have religious beliefs “delusional” is counter-productive. It alienates the people who, at least in theory, most need to hear the message. However, in terms of objectionable behavior, it is so far removed from performing gruesome medical experiments on helpless prisoners that comparing the two only makes Dawkins statements look more rational.
The problem with this is that God is a lot more complicated then Leprauchans–except for some fundamentalists, I don’t think many people think of God has a physical entity.
If judges sent delusional people to asylums after they died, I wouldn’t mind nearly so much. Dawkins’ declaration — please spread the word that the man (whom I did not compare) and his declaration (which I did) are not one and the same — if taken seriously by the right people, can subject men to what some say are gruesome medical experiments on helpless prisoners. Institutional psychiatry comes with long history of horror stories. I stand by the comparison. He believes we have a mental defect. He is a monster.
He believes you have a delusion, and he believes it’s a dangerous delusion. And he believes the world would be a better place if no one had that delusion. But he doesn’t believe you have a mental defect, and he’s not a monster.
Nice try, Miller. No kidding. I just don’t think Liberal is going to get up offa that thing, ya know? Saying someone has a delusion *is exactly equal to * calling that person delusional, which is *exactly equal to * diagnosing that person with a commitable illness, which *is exactly equal to torturing * said person, which makes the first guy a monster. Ya see? But if anyone could have gotten through I think you would have done it.
It is threads like these that make the SDMB worthwhile. Miller, Sentient Meat,Liberal, Aeschines; all of you guys provoke me into thinking about things in newer, deeper ways, and the cites I have gotten from** Sentient Meat ** and **Liberal ** provide reading material for months to come. Thanks.
Do you really think that Dawkins believes that people with religious beliefs should be institutionalized? Do you think that his statements in this interview are part of a concerted effort to push an agenda whose ultimate goal is to have religious belief reclassified as a severe mental disorder? Personally, I think it’s far more likely that he’s making deliberatly inflamatory statements in order to garner more attention for himself and his books. Trolling, in other words. Which is certainly nothing worthy of respect, but it’s hardly monstrous.
Even if you answer yes to the two questions posed above, I still don’t see why you’re quite so outraged. Sure, it’s a reprehensible opinion. So is the idea of eternal damnation for not correctly guessing which diety is hiding behind door number one. The thing is, you’re as likely to end up in an institution for being a Christian as I am to end up in hell for not being a Christian. I don’t appreciate being told I’m going to burn in hell, but since I don’t believe there’s such a place as hell, or such a being as God to send me there, it’s hard to get really riled up by it. Similarly, in this overwhelmingly (and increasingly) Christian nation, the odds of religious belief being redefined as a mental illness is so vanishingly small as to be laughable. Why get so outraged at being threatened with something that cannot possibly ever happen?
Yes, I started a GD thread with the intention of debating with people who disagree.
But at least a few are, right?
My point wasn’t that the man is an idiot; the point was rather that he was “dumbing down” his rhetoric. We actually don’t seem to be disagreeing much on this point.
I disagree. The concepts of evolution have made good progress and will continue to do so. Decrying how stupid everyone is for not getting it yet is not the way to go IMO.
I gave those because those are ultimately the stronger arguments, as they undercut the very notion of proposing we are in a simulation in the first place. These arguments are also necessary to combat the “gimmick” of the pro-simulation arguments (see below).
The plain-jane argument against our being in a simulation is that there simply is no evidence for it.
The gimmick of the pro-simulationists is that they argue that the technology to produce simulations is not only possible and thus inevitable. If we grant that it is inevitable, then we have to ask ourselves how we know that we are not in a simulation already.
It’s a beguiling argument, and the trick to solving the puzzle is to understand that gimmick is only superficially attached to the “final product,” which, as I stated earlier is no different than control by an evil demon or a benevolent God.
There are any number of scenarios that can be gratuitously asserted. Perhaps we are not really in Reality but just in a dream world from which we will wake up. Etc. This is even more plausible than the simulation technology, since we know that dreams are possible from personal experience.
It’s not really a connected point, but I’ll answer anyway.
If asked what God is, I answer that it is a principle that inheres in That Which Is, or Reality. I do not propose a separate God that created things (although intelligent creation at certain stages and times is certainly possible–we humans do it).
Some of what Dawkins says could be construed as trolling, and I think they’re inflammatory enough we’d better ask him himself what he’s on about, as one could reasonably go either way on the subject. The thing is, I get the impression the guy is not provoking for provocation’s sake, but because he’s pissed off. Why? Because people like him keep getting accused of depravity for doing a good job by some of the most undeniably trollish specimines of humanity the world can currently show. Unlike his detractors, he’s got an excellent mind, a dynamite theory, and a mountain of facts to back up his sharp tongue.
And what could be more slanderously bizarre than to suggest his statements lead in any conceivable way to involuntary imprisonment of spiritualists for the purposes of gruesome experimentation? Wouldn’t you be pissed? Dawkins has said time and again that he views spirituality as a quintessentially human trait, perfectly normal, and perhaps even adaptive. His beef has never been so much with the deluded (who are prone to be by their very humanity), but the delusions themselves, and his lamentation is that we ought to know better.
I’m not a Kantian, but the question of how we use the fuzzy logic of probability without really being able to explain how we do so did call to mind Kant’s categories.
I’m not really impressed with what cognitive science has come up with thus far. If Dennet’s Consciousness Explained is to be considered one of the better works in the canon out there, then I’d say the field is in rough shape. Not that a lot of smart people haven’t written a lot of interesting stuff, but they just haven’t been able to produce an “Ah ha!” moment with their work. If I could sum up the field in one line, it would be, “Consciousness is no big deal, and the brain is doing it.”
Answer me this: Where has applied science taken off with the discoveries of cognitive science? I rest my case. (Again, saying so is not to defend any other viewpoint.)
This is grossly short-circuited reasoning. Even if one concedes that ontology is doing its best to hold a position that is contrary to your physicalist philosophy, that doesn’t mean that everything in it can be tossed out without considering the merits of individual propositions.
Having read many of your posts on this board, I sometimes feel you are using the name of your philsophy as a kind of Hammer of Thor to smash to bits any proposition that smells funny to you: “Wait a sec, you’re talking about something that’s not physical, so that means the content of what you’re saying is null and void!”
Since you say that all is phyiscal with great confidence, wouldn’t it be that when people are saying things that assert non-physicality you should conclude that they are semantically off-kilter rather than fundamentally incorrect?
For example. Someone says, “I believe in ghosts, and ghosts aren’t physical.”
Wrong thought: Gotcha! I know that everything is physical, and you say that ghosts are physical so you are wrong and ghosts don’t exist!
Right thought: Well, whatever ghosts are, I know that they are not physical.
I can tell you right here that the proposition is definitely wrong–or, to be clearer, it’s moot. If everything is physical (and cannot be otherwise), then physicality itself is a characteristic that cannot be distinguished from anything else. “Physicality” then becomes equivalent to “existence”–everything’s got it.
Where does that assertion get you? Nowhere. It’s bad philosophy. The same thing would apply to panpsychism or any other “pan.” To pantheism, too, if the purpose is not to answer “What is what people call ‘God’” but rather to assert that all things’ being God is an interesting characteristic of all things. (In my version, the Divine is a quality of harmony that can inhere in patterns to a greater or lesser degree).
Now, so as not to straw man your physicalism, I suspect that it is similar in some way s to my own pantheism. I hold my pantheism not to assert something particularly new but to correct notions about God that I deem incorrect. Perhaps you hold physicalism to correct notions about the Universe that you consider incorrect (i.e., all is matter and energy, and to think that there is a separate soul or spirit is incorrect).
That’s fair, but you must avoid making the kind of logical errors I described above. And sometimes you do, as in this very thread.
[quote]
“Averse” is hardly the right word: they consider “transcendental truth” to be a category error, since “truth” is ultimately a physical state wherein a cognitive apparatus encodes the universe how it is rather than how it is not, according to some (arbitrary) criteria. Positing a truth which transcends this physical nature is, to an atheist, unnecessary.
Here is an error. Who says that “transcendental truth” has to “transcend” physical nature just because people say so?
The wise thing to ask (I was told this years ago by a prof and it has really stuck with me) is, “In what way could what this person saying be true?”
You talk about a cognitive apparatus encoding the universe correctly (how it is)–how do you assess that how-it-is-ness without going meta on the system and assessing it from above or without? I think you end up with transcendental truth anyway.
The philosophical point being that, at that level of power, there is no difference whatsoever between “computational” and “supernatural.”
No, the proposition is simply moot. The concept “simulation” exists in contrast to the concept of “the real, non-simulated world.” If there is no difference between the simulation and the real world, and if there is no test to see if one is in one or the other, then there is not even any difference between the concept.
Wouldn’t you consider me nutty if I proposed that there were “simulated owls” in the woods that were exactly the same as “real owls” except that they were “simulated”?
It has a bearing. Imagine that the controllers of the simulation have the server in front of them in which we exist. They can project 3D images of us and watch and hear us, and they can communicate to us when they so choose.
They say, “We are in control, and you are in our simulation. Ha ha! We can even prove it to you.” They proceed to alter reality Matrix-style, to prove that they are the masters.
Now, in such a situation the controllers would indeed be in control as far as we were concerned and the nuances of philosophy would be of little consolation, just as they would not if an evil demon ruled over us.
But suppose a booming voice then told the controllers that they themselves were in a simulation–a booming voice that we ourselves could also hear. And suppose this booming voice then told the controllers that they were just a simulation that was allowed to test the faith of people in the real world.
Any combination of existential control or bullying is possible. You could have an evil demon running a “simulation” on “real” hardware that is causing “simulated” pink unicorns to prance in front of “real” people. The example amply demonstrates that the dichotomy of real/simulated is false and vacant.
Yes, it’s one of my sins, Father Meat.
Not at all. And we say that someone is “dead” long after that corpse is gone for useful semantic reasons. But we do not hold that the dead person is in a state of death, merely that we continue to experience his/her absence.
Again, the atheist uses “dead forever” to deliver a rhetorical punch to the theist who believes that in the afterlife we are “alive forever.” The implication is that there is a “state of death” that parallels the “state of eternal life.” I know that atheists don’t really believe that, but they do try to rub in the feeling of that phrase (or those similar) in a nya-nya-nyaaa way.
. I’ll just return to what I said before about the fallacy of the borrowed connotation.
What I said about atheism was said carefully: Atheism isn’t delusional but it does have a piss-poor record when adopted by political movements (contrary to contentions that religion is uniquely corrupting). I stand by those statements.
No doubt! I’m not trying to be a smartass when I say it, but doesn’t the consensus seem to be here that Dawkins did in fact dumb himself down for the Salon interview?